Topic: Decentralised Gambling Game vDice Announces Crowdsale (Read 4730 times)

utorrent example is actually a good analogy in many ways:

1) This is a good article on Crowdsale (ICO) from CEO of Coinbase:-
https://medium.com/the-coinbase-blog/app-coins-and-the-dawn-of-the-decentralized-business-model-8b8c951e734f

2) This is an explainer on the idea of blockchain gambling we wrote:-
https://blog.vdice.io/what-is-vdice-ether-gambling/blockchain-gambling/

3) Here is our Crowdsale site:- https://crowdsale.vdice.io

Does this sound like a provably fair, decentralized dice site?



Source: VSlice Audit
November, 2016. Authored by Peter J Vessenes and Dennis Peterson.

Oh you must of missed it:

Unless and until you make your game probably fair, I would suggest that you remove any references to being provably fair on your website.

A smart contract might be a pretty cool idea of a way to fund an established gambling site's bankroll provided that the site's management has decided to distribute bankroll profits that cause the bankroll to grow above xBTC every week/month/ect., however I don't think it is a good idea to allow shareholders to own a company/site as most jurisdictions do not allow for anon shareholders.

How so 

It's just tech. issue we're working through on gitter. It happens.

Our formal bet proof verification is already published, as above.

Checkmate ts?

Crowdsale = They are looking for investors.

A "100% fully decentralized game" implies that there is no central authority controlling any aspect of the game during game play.

vDice is not decentralized.  RHaver explained why better than I could:

---

I couldn't find a number to call, so I sent an email to [email protected]  Do have a number I should call?

The list of questions goes on and on...how about some more answers?  Why are you ignoring these? 

• Who are you?  (The person behind the forum account I mean)  
• When did you launch? I know it's been at least 5 months.  What are your numbers like?  Is the 7k bets listed life time?  
• What happened to your lead developer, James Groton?
• Who is James Groton?  His Github is new, can't find much of anything about him.

Latest vDice.io chat, cause for concern:

What is a Crowdsale?I really don`t know.

What is a decentralized game?A p2p software which people download that connects them?

Is this something like uTorent?

Yeah, I've called out a bunch of different sites on their bullshit.  Now I'm calling out yours.  Seems as if vDice.io will be joining the my list including Betcoin.ag, Fortunejack, Betcoin.tm, btc-casino.io, and pocektdice.  
That's worthy of a $49 press release, right?

It's an attempt to make the truth known to those who might otherwise give their money to scumbags.

It wasn't a question.  It was a statement of fact.

I'm asking you whether you consider the statement to be true or false.

lol.  You got me.  My cherries are never out of context or manipulated though.  

I do have some other questions by the way:

• Who are you?  (The person behind the forum account I mean)
• When did you launch? I know it's been at least 5 months.  What are your numbers like?  Is the 7k bets listed life time?  
• What happened to your lead developer, James Groton?
• Who is James Groton?  His Github is new, can't find much of anything about him.
• Did your team go to china for the devcon?  There was a bunch of blogs (that you probably paid for) about vDice becoming a Devcon sponsor.  Then just  nothing for a few weeks, then ICO time...
• These people  seem to have no history on the internet.

Kinda weird for a social media expert that's online all day...

And this is Jason Colby really?



Looks more like this guy (who interviewed Jason) than the guy from the group picture in Miami:

It's not at all. Though I understand what you are trying to do.

We've seen you do it on many other forums, to many other game operators. To what end, who knows?

Namely it is an attempt to discredit both our brand and the brand of Oraclize, and the technology that powers the game.

That question in the audit was specifically addressed by many, many developers in the community.

It has been answered in detail over and over above.

Please elaborate on exactly what you think the 'risk' is and the incentives and the possible attack vectors.

I will respond to each possible attack vector, with a proof that will conclusively prove no such risk, as you are trying to insinaute, exists.

Look forward to receiving the possible attack vectors from anywhere...and will gladly address them. Feel free to list them all.

Cherry picking a sentence from a code audit, to try and build a straw man argument, will not work.

It's a yes or no question that I think we both know the answer to.

Are participants in the vdice smart contract exposed to any risk from the ‘house’ being a bad actor, and/or from a bad actor internal to Oraclize.

Yes

or

No?

Once again, here is the answer to your question below!
I cannot help you if you do not understand the full answer.

I do not have time to teach you technical skills or coding.

