ChainProfit.com - 27+ BTC Paid | 140% Return | Running over four months now

[hasiramasenju]

Charles Ponzi who introduced this scheme for the first time
and that person is really unfair to introduced this and how
do you think this scheme is provably fair?

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[thompete]

all ponz is scam

they will run with your btc

That might be solved by having an escrow handle the address or a new address to which funds are sent to.

[dyask]

all ponz is scam

they will run with your btc

That might be solved by having an escrow handle the address or a new address to which funds are sent to.

Interesting approach.  +1

[Mitchell]

A Ponzi can never ever be provably fair. An owner can (and most likely will) put money into it, this to make it seem like it's active and attract new players. Nothing can or will prevent that. It's impossible.

[dyask]

Charles Ponzi who introduced this scheme for the first time
and that person is really unfair to introduced this and how
do you think this scheme is provably fair?

Seriously, you need to read some history.   What Charles Ponzi did was set up an investment that paid people from deposits coming in.  However he lied about how the money was generated.   It was based on deception.    It certainly wasn't the first time that kind of scheme was used.  He got caught and the scheme took on his name.   The loses were around $20 million US which was a lot around 1920.    

The key was people didn't know where the money was coming from.   It was all a deception.  

[thompete]

Charles Ponzi who introduced this scheme for the first time
and that person is really unfair to introduced this and how
do you think this scheme is provably fair?

Seriously, you need to read some history.   What Charles Ponzi did was set up an investment that paid people from deposits coming in.  However he lied about how the money was generated.   It was based on deception.    It certainly wasn't the first time that kind of scheme was used.  He got caught and the scheme took on his name.   The loses were around $20 million US which was a lot around 1920.    

The key was people didn't know where the money was coming from.   It was all a deception.  

When I first read the story, I was surpirsed he was able to run it for years. I thought it should have crashed much sooner.

[Snail2]

You can't create a provably fair system as that scheme is all about the proven randomness of things (rolls, card shuffles, etc). I the case of a ponzi game we can't talk about programmed randomness and we can't ensure that the owners can't get involved in the investment procedure. I think the only thing what you can achieve is a  transparency when all the site addresses are traceable on the blockchain. Maybe you can research using multisignature transaction to make sure you can't withdraw investor funds and run with the coins .

[shorena]

-snip-
Dont you think that the same probability exists for a dice site as well that accepts invetment in bank roll ? If players win against their odds, they can also run away with all the investments. They can play in their own website knowing the seed. In fact, Dicebitco.in did the same. In Ponzi game, there is no seed. The probaility is 100% real - "Whether there will be a next investor or not". So, how can it not be provably fair ?

Dicebitco.in did skip nounces and it came out very fast. The only reason it every came out is because it was provably fair. Without provably you just have a gut feeling that a site might do something shady to the rolls, but you can never confirm or deny it. Gamblers have strange gut feelings all day long.

Investing is a very high risk granted. Thats why the dice sites that allowed investments had been under very close watch by highly reputable members within the gambling subsection (e.g. doog).

-snip-
Ponzis won't qualify as being provably fair

http://bitcoin-casino-guide.com/provably-fair-gambling/

Very good read on the subject, thanks.

-snip-
I think having a blockchain already makes it provably fair.

How can the blockchain prove who is playing?

The idea with ponzi games is that the operator does not play. Its PvP players gamble against eachother and the operator gets a little bonus for providing the service. Youd have to prove this for a ponzi to be provably fair. So you have to prove that a certain person and their friends are not playing. Proving a negative[1] is considered impossible. I dont want to rule out that there is a solution, but all I currently see is people saying: stop the warning we dont do bad. I see very little actual suggestions towards a solution.

-snip-
Provably fair also doesn't mean you can't be cheated.   

No. It means the player can reveal the cheat, thus giving the operator a very high incentive to be honest. A single instance of a revealed cheat would ruin the operators reputation (see dicebitco.in).

---

tl;dr: A provably fair ponzi would have to prove either that the operators are not playing or make sure that everyone is a player. That is to remove the operator.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence_of_absence

[shorena]

Answer to a question asked in meta[1] as this is about provably fair not about the rating towards ponzis:

-snip-
Just a couple points, from a programming point of view.

1) The seeds are not meaningful unless you can actually exercise the code and produce the same throws.   Unless you know for certain the exact bytes running on the server, you can't be sure what you are seeing.   There are many possible cheats here, but they are complex in nature for an unskilled programmer.    I won't say more, but there are many possibilities.

2) You can still cheat without mucking with the random numbers by favorable rounding of the thresholds, etc.   A ton of little nicks can add up and if caught ... "Thank you for finding a bug!"

