Bitcoin Forum

Just wanted to confirm PopCoin will be launching today! We're going to be seeding the game with 2ETH, so the first players should have a really good chance for a big win; watch our video above for a quick primer on how to play.

I just checked on your youtube and it said that bet until you are the one who make a bet which is no one played and you will be the winners. Am I right? And is there any min bet here to get into this game? And how much is the max bet for players can make and earn? There should be some house edge here, or is it like a mere lottery games?

OK, this is another one of those ETH smart contract gamble games like those ExitScam and Fomo games getting popular now, right? I will admit, this one looks LESS complicated, and MORE easy to see and to win, but the problem is to attract the first few players.

You said you put in 2 ETH but I see there is 0 in the pool right now, meaning not a single player has played, meaning no one will risk until those ETH start building up.

First, just want to confirm we are launching today. We needed to make some last minute adjustments so we pushed back launch by a day. It will now be launching at 2am UTC.

Correct, since we are seeding the contract with 2 Eth if no one plays then who ever does play will win that Eth. If other player’s play then all the money coming into the contract will be payed out accordingly to the winning players.

The min bet is 0.001 Eth.

There is no max bet and there is no max for how much players can make as it will be determined by the round size. So for example if you were the only player to play the first round and you bet .001 Eth you'd win ~2Eth since that is what we are seeding it with.

There is a house edge in that the house takes a rake 3% of every bet. So the natural question is who is the house? The answer is you… that is if you play. You can exchange PoPCoins for the 3% rake that the house takes off of every bet. So how do you mine PoPCoins? You play the game. Every bet you make earns you PoPCoins which can either be hodl’d to collect even more rake or exchanged for the rake the house currently holds. In short play the game become the house. So there is a house edge but that is just gets played out to the players. Every player is playing against each other with no-one having an advantage.
 

First, just want to confirm we are launching today. We needed to make some last minute adjustments so we pushed back launch by a day. It will now be launching at 2am UTC.


Correct, it is similar to some of those games however also pretty different. The biggest difference is how we integrated our own mining algorithm into the game. The House takes a 3% rake of every bet made and puts it into a side pool just as a casino would in real life. This is how they make money and this is how The House in our contract makes money. However, unlike other games where the house is just the developers we instead wanted to make it so that The House were the people who added the most value to the game (ie the players) hence PoP - Proof of Play.
When you place a bet you mine PoPCoins which can be exchanged for that 3% rake the house takes. So by playing PoPCoin you are not only playing a game similar to the games you mentioned earlier but you are also becoming The House and are earning a portion of that 3% for every bet going forward. The game is not pre-mined and there is no way for the developers to change anything or remove money once it's launched.

PoPCoin is also different in that it is a framework of games all of them paying eth into The House that PoPCoins make you a part of. PoPCoin is essentially a decentralized casino with unique fun games and where the players own the earnings of the casino.

You did see 0 in the pool when you last checked because we had to make some last minute changes to the contract. It is true with no money in the contract there is no reason for players to play. That is why we are seeding the contract with 2 Eth which you will see later today. :)

If you want more information on how PoPCoin works you can checkout our videos or our pitch deck with outlines the economics of it: http://popcoin.gg/images/popcoinPitch.pdf

Hey guys, sorry we are having a delay. We are doing some last minute contract review to make sure everything is functioning correctly before we make it live. Will update here tonight. Likely will launch the contract tomorrow.

Thanks for the responses. It looks like you still had problems launching, I guess the announcement was premature. Idea is actually very good now that you have explained it because:

1. Mining by betting and proof of play is just like a casino rewarding the most active players or the ones who wager the most. I really like this concept.
2. 3% rake might be too high. Lower it to 1% for a start, maybe max 2% once established. No point being greedy, right?

Now your idea is excellent but you really need to get your smart contract looked at AND maybe touch up your design.

Hey everyone, just wanted to provide a quick update. After doing a final review we decided to add some small, but we think important features to the contract. Contract should be in it's final state now, just running tests at this point. We plan on launching very soon, most likely early on this coming week. Will provide an additional update once the final launch date is locked down. Thanks for everyone's patience!

Thanks for your feedback! After collecting some additional last minute input we decided there were a few small features that should be added to the contract. Everything is in place now and we're just going through the final testing stages, feel optimistic for a launch early next week.

Regarding your point about rake, we agree 3% in a vacuum would seem high, but keep in mind the majority of this rake doesn't go to the game or the developers, it goes back to the players.

Because of this players, especially early players, have an interest in and benefit from a healthy rake. We're intending to launch with the percentage of PopCoins the developers mine (and thus percent of rake they're entitled to) set to 30%. This number is set in the contract itself and can possibly decrease but can never increase.