I suggest perhaps this site: https://www.codecademy.com


----
1- "Replay Risk"
the very reason why the authenticated JSON-RPC APIs of random.org are used, is because of the "requestsLeft" field which is returned by each API call response ( https://api.random.org/json-rpc/1/signing ). This field content is tied to the API credentials specified in the query and is there to indicate how many requests are left in a given day.
If we check all the TLSNotary proofs published on the blockchain (which contain the whole API response!), an independent auditor can verify whether any subsequent number in the "requestsLeft" fields is missing - when that happens, the auditor has a good indicator that something wrong happened (either on the Oraclize side - which sent more requests than expected - or by any external party knowing that specific API key (vDice itself & random.org)). Of course this doesn't say much about the intent in itself (can just be some failure in the HTTP request, which had to be sent again), but in general it provides some level of security against replay attacks.   
----
2- "setConfig"
Oraclize are updating on-chain contracts in the coming days to support this. It's here for forward-compatibility and enables arbitrary Oraclize flags to be enabled/disabled. The very reason why the vDice contract needs it is to enable the "zero-confirmation query precomputation" feature.
----

Is this true:

What the hell?

I quoted the third part audit that you posted.

It's a simple question that you still have not answered.

The reason you haven't answered it is because:

If you lie and claim it's false: you would be disputing the results of the third party audit that you've been spamming all over the place.

If you answer honestly, it would be even more obvious to more people that you either don't understand the concept of decentralization or you're a scammer.

By the way, it was quite a shock when I saw your linkdin after all these blogs and press releases popping up that you deny paying for or writing yourself (assuming this is Jason, the CEO.  It could be Barney, the " Social Media expert who spends all his time on the internet and is new to the blockchain"



Even more shocking is that your simple dice site, which isn't even provably fair, is a piece of crap.  Players can't verify rolls, it can take an hour to complete a single bet, and you've barely had 7k bets a month after launching.


It's time to come clean Jason.  Or is it Barney?  

it is very obvious they are beating around the bush

TRUE

You spread lies everywhere.
You paste images on social media. You spread lies generally.

So dishonest.

This was answered to the satisfaction of people much, much smarter than you, above.
Maybe spend some time learning to understand the answer, instead of trolling  

Once again, in response to your question:-

----
1- "Replay Risk"
the very reason why the authenticated JSON-RPC APIs of random.org are used, is because of the "requestsLeft" field which is returned by each API call response ( https://api.random.org/json-rpc/1/signing ). This field content is tied to the API credentials specified in the query and is there to indicate how many requests are left in a given day.
If we check all the TLSNotary proofs published on the blockchain (which contain the whole API response!), an independent auditor can verify whether any subsequent number in the "requestsLeft" fields is missing - when that happens, the auditor has a good indicator that something wrong happened (either on the Oraclize side - which sent more requests than expected - or by any external party knowing that specific API key (vDice itself & random.org)). Of course this doesn't say much about the intent in itself (can just be some failure in the HTTP request, which had to be sent again), but in general it provides some level of security against replay attacks.  
----
2- "setConfig"
Oraclize are updating on-chain contracts in the coming days to support this. It's here for forward-compatibility and enables arbitrary Oraclize flags to be enabled/disabled. The very reason why the vDice contract needs it is to enable the "zero-confirmation query precomputation" feature.
----

I'm not a competitor.  I have no affiliation with any site.

So please, just answer my question.

Is this true or false:

What we have here is some competitors saying wrong things and bad information about us.

We expect this of course. When do competitors say good things. 

Everyone who reads this forum can really see that. So it's fine.

They did disclose they are from competitor games, so it is OK.

Decentralized app which rely on centralized services, this way it is not safe for players nor investor.
You should postpone your ICO 'till you solve those issues which RHvar pointed out.

Is this true:

I trust one of these great minds to make that happen (points at RHavar, dooglus,...)

No but seriously I'd love to see something like that to happen. Would pretty much turn out to be the best thing ever

I believe that my summary is quite accurate:

which is confirmed by vdice where he explains the reasoning behind the limitations, and says that some will hopefully be improved -- and some of the tooling will be improved as well.


The real "problem" right now in current provably fair gambling is that:
a) You need to trust an operator with your money (until you withdraw)
b) If they do cheat you, and you detect it, it'll be your word against theirs

So there's absolutely a lot of potential to improve the current status-quo. But unfortunately vdice is (currently) a step backwards, because it's not even provably fair at the moment.

And even though I strongly dislike ethereum, it's actually probably a good platform for making trustless gambling practical. (It's possible in bitcoin too, but the UX would be horrible because you'd need a very complex custom wallet)

Since I'm not a developer, could you please tell me whether or not the player is exposed to any risk of the 'house' being a bad actor.

