Hi,

I've looked at server logs and I've compiled a summary for you - I've just sent it via email. It really looks like someone used your PC, all the requests look very "natural". So either you have malware that allows an attacker to take control over your PC, or someone just used your computer. I've found nothing in the logs that looks like unauthorized access.

If I can help you in any way - tell me, either here or via email.

Cheers,
Ethan

Hi,

the BTC network fees have been quite high for the last couple of days. Because of the fact that our own withdrawal fees are proportional to network fees these have been quite high too - up to 0.002 BTC per withdrawal. You don't have to be Einstein to realize it's high.

I've been looking at different fee estimations looking for ways to make the withdrawal fees smaller. Today I've changed the algorithm so that we now target withdrawals to be included in the next 5 blocks. The fees are a bit lower now (right now it's 0.00118 BTC for instant withdrawal) - still high, but better than before.

I still hope the network fees will get down in the next couple of days. Lightning network is IMO not a cure for all the problems but I keep looking at it.

On the other hand - LTC, ETH and DOGE network fees are much more reasonable. Sometimes it might be cheaper to convert e.g. BTC->LTC and withdrawal with really low fees instead.

BTW: how many of you have and use LN wallets? Would you use them if we launched LN transactions?

Cheers,
Ethan

We don't have that huge transaction volume, so the batch withdrawals are processed every 5h, so if you request a batch withdrawal your average waiting time should be 2-3h.

I have to admit the network fees are getting crazy in the last few days - I've tried to switch to a different algorithm, but still, we cannot ignore the fact that mempool is full - see https://btc.com/stats/unconfirmed-tx

If the transactions are to be confirmed in a reasonable time, we have to use high fees :-(((((

If nothing changes in a day or two I'll try to find a better solution for this, but for now the withdrawal fees are bound to the network fees. One solution is to use batch withdrawals if you're not in hurry...

Another thing is that the start/end date of weekly competitions changed - it's now at Monday, 21:00 UTC time (instead of 0:00 UTC Monday). I had to do this because I am not able to wake in the middle of the night and reliably send the prizes any more. I've been waking up like that for the last 21 weeks and I have to confess - I am getting too old for this :-)

So the current competition is a transitional one - it started at 0:00 UTC last Monday, but will end at 21:00 UTC on Monday.

Cheers,
Ethan

Thankfully this is "fixed" now - there was nothing wrong with YD, @zrippd was entering old credentials and that's why he could not log in. But @kolloh,  you are right - the first thing to check if your 2FA is not getting accepted is if your device has valid time/date. Even one minute skew will make your codes invalid since they are time-sensitive.

Cheers,
Ethan

I've replied to your email, let's stay in touch. I bet there is a simple explanations, it's the first time I am seeing such an issue.

Cheers,
Ethan

Hi,

earlier today I've pushed a few changes to YOLOdice:

1. Referrals pass XP again

You can get 10% of the XP from wagering from your referrals, up to 50 XP. So if your referrals get e.g. 400 XP from playing, you get 40 XP.

2. Investing provides XP too

Once you open an investment you get instant XP boost for your account. It's calculated as xp_amount = n * initial_investment_amount. For BTC n is between 3 and 4, and for other coins it can vary based on current exchange ratios.

I am still thinking about gradual XP growth from investments over time, but at least investors have a way to get XP now.

Details about your XP can be found at https://yolodice.com/#level
To protect your privacy XP from investing and referrals are disabled by default. Just for sure. You can easily enable them at the link above.

3. We'll to clarify the dilution fee deadline soon

We've postponed the introduction of dilution fee until we have a more flexible way to manage investments. Once we make any decision, I'll announce introduction of the fee up to 1 week before the data. For now investors can open and close investments without any dilution fees added.

Cheers and thanks,
Ethan

Good luck! Thumbs up!

Psssst. Neither me nor Scott are affiliated nor involved in this game and we cannot vouch for it, but it seems players enjoy it. As long as rules are fair and game is honest I can only say... go go go!

Cheers,
Ethan

ETH bankroll will be probably open soon.
Cheers,
Ethan

So maybe we could do a combination of (1) and (2) - initial XP boost from just investing plus gradual XP increasing. From what you say indeed I think from the investors' point of view it would make most sense.

I've been updating investments' XP periodically, taking into account how much the site total wager was and the percentage share of a given investment. The issue was that the percentages change when people open/close investments, and iterating over individual bets is a lot of overhead. I had huge optimizations in place but still...

Whenever possible I try to avoid adding overhead by updating too much data after every bet, so the main thread (process) only does what is necessary to process the bet and return the result. Things like stats, investment XP and so on are all calculated in separate processes asynchronously.

Well, but code aside, we have two options now:

1. investments get XP gradually, proportional to their wager - which depends on amount (share in bankroll) and time they are opened
2. investments get XP instantly, proportional to their initial value only. Let's say

XP_points = n * amount_of_coins

where n is something we could set arbitrarily.

(2) is far simpler to implement and gives instant gratification to investors. I also think it's pretty fair. (1) means slow leveling up, so someone who instantly invests loads of coins is still in low level range for some time.

Tell me what you think. Personally I am leaning towards (2).

Cheers,
Ethan

This is exactly how we had it before, but it was hard to calculate and update how much each of the investment was "wagered". Maybe the reason was that I was trying to be really precise on calculating it. But that's why I am looking for a simpler solution without many rules, yet giving an adequate appreciation to investors.


The thing about the commission - various player benefits like faucet/rakeback/referral are mostly wager-based, but they also effectively lower house edge for players. What we are doing with wager-based commission is we make sure to take commission in a way to be able to pay these bonuses to players. In the long-term whether the commission is profit-based or wager-based should not matter, but from our perspective it's critical to have a system that is protected against short-time variations in site profit.