So: 3% * 0.3 = a total of a 0.9% rake for the game/developers which we think is very reasonable and below most dice sites or other popular forms of crypto gaming. The remaining rake the players are entitled to and can redeem their PopCoins for at any time. This is all enforced through the contract itself, no trust is required of us at any time.

Hope that answers your questions, and we'll keep working on the design too :)

The game actually sounds interesting, the idea of mining during gaming is definitely not explored enough. It is not completely new, however, as we already have a not very successful yet Electroneum. And it is not clear what exactly the game is about. The experience seems very plain from the video, but the descriptions say that the game progresses as players make their moves. What I don't like is that it might be too eth-consuming to even make it to the end. And what, if you want to invest small, you are not even going to get the coins? And the official website at least lacks info on its creators and proof that it is truly based on smart contract.

We’ll be publishing the contract source very shortly upon launch so everyone can confirm both that the game is based on a smart contract and can also verify all the claims we’ve made about the game if they so chose.

Just to get into this point a little more, we believe one of the coolest parts of crypto and smart contracts is that they allow decentralized, trustless games like this to exist. We think the idea of by playing a game you effectively become the house is really powerful and interesting, but who would want to trust some centralized, non-verifiable source that the game winnings are being reported accurately and that the new player/owners will actually get the winnings they were promised and entitled to? We think a game like PopCoin is a great candidate for a project well suited for smart contracts and one that really couldn’t exist and make sense before their creation.


As far as investing to acquire coins, all players who make a bet, regardless of how small it is or if it ends up winning any ETH, will earn PopCoins, entitling them to a portion of the house of the rake. Not only that but the amount of coins they earn will increase linearly as the game continues, so a player’s bet might initially earn then 100 coins, but by the end of the game, as more bets from other players come in, without doing anything additional that same bet will have earned them 200 coins. The amount of coins the contract will ever issue is fixed at 10,000,000 and will payout less over time, similar to how bitcoin's block reward decreases over time.

Also just to be clear, this is a portion of the rake not just for the current game, but for the entire history of the contract both past and future. By playing the game you really are earning a portion of the contract rake and pseudo becoming the house.


It’s interesting to hear another project has explored the Proof of Play concept, although we hope there’s still something unique in our approach. It can be hard to keep with the crypto trends!

You’re probably right there’s room for improvement in our marketing and educational materials but we’re hopeful though that once the game is live and you can see it in action it will be very approachable to understand how it works. We’ve tried to make it both simple and easy to get started and also exciting as the to watch the game develop as the round continues and grows.

Thank you for responding, I was hoping you would, because I looked at your pitch and it looks like time was invested in there. Do make sure you give people like us some lead time before you launch, since we are all clearly interested and would like to play when they game is up.

Now that the rake is explained you are right. Just below 1% for developers is very fair.

I have 1 question: what if all popcoins are mined and nobody ever wants to claim the rake? Is this possible as from what I am reading it almost seems likely everybody will just try to mine popcoins til they are gone, and then nobody wants to claim, there is nothing worth left to mine, won't nobody want to play?

We’ve designed the contract so a few key constants, including the rate rake, will be able to be adjusted over time. Limits to the rate of this change are built into the contract and changes will always apply to future, never current games. The contract will also have a "nuclear option", a function that, if we call it, will prevent even us from making any future changes to these constants including the rake.

You make a good point that as more PopCoins are mined the incentive for new players to enter the game will decrease; as this happens likely the rake will be lowered.

We’re also of course hopeful that by the time a large majority of PopCoins have been mined the game will have a healthy player base and rounds will be generating pots large enough that play will largely come from organic interest in these pot sizes and not only a desire to mine PopCoin.

Also as a technicality, all PopCoins will never be completely mined. The rate PopCoins are issued at will decrease as more are issued, but this rate will only approach 0, never quite reach it.

I've looked at this a few times but everything says zero, will keep checking, good luck.

Thanks, we've pushed back the launch a bit but still planning on launching soon, very likely within the week. Will update when we have a date confirmed.

Hi everyone, just wanted to announce we now have an official launch date! PopCoin will launch:
August 20, 2:00 UTC

We're very excited for this launch and think we're going to have a great game. See everyone on Monday!

A direct link to the game: http://www.popcoin.gg/game.html (http://www.popcoin.gg/game.html)

Thank you for that explanation again, I do think it is one of the more interesting concepts to be introduced lately, but I will say that the early people, like me, if I plan on joining, will definitely want to own the PopCoins and those that come later may not be as incentivized to join for the lack of rake shares/popcoins.