I've read your response, and I think you're just explaining why you're doing what you are.  Not changing it.

I don't mean to take anything out of context, I'm just trying to keep my question as direct and simple as possible.

Nice of you to cherry-pick. I note also you are not a developer.
So you are just taking things out of context to try and make us look bad.

Anyway, I think we already answered to all the major points. But again.

----
1- "Replay Risk"
the very reason why the authenticated JSON-RPC APIs of random.org are used, is because of the "requestsLeft" field which is returned by each API call response ( https://api.random.org/json-rpc/1/signing ). This field content is tied to the API credentials specified in the query and is there to indicate how many requests are left in a given day.
If we check all the TLSNotary proofs published on the blockchain (which contain the whole API response!), an independent auditor can verify whether any subsequent number in the "requestsLeft" fields is missing - when that happens, the auditor has a good indicator that something wrong happened (either on the Oraclize side - which sent more requests than expected - or by any external party knowing that specific API key (vDice itself & random.org)). Of course this doesn't say much about the intent in itself (can just be some failure in the HTTP request, which had to be sent again), but in general it provides some level of security against replay attacks.   
----
2- "setConfig"
Oraclize are updating on-chain contracts in the coming days to support this. It's here for forward-compatibility and enables arbitrary Oraclize flags to be enabled/disabled. The very reason why the vDice contract needs it is to enable the "zero-confirmation query precomputation" feature.
----

Is this true:

Further, please note early design choices made in your original contract: since then they have been refined during different audit reiterations. Those choices still present a solid approach considering the existing ethereum alternatives we have today.

The requestsLeft field is not being checked because there are cases in which it could fail (which doesn't necessarly mean there was some bad player involved). It is correct to say the id is not being checked, while it could.. this needs the contract to be updated accordingly. The id could be a unique identifier for the query and would indeed avoid Oraclize to swap different requests.

the json-rpc random api provides a signature. This cannot be verified straight from the contract code (rsa verify is still not available in ethereum), but can be checked from the tlsnotary-proofs (which contain a full version of the api response). The reason why the tlsnotary proof is there, is to provide a security layer which is agnostic to the random number generator service (the datasource). Also, Oraclize is working to get the tlsnotary verification to work onchain, while the rsa verify feature ethereum integration is still uncertain.

"Man how sad is that guy forging images. Those who can't do..."

Excuse the delay here.
Re an open source way for people to validate tls proof checks off chain ;
As for pgsg proofs verification, this can be done with the opensource offchain-network-monitor or via the pagesigner-console tool (but needs our "oracles.js" details to be integrated there). The plan is to release an already-integrated pagesigner-console tool to make it easier, but the offchain-network-monitor already does it (you can find it on app.oraclize.it too)
API call \"method\":\"generateSignedIntegers\”

Sure, you have your opinion. Everyone does.

There are a lot of people here with competitor product.

IMHO They should say that, before they use bad words, wrong information and lies.

I am not accusing of this. Your questions are good. We have answered.

Just in general I mean.

Ha. Funny. This seems to be the go-to response of every single shady gambling site I criticise. But amusingly enough, less than an hour or so before you posted this someone was asking on my site:


...and then later recommended him to checkout MoneyPot, as he was US based. I think you'll find I'm pretty much the least competitive person out there. I really don't give a crap. The only reason for my skepticism is that I care about the crypto gambling community, and don't want to see people get ripped off.


Anyway, the fact you have never directly refuted my assertions, seems to be a tacit acceptance of them. I'll take that  

Thanks for the well wishes.

This has been answered many times.

And you have asked questions as a result of those answers.
We will be responding to those in full soon.

This is the basis for good debate.

I understand also that you run a competitor service.
So everything makes a little more sense now.

I suppose everyone here knows you're a competitor.
So they will keep that in mind when reading your negative opinions.

Thanks.

So the tldr is:

The site has an extremely weak trust model, significantly weaker than existing bitcoin gambling sites:

* random.org  can undetectably cheat (by picking any number they want)
* cloudflare can cheat, but if they do random.org will be able to detect it (and it'll be CFs word against random.org)
* oraclize can cheat, but it's semi-detectable (there's no tooling offered to detect it, but it's checkable, and oraclize has plausible deniability)


It is centralized by every meaningful definition. It uses a decentralized contract, to communicate with a centralized oraclize server, which sends a message through a centralized CDN (cloudflare) to communicate with a centralized random number generator (api.random.org).


AFAICT this isn't even a serious project, some low-hanging fruit like checking api.random.org's signature is not checked (which would remove the possibility of cloudflare being able to cheat). They also are buying reddit upvotes for 0.006 BTC each, and a bunch of "press releases" to promote the ICO.

