Disclaimer: This article is purely for learning purposes.I’m wasting my money, so you don’t have to.Summary: Many people struggle to understand a legitimate use case for Ethereum or smart contracts in general.Gambling is a fantastic illustration of exactly what smart contracts are capable of, and how a user can benefit from an entirely trustless system.When you stake your money in a conventional casino, you have no guarantees that the process they use to run the game is fair, or that you aren’t being cheated.For example, a slot machine might be programmed to never actually release a jackpot.Smart-contract based gambling is provably-fair because all of the code running the game exists publicly as a smart contract on the Ethereum blockchain.You know exactly what code is being run, and where your money is going.You don’t need to trust that you aren’t being cheated, but rather you can verify it based on the contract transactions you are initiating.This verifiability is what people mean when they say trustless, and is exactly the sort of use case that a platform like Ethereum excels in.With that being said, Ethereum gambling is really boring.

It’s slow: it takes almost 5 minutes to play a single hand of Blackjack.It’s expensive: you have to pay a fee for every action, and you also can’t play with anyone else except the house.But it’s anonymous, and provably fair, and for some people that’s what matters.I’ve outlined a short guide below of my experience using Blockjack, a casino contract maintained by Winsome.io.Step 1: Choosing a CasinoThe first thing you need to do is figure out which smart contract you want to gamble on.There are a few choices to go with, however I went with “Blockjack.” The big reason I chose this contract was because I liked the source code, I liked the name, and the way they laid out their contracts provided a good template for my personal Dapp work.I would highly recommend examining the source code of any contracts before staking real Ether on it.Step 2: Preparing your WalletOnce you’ve identified a suitable casino contract to play with, you need to load a wallet with Ether to actually interact with it.

For this part I used a Chrome extension called MetaMask, which allows you to interact with Ethereum applications directly from your browser.Once you install MetaMask, you create an account which is tied to a wallet.You can then transfer Ether to this wallet, and boom, you now can start interacting with Dapps directly inside of your Chrome browser via MetaMask.It took about 15 minutes to get my Ether from Kraken to MetaMask.Step 3: Going to the CasinoNow that you’ve prepared your wallet, it’s time to actually access the Blockjack contract.bitcoin pibYou can do this by going to the Blockjack page.Once you’ve successfully connected to the page you should see a page like this:Step 4: Actually PlayingWith the game setup, you’re ready to stake some Ether to play.mycelium bitcoin helpAlways remember: Every contract action requires paying a transaction fee.block bitcoin explorer

Think about what that means for a second…What does this mean for you?That unless you’re playing with a large volume of money your going to be a paying a lot of your winnings in fees.This can definitely affect your strategy when you play.If you know you’ve staked $1 worth of Ether, and you need multiple extra cards because you were dealt a 2–3, you’re going to have to pay a non-insubstantial amount in transaction fees to even see the other cards (I had to pay 52 cents just to stand!).bitcoin kurs 3 jahreIt’s entirely conceivable to pay more in transaction fees than you’ve actually bet, regardless of game outcome.This makes sense though.itunes voucher bitcoinEvery action you make is being committed to the global Ethereum blockchain, so its only logical to pay a price for your game to be mined in verified blocks.In my single hand, the house ended up winning.bitcoin nowadays

But how do I know this is fair?I can go directly to the contract transaction, and I can see how they generated a random number!The way Blockjack creates their provably random seeds is by using the hash of a newly mined block, post contract transaction.So I can say with certainty that I lost fair and square.Imagine an online gambling ecosystem that is decentralized, meaning that it cuts out the typical middleman between a game-maker or betting operator and the player or bettor.bitcoin calculator minerThat’s of Russian company DAO.Casino, a decentralized platform for online gambling operators that runs on the Ethereum blockchain.In its on the developer site Github, DAO.Casino says it can solve common headaches of online gambling that afflict both game developers and game players, such as: fraud risk; hidden fees; high cost of entry for game developers; operational overhead; player access to funds; player withdrawal delays; and general lack of trust.If that sounds like a mouthful, let’s take a step back.npr money bitcoin

In the cryptocurrency world, much of the press and attention right now is around bitcoin, since the price of bitcoin is flying: it’s up 200% in 2017 so far.But the price of a rival cryptocurrency, ether, has seen a bump as well: it’s up 174% in the past month, to $263.Ether is the currency of the Ethereum network, which is a blockchain for smart contracts.While bitcoin runs on the bitcoin blockchain, a decentralized, permissionless ledger—and blockchain technology originated with bitcoin in 2009—Ethereum runs on its own blockchain specifically designed for smart contracts.Smart contracts are coded agreements that live in a permanent address on the Ethereum chain.litecoin live priceThese agreements can interact with other contracts to automatically enact functions.In other words, “smart contracts” is a fancy way of saying “computer programs.” For example: on Ethereum, we could exchange the title deed to a car, directly from seller to buyer.

In a recent of 578 financial service firms, 78% of respondents said —of those, 49% listed the bitcoin blockchain, 42% said Ethereum.While bitcoin is soaring as a speculative investment, there aren’t yet obvious mainstream uses for the currency beyond trading and holding it; many in the industry await the “killer app” for bitcoin.There is arguably more excitement right now around the uses of Ethereum, since it was created specifically for smart contracts (not for the currency, which is just an incentive token for developers).TechCrunch writes that Ethereum is “” And Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin (just 23 years old) , who praised Ethereum.That brings us to DAO.Casino, one of the many startups that believes it can solve a problem using Ethereum.On June 29, DAO.Casino will launch an ICO (initial coin offering), a popular new way of raising money for cryptocurrency startups in which investors buy up the startup’s own coin and pay for it with a more established coin.Ethereum did its own ICO in 2014, in which investors bought ether using bitcoin.

An ICO typically lasts for a month.Think of an ICO as the equivalent of a VC round for cryptocurrency startups.In DAO.Casino’s ICO, it will sell BET, its own token, in exchange for ether.Just don’t associate DAO.Casino with The DAO, a leaderless, decentralized network that launched in May 2016 (via an ICO that exchanged tokens for ether) as a platform for Ethereum-based projects and was quickly hacked, one month later, to the tune of $50 million.The entire Ethereum blockchain had to perform a split known as a “fork” in order to restore all the funds stolen in The DAO hack.DAO.Casino is not an actual casino itself, but an open protocol for online gambling companies (like an online casino, blackjack game operator, or sports betting site) to build on.(DAO.Casino will also build its own branded games.)It isn’t aimed at the end user—if an online betting site were to use it, the bettor wouldn’t have to know or see that they’re using a system built on Ethereum.(I could even develop my own gambling site on top of DAO.Casino’s protocol and pay out users in BET tokens, but rename them Dancoins.)

The company’s hope is that online betting sites will integrate with its network to offer games the casino, a middleman that takes a big cut and may not always be trustworthy.No relation to The DAO hackIf you’re confused, don’t feel bad.In a back in March, the company addressed the confusion its name creates.“Many people wonder why do we have DAO in our name, when the term has previously been associated with a ‘hacked’ investor-directed venture capital fund.They think — and we don’t blame them for it — that is somewhat an extension of an organization whose security loop could’ve cost them millions worth of ether.” The post goes on to acknowledge that using the DAO acronym is “somewhat giving us bad publicity.”Nonetheless, the company embraced the DAO acronym because of what it stands for, a decentralized autonomous organization (which any blockchain-based project is), even if it now carries the stink of The DAO.Potential causes for hesitationOf course, online betting operators may be hesitant to jump on an Ethereum-based protocol for reasons that have nothing to do with DAO.Casino’s name.

For starters, the entire cryptocurrency space still has an air of distrust to it; blame the high-profile Silk Road drug market trial, or , all of which stoke negative headlines.As one West Coast fintech attorney, who wishes to remain anonymous, tells Yahoo Finance, “I get clients all the time that say, ‘I want to take X and make it better by using cryptocurrency,’ and it’s always either a way to try to get around something illegal or it solves a problem that really didn’t exist.”Keep in mind also that online gambling (or “iGaming”) is , even when the website taking a bet is based outside the US.But online gambling thrives outside America, and is a $46 billion market globally.DAO.Casino could face regulatory scrutiny in the US, even though the company would likely make the argument that it is just an Internet protocol, not the gambling operator.Implementing randomnessAs of January, nearly 25% of all smart contracts on Ethereum were game-related.That’s why DAO.Casino CEO Ilya Tarutov honed in on a gambling protocol.

Traditional server-based online gambling sites don’t engender enough trust, he says, but using a decentralized network can add transparency.Tarutov explained it to thusly: “Game outcomes are determined by equally unpredictable pseudorandom values, and anyone can audit this.Once the game software is audited and deployed, no one can fiddle with it and change it.”To ensure fairness of games, DAO.Casino implements randomness through PRNGs (pseudorandom number generators), and incentivizes users who develop new games, fund the development of new games, operate casinos, and contribute random-number algorithms by rewarding them in BET tokens.The games built on DAO.Casino will operate in BET.(“Grossly simplified,” Tarutov explains, BET is a “security measure.”)For now, DAO.Casino is in beta, and offers a simple dice game as an example of what it can do.More games are coming, Tarutov says, from online gambling operators ready to put their games on DAO.Casino’s testnet.In the next few days, the site will add a blackjack game.