August 20 2 UTC for launch is about 18 hours from now, looks really exciting. How will we know it has launched? When that ETH pot shows positive? Will we be able to deposit from an exchange or casino or must we stick to MetaMask?

Thanks for your feedback, realizing made a small mistake in the time conversion, actually going to be launching at on 8/21 at 02:00 UTC, so little bit more time until the game begins.

For now the easiest way will be to use metamask through the game UI at http://www.popcoin.gg/game.html (http://www.popcoin.gg/game.html). PopCoin is a smart contract like any other though and we'll be publishing the contract source along with ABI so it will be technically possible interact with the game through other means. If someone wanted to put in the effort it should even build your own custom UI, but for most players using the game page at http://www.popcoin.gg/game.html (http://www.popcoin.gg/game.html) should be easiest.

As far as knowing when the game launches the countdown timer on the game page just below the betting box should provide a good indicator and we'll of course also be making a post in the thread once it goes live. Also once the game is live the "Pot" field will be displayed as greater then 0 and there should be a graph similar to the one in the youtube videos featured in this thread in the center of the page. The large "Bet" button on the game page will also be active.

Also just wanted to remind everyone, PopCoin will be launching in a little more then 24 hours!

The first game will be seeded with 2 ETH so make sure to get there early. Very excited for the launch and looking forward to a great game!

OK sounds good, like I said never tried this game before or anything like it always a bit curious since there's the gambler in me! Still not 100% sure of how it's played but I guess I don't mind risking a few dollars for the experience. If I'll put anything into it I'll be a few hours late though. It's around 10am my time I get lunch break maybe 3 hours after the game starts.

Will you be seeding anymore of this yourself or playing it yourself? The reason I stay way usually is that I don't dare fight the whales ;)

We've included a way for us to reseed the game (basically add more fee money to the pot) in case the action ever gets too slow and things need to be kickstarted a bit. The thing is we've set the game up so that smaller players could potentially do very well against whales, it's all about just watching the game and getting in at the right moment.

Just wanted to remind everyone, PopCoin will be launching TODAY!

Another reminder that the first game will be seeded with 2 ETH to kick things off, try to get there early!

Hey everybody PopCoin is launching NOW! Game should be live within a few minutes!

2 Eth up for grabs!

PopCoin is now LIVE!

Go here to play: http://www.popcoin.gg/game.html (http://www.popcoin.gg/game.html)

2 Eth seeded and the earliest players should mine the most PopCoin!

Interesting idea. Would be nice to have a faucet or a tiny promotion to try it out first :)

Hmm, I had to wait to finish work and still got a few hours left at office after all. But it seems the game has not launched at all? I see 0 ETH, and it says if game ends now there is 0 ETH, so I guess something didn't work out. No seed or players that I can see. Shame, maybe the launch is delayed, should have done this on Friday evening or on the weekend I think :)

Am not the gambling type, you guys should put what you can afford to lose. The whole scheme will not take long before it park off once they gain users trust

I wonder if the game is live and working?

https://i.imgur.com/vladCazm.jpg

this doesn't seem right-the pot is zero , no info about when it ends etc.
have you stopped it because of some bugs or  am I missing something?
I like the idea,but the implementation seems to be lacking just a tiny bit

The game is live, do you have Metamask installed? Have mentioned this briefly at other points but probably didn't make it clear enough that right now you do need to have Metamask installed in order to interact with the game.

We've added some messaging and a download link to Metamask to hopefully make this more clear to other players.

We actually did have a launch last night with some play, by any chance do you not have Metamask installed with the browser you're trying to access the game with? Probably needed to make this point more often that Metamask is necessary to interact with the contract through the browser.

Ah, so that was the problem. Yes I did have Metamask installed it is on my Chrome, but I did not sign in. Usually it should automatically alert me if I go to a site that needs metamask, and then I will be asked to sign in but it seemed not to have worked at the time.

Anyway, another day of work for me let me see if I still have time to enter the first round. Probably too late for me by then though.

oh yes,I don't have Metamask installed,probably the reason to this
and of course,if Metamask is the prerequisit to play,you should make it clear
probably with huge red letters in the middle- INSTALL METAMASK if you want to play

Yep, definitely good advice. We've added some messaging now that should make it clear to all new players.

Has it been launched?

yes it is fully operational
undergoing some cosmetic changes,I see, but the game is on
can't say it is super popular ,but a start is a start....

OP you should update us here on the game. A few of us are curious, but naturally want to learn more about how the game works before trying it. FOMO3d ended and had the second round started a few days ago so I guess the lesson is that it does work so the model can somehow apply, just to see now if it can be sustainable. Popcoin model sounded good on paper too but if you can share statistics and all that, we can learn together.

Anybody won that first seeded round yet?