Good luck, I guess.

 
It's not provably fair or decentralized though.


But your game isn't provably fair.


Because you and all these excited "journalists " keep posting the same stuff that isn't true and I wouldn't want someone who doesn't know any better to believe you and then give you money.


Requesting kindly you quit taking out $49 press releases and and creating fake accounts to interview yourself and posting big images to bury criticism....


Yeah I did.  Did you?

Did you read this part?



Or this?



I hope dooglus stumbles across this thread soon.

Lol. He does this to everyone.

Judging by replies I suspecting he is not a developer / technologist though. 

Great if its done right. Can he do a decentralized poker site next please that would be something.  Whats interesting is that USA players can play with no worries over gov.  

Yes, indeed. And we'll be replying in full asap. So many questions at the moment.

We didn't expect interest in the project to explode like this.

Thanks for your patience everyone. Full answers to tech. questions coming shortly...

Give me 24-36 hrs to get back in full.

It's getting crazy busy at the moment. But thee are good questions and we will answer asap.

Thanks.

I don't like it when people use deceptive tactics to try and convince innocent people to give them money.  I call them out because I think it's the right thing to do.  I know it's hard to believe, but I have no other motivation other than helping honest people not get scammed.

It looks like you are trying to make me out to be nothing more than a troll in attempt to validate OPs inevitable decision to ignore me and anyone else they choose. 

Really the issue is what RHavar wrote it's not truly decentralized if using centralized sites. I wish I could offer a way to actually help solve this dilemma but it's above my pay grade. Good luck

It's no doubt that you have the right to make a comment but it looks like you're enjoying making caustic remarks about other people and finding some fault . If you don't like this project or doubt that you could make one yourself. Just my opinion.

Some interesting notes from the October Audit mentioned in your ($49) press release.

Well the "sponsored article" label was removed from the end of the article.

Also, it seems like it's just a community post now,  written by James Davies: https://www.techinasia.com/profile/james-davies

James Davies has made 1 contribution (the post were talking about) to techinasia

He seems reluctant to disclose his relationship with vDice...

We didn't pay a cent for that article thanks.
Some guy contacted after the Hacked.com piece.

-- Edit: Just asked the writer to confirm that in the thread.

partners in China and Russia? Who? Will they get commissions from ico?

Geez. Do you really think everyone here that dumb? You've paid. They've not picked.

See, at the end of the post, small notice: "This is a sponsored story."

Regards,
Alex.

They can't as Rhavar said, they have to use some services to receive data, no matter what data it is. I remember now why we throw away idea of smart contracts, there's no way to get genuine random number on smart contracts, that's why they use 3rd party smart contract to get it ( they could use their own smart contract, but that's centralised right? ) So they user random.org's smart contract to get random numbers. But the whole idea of being decentralized falling apart by flaws in design. And they not even first, first such project was hacked because they've used some pseudo random thing to get over this limitation and didn't test it enough. Happens.

PS: I do trust centralised casino's, rather than pseudo decentralized projects I think people learn, DAO already proved that all good things come to an end, but they was able to recover by making a hard fork, do you think they will do another one for you in case you will mess somewhere? Or you will pay investors from your own pocket?

Regards,
Alex.

It looks like TechInAsia has picked up on the hacked piece.

Interest is growing in Asia for the decentralization of gambling.

https://www.techinasia.com/talk/blockchain-decentralizing-gambling



QUOTE FROM ARTICLE:

"How blockchain is decentralizing gambling:

Now there is a host of exciting new startups reimagining the gambling industry. They are decentralizing the entire structure and are building something truly new.

VDice is one example of such a startup. It is billed as the world’s first fully decentralized gambling platform. It went live this June and is already wildly popular amongst blockchain geeks. Using the Ethereum blockchain, they have leveraged Smart Contract technology and have created game codes that exist without a server. These games live on the Ethereum P2P network."

This was inspired from a piece in hacked.com it seems:

https://hacked.com/vdice-io-the-worlds-first-full-decentralized-gambling-platform-ethereum-or-blockchain-tech/

ICO is November 15th - December 15th : https://crowdsale.vdice.io

There is a lot of interest picking up.
People are very interested in the vDice brand and platform.

Everyone is telling us they like that the product is real and works already. So they believe in us.

There is an upper limit of 700k ETH on the ICO smart contract. This was after discussion with our partners in China and Russia.

Mostly this is for security reasons. It is bad security practice to have an ICO Smart Contract with no upper limit.
So the ICO is defined by its end at December 15th or 700k eth, whichever comes first.