The problem is proof in the crypto world is only hash deep.   You can wrap a cheat in proof and it would still cheat.   

So you are saying it possible that I test 100000 rolls with their code and the seed (which is partly provided by me) in question which all turn out exactly as they did on the server, but they still cheat every 1millionth roll?
Even if thats true - which I doubt - it still needs only a single person to test 1million instead of 100k rolls and they are done with it. E.g. paradocks (#1 rolls on coinichiwa) has as of now made 3,929,072 rolls. Even if only half of them have been verified the scam would be public by now. The users total wagered is ~4.8 BTC which is 122 Satoshi on average. Lets say your code would pass all the tests and cheat every millionth roll, that user would be short 488 satoshi.

Again I know provably fair is not 100% because there are other factors but the roll, but to say that there are possible loopholes is very unlikely. Id like to see stats like those for primedice, but aparently Stunna keeps them hidden or I am to stupid to find them. The site has run 3 billion rolls now. Someone would have caught a cheat.


[1] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=923461.msg10174134#msg10174134

[rammy2k2]

all ponz is scam

they will run with your btc

That might be solved by having an escrow handle the address or a new address to which funds are sent to.

if its a ponzi u cant do escrow ... wtf is wrong with u people ?
no wonder these thieves are are taking your money ... duh ...

[NeuroticFish]

I dont understand why people are categorizing Ponzi games by default as a scam.

Each "investor" in a Ponzi scheme has smaller chance of return than the previous one.
Everybody who knows what a Ponzi scheme is and plays, actually hopes that he will not be the scammed one, he hopes he will scam the next "investor".


Unlike a dice game, where you know (if the owner is fair) that you will surely be paid if you win, in a Ponzi, even if the owner is fair and doesn't run with the money, at some point the game will stop and the last ones "playing" or "investing" will lose.
At that point the owner of the game will publicly called a scammer anyway. And because that, most will actually wait for the best moment and just run with the money. Because scammer with money is better than "fair" scammer, you know.

I hope it make sense now.

[sandykho47]

Ponzi isn't provably fair at all
It's just stealing someone else money

Gambling site still much more better than ponzi

[fearlesscat10]

You can check this site, the game called "the list" is similar to a ponzi

www.bitnety.com

Is interesting because rules and data is public and you can withdraw your coins whenever you want, without waiting time. As far I see, there is also another intersting feature: when players withdraws money also gives some of this to players still inside the "list"

Its a bit difficult to understand at first sight, but i tried the test mode and works!

This is interesting. Do they have their own thread on BCT?

But for OP, I think having everything on the blockchain seems to make things fair except for a few cases where the script doesn't work right. The escrow idea sounds good too.

[dyask]

Answer to a question asked in meta[1] as this is about provably fair not about the rating towards ponzis:

-snip-
Just a couple points, from a programming point of view.

1) The seeds are not meaningful unless you can actually exercise the code and produce the same throws.   Unless you know for certain the exact bytes running on the server, you can't be sure what you are seeing.   There are many possible cheats here, but they are complex in nature for an unskilled programmer.    I won't say more, but there are many possibilities.

2) You can still cheat without mucking with the random numbers by favorable rounding of the thresholds, etc.   A ton of little nicks can add up and if caught ... "Thank you for finding a bug!"

The problem is proof in the crypto world is only hash deep.   You can wrap a cheat in proof and it would still cheat.   

So you are saying it possible that I test 100000 rolls with their code and the seed (which is partly provided by me) in question which all turn out exactly as they did on the server, but they still cheat every 1millionth roll?
Even if thats true - which I doubt - it still needs only a single person to test 1million instead of 100k rolls and they are done with it. E.g. paradocks (#1 rolls on coinichiwa) has as of now made 3,929,072 rolls. Even if only half of them have been verified the scam would be public by now. The users total wagered is ~4.8 BTC which is 122 Satoshi on average. Lets say your code would pass all the tests and cheat every millionth roll, that user would be short 488 satoshi.

Again I know provably fair is not 100% because there are other factors but the roll, but to say that there are possible loopholes is very unlikely. Id like to see stats like those for primedice, but aparently Stunna keeps them hidden or I am to stupid to find them. The site has run 3 billion rolls now. Someone would have caught a cheat.


[1] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=923461.msg10174134#msg10174134

Not really ... let's just say it is possible to write a random number generator that gives clues to the next roll.  The clues could be coupled to the server seed and another function.   If you know what the next roll is like, you have a lot of options for cheating.   However that is just one approach, there are others and I'm sure many that I've never thought of.