The first 2 weeks it seems that both DOGE and LTC performed above the expectations - the actual profit was higher than expected (LTC by 37% and DOGE by 22%).  Unfortunately BTC perfomed worse than expected (still bringing over 5 BTC as site profits), but investors should be seeing profit nevertheless.

I am now working on re-enabling XP from investments and referrals.

Cheers,
Ethan

OK, so the dilution fee and limited number of investments is a problem indeed, I was planning to solve it by allowing investors to merge individual investments. Or how about this: if you close one 1 BTC investment and one 0.2 BTC investment, you could open a 1.2 BTC investment without the dilution fee?

Anyway, we are postponing enabling dilution fees till next Fri, 24th April. I don't want to enable a half-baked mechanism. We'll be pushing some other changes meanwhile.

Next week we'll re-enable XP from referrals and XP from investments. XP from referrals will work exactly as it was before. XP from investments will most likely be from active investments only, proportional to the amount invested. So the moment you invest you level-up instantly.

More details next week!

Cheers,
Ethan

1. Yep, there will be XP from investing, I know how to do this! The difference between the previous investment XP will be that now most likely XP will be added at the moment you open an investment and will be proportional to the value of the investment. Once an investment is closed, the XP from that investment will disappear. So investment XP will be proportional to the coins you have invested.

2. Dilution fee will be enabled, thanks for your opinion, I was really having some second thoughts. We previously announced it would be enabled on 2020-04-16, but we might just extend this a little bit.

Cheers,
Ethan

Hi,

first things first: The reason for using SHA256 is simple - SHA256 hashes are shorter, but the are not less secure by any means. There is no known collision known for neither SHA512 nor SHA256. You'd have to crack the original 128 bytes of the "secret" part - good luck brute-forcing that. Neither SHA256 nor SHA512 have been cracked so far it's not going to happen in a foreseeable future, even with quantum computing on the horizon.

I am glad you people like that investing is back. So far I've got the following feedback:

1. Commission is 50% of "expected profit" instead of real profit. Some people like it, some people have objections and it's OK. It definitely does move the "risk part" to investors and protects us as site owners, but that's the point. 50% itself does not seem to be an issue, other sites have been taking 50% cut for some time now. In the long term, wager-based cut vs profit-based cut should not matter much since the real profit oscillates around the expected profit. But I have to be honest - since our costs like referral bonuses and rakeback are based on wager, it's so much easier and safer for us. We've been through moments when not only bankroll lost a chunk of coins but we also had to pay the bonuses from our own pockets and a few such events left us in loss for months.

2. Pausing the investments during competitions. This sounds controversial, but it's pausing only, for one week once in 2 months. It's still not implemented in the code, so no worries :-) Anyway, I think the competitions bring more to the table then just increase wager for a week - they reactivate existing players, they bring new players and get things rolling.
We'll try to think it over, maybe we will not be pausing investments on all competitions, or maybe we'll come out with a different ideas.

3. Yes, ETH will be open for investing too. Finally  :-)

4. Dilution fee - most feedback suggests investors don't mind the dilution fee, but I am still having doubts. From the investor's perspective it's locking funds in the site. I might postpone these dilution fees for some time. I'd be really happy to get your opinion on this. What do you think?

Edit: Other than that, I am really happy the investing is open again. I like the transparency of the site, it's much more community-oriented now, just as it was from the very beginning.

Cheers,
Ethan

Yes, it's serious. A word of explanation: a paused investment will just be "frozen" - it will retain it's exact value, but will not participate in the bankroll and profits. An investor could still close the investment and cash out anytime.

I think this is the only reasonable way to run competitions where we share profits with the players (like: 50% of site profits goes to the prize pool), unless anyone has any other idea?

Cheers,
Ethan

The commission used to be 35% of the profit before, but honestly since it was tied to the profit, it was quite unstable for us - most of the costs are wager-based. I think what we have now is a better solution.

I also hope that that the real site profit will be higher than expected 1%. In such case all the extra profit goes to investors. On the other hand, you are right - when players win the commission is still taken.

Cheers,
Ethan

Yep, I've enabled investing a few minutes ago.

1. Right now you can invest in BTC, LTC and DOGE. ETH is coming soon.

2. Commission is based on wagered amounts (expected profit), not pure profit. The commission is 50% of the expected profit, so it's 0.5 BTC from every 100 BTC wagered (it's 0.5% of the wagered amount) is taken from the bankroll "live" (as bets happen). This means
  - no "commission runs" - the commission is taken in real time, which means your investments value is what you get when you close it,
  - if players lose more than "expected 1% of wagered", it's investors' gain

3. There will be new "dilution fee" of 1% or 2% (still not decided), but it will be enabled in a week (on 2020-04-16). If you invest now, you pay 0% dilution fee, but you'll receive your dilution profit from all investments opened after 2020-04-16.

4. There is no "leverage"  this time - the amount you invest translates directly to your share. It's so much simpler now.

5. During the competitions we'll pause your investments so that we can do "50% of site profit goes to prize pool".

Links:
- FAQ on investing: https://yolodice.com#faq/investing
- Investor stats: https://yolodice.com#stats/investor
- Investor panel: https://yolodice.com#invest

If you have any questions I'll be happy to answer them.

Take care and cheers!
Ethan

I hope mOglie is all right. Looking at the world around us - the quarantines, the sick, social changes, the falling economy - I really hope we can all go through this. I've seen he started editing the sheet yesterday but did not finish it.

Cheers,
Ethan

Hi,

I am still waiting for mOgliE  to update the spreadsheet with last week posts. As soon as it's ready I'll send the payments. Please excuse the delay and thanks for your patience! I hope all of you are fine, stay healthy!

Cheers,
Ethan