Then that is all the tokens that will exist and there will be no more. There is limited supply.

There is A LOT of interest from China and Russia markets at the moment. So that is very encouraging.

We already have such team members.

The project is not that complicated. It's a smart contract ; a couple of hundred lines of code.

Actually, it's a lot simpler than a lot of centralized game services.
Because we don't have to worry about securing Hot Wallets from hackers and thieves.

Most of our developers that come from centralized games love working on our project.
They don't have to spend all day dealing with security and attacks on hot wallets, stolen funds.

That allows them to build the vDice platform.

Remember this story:
https://www.hackread.com/gambling-site-hacked-bitcoin-stolen/

Or this:
http://themerkle.com/bitstarz-refuses-to-pay-out-players-bitcoin-earnings-and-demands-credit-card-scans/

Blockchain gambling is important. It will be a huge part of the industries future. It will be successful.

The guy above wants to discuss the technology at a deep level.
That's why it seem complicated. It's not.

Actually it's a lot simpler in many way to centralized services. We believe in simplicity at vDice.

When ico? How much btc and eth is your target?

We already do. 3 people in fact. The extended vDice team is almost 30 people now. Some are subcontractors and some work directly.

We have, on our website, the head of each department overseeing important parts of operations.

After reading discussion of RHavar with vDice team I gotta say that this project looks very complicated. To the point I can't even grasp how exactly this works.
Also Twitchy is right, you probably need someone experienced with Provably Fair mechanisms - unless your smart contract is totally different that standard Provably Fair systems...

I think vDice should hire someone with experience developing and running a successful, provably fair crypto-based casino.

I have =)



Sure, I'm merely asking some questions which you aren't giving a straight answer to =)


This I have no doubt


Because you have been ignoring my questions for days, which make me believe you are hiding something I would think "blockchain nerds" like yourselves, would be happy to discuss things on a technical level



Sure, I'd be happy to keep it here if you reply to me here.


However, AFAICT your contract never actually checks the "requestsLeft" field or the ids. Am I wrong? You also provide no tooling to check if any are skipped. Furthermore, this does not provide protection against oraclize making 2 or more requests at the same time, and re-arranging them. I would assume a properly designed contract would have an explicit checks for the id that it expects, and only accept a result that matches the one it expects?

Furthermore, using a service like random.org seems backwards, because there is absolutely no guarantee they're giving you a fair result. Contrast this provably fair bitcoin gambling services, where a cryptographic proof exists that the number was fair.


Why do you verify the TLS, when api.random.org actually provides its *own* signature. Checking the api.random.org signature seems to be the correct thing to do, not the TLS one. By verifying the TLS signature instead of the api.random.org one, it just introduces more opportunities for a party to cheat (notably: cloudflare, which the requests are going though).


Well, then it's not really provably fair as a player/investor has no way to distinguish being cheated with "http request failure"


Again this is nonsense. You have 1 decentralized part (ethereum contract) and 3 centralized single-points-of-failure (orclize, cloudflare, random.org). Players have significant less protections than playing at a current bitcoin gambling site, with a better user experience. I fail to see a single*advantage that your site offers a player, other than affording you the possibility of getting rich with an ICO

Hacked.com Feature Piece on vDice is Live!

https://hacked.com/vdice-io-the-worlds-first-full-decentralized-gambling-platform-ethereum-or-blockchain-tech/

vDice.io, launched in June as the 1st FULLY decentralized gambling game.

Running on the first programmable P2P network, vDice will host a crowdsale from Nov. 15 - Dec. 15.
In exchange for Ether (ETH), investors will receive “vSlice” tokens, each of which is directly tied to the profits of the game.

The “vSlice” token will regularly distribute profits of the vDice game to token holders.

The game works and the code is well tested. Go review it yourself.
There is no need to be aggressive and start making wild, unfounded accusations. Let’s keep it civil please!

We have some of the finest developers in Ethereum on our team.
Our coders and game are live, working and can be verified. We are obviously legitimate.

Now, I have no idea why you are posting the same questions, over and over, in EVERY forum.  

Requesting to kindly keep this just one forum.
It's really annoying to have to go and paste the same answer over and over again.

Anyway, these concerns are addressed in our 3rd Party Audit by Peter Vessenes.
You can read that here: https://blog.vdice.io/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/vdice_game_code_audit_october_2016.pdf

For his credentials as an auditor you can google him or go to his security blog: http://vessenes.com

That is on our website. Along with all other documentation.

As an addendum to the audit, in relation to Oraclize and