I'm not going to give you any details on how to make a random number generator that cheats.  I'll just say it is extremely difficult to make a random number generator that is truly random.  Additionally if you can run it and get the same sequence with the same seed, it isn't really random.  Anyway attacking the roll is a harder nut and there is a lot of low hanging fruit that I suspect most people would go with.  Even highly skilled programmers often aren't that strong in math.  

If you have the source and you can really understand the source then the hash keys might mean something.   Believe me, that is a tall order.   I wrote my own sha256 routine using AVX instructions along with parallel paths in the processor and understanding the simple hash math well enough to do that isn't something that can be done in a few hours.   There is a great deal of open source code that has had major bugs found only have years of a great many people going through the code.   If you don't believe me, read some pull requests in git repositories for your favorite Linux.    

The point is that these proofs are only valid if the site is honest in the first place.    

[arvindr]

I have seen people mentioning missed payouts on other threads, and the ponzi operator saying that some system error and will be fixed. Can't those people see, that operators are trying to skip payments and are keeping them to themselves, by getting people to believe in their BS ?

[Snail2]

if its a ponzi u cant do escrow ... wtf is wrong with u people ?
no wonder these thieves are are taking your money ... duh ...

I think OP refers a dedicated ponzi game like ponzidoge (was) but not a real ponzi scheme. In such a game players get into a queue and get paid from the next player's money until the round ends, so it shows some ponzi characteristics but still not a real ponzi. Certainly late comers are going to lose money but as the timer is there they know what level of risk they are taking.

[Josef27]

I have seen people mentioning missed payouts on other threads, and the ponzi operator saying that some system error and will be fixed. Can't those people see, that operators are trying to skip payments and are keeping them to themselves, by getting people to believe in their BS ?

I think they didn't really understand what "Ponzi" is, so they just think they would always get interest by "investing". I hope they learned their lesson

[shorena]

-snip-
Not really ... let's just say it is possible to write a random number generator that gives clues to the next roll.  The clues could be coupled to the server seed and another function.   If you know what the next roll is like, you have a lot of options for cheating.   However that is just one approach, there are others and I'm sure many that I've never thought of.

Knowing the next number would give an advantage to the player not the operator. I dont see how this works, besides against the investors, which is a completly different topic and we are allready way off the OP (are ponzis fair).

I'm not going to give you any details on how to make a random number generator that cheats.  I'll just say it is extremely difficult to make a random number generator that is truly random.  Additionally if you can run it and get the same sequence with the same seed, it isn't really random.

Truly random is not the goal, as doog once said:

-snip-
I have tried many times to explain how truly random numbers can't be *provably* fair, and so we use secret seeds, public hashes and nonces to generate a sequence of pseudo-random rolls which are provably predetermined and which allow us to prove that we didn't change them depending on the user's bets or deliberately pick "bad" sequences.
-snip-

If you have the source and you can really understand the source then the hash keys might mean something.   Believe me, that is a tall order.  

The source is mostly very simple, e.g.:

Code:

function getLuckyNumber($serverSeed, $clientSeed, $incrementalNonce) {
    $seed = $serverSeed . '-' . $clientSeed . '-' . $incrementalNonce;
    do {
        $seed = sha1($seed);
        $lucky = hexdec(substr($seed,0,8));
    } while ($lucky > 4294960000);
    return ($lucky % 10000) / 100;
}

I wrote my own sha256 routine using AVX instructions along with parallel paths in the processor and understanding the simple hash math well enough to do that isn't something that can be done in a few hours.   There is a great deal of open source code that has had major bugs found only have years of a great many people going through the code.   If you don't believe me, read some pull requests in git repositories for your favorite Linux.    

I have no idea what this has to do with the topic at hand.

The point is that these proofs are only valid if the site is honest in the first place.    

I have yet to see an argument why this would be so.

You can check this site, the game called "the list" is similar to a ponzi

www.bitnety.com

Is interesting because rules and data is public and you can withdraw your coins whenever you want, without waiting time. As far I see, there is also another intersting feature: when players withdraws money also gives some of this to players still inside the "list"

Its a bit difficult to understand at first sight, but i tried the test mode and works!

I dont know, they got provably fair wrong and wrote "probable fair” instead. Ill take a deeper look when I have more time.

[Dilemma]

we cant create a fair ponzi game
because fair and ponzi is diffirent world
it cant be in same sentences...

[sukamasoto]

Whenever you want to build provably game but as long as ponzi scheme exist, you will never build a provably fair ponzi.

As we know Ponzi scheme will scam people in the end.
Better gambling it rather invest into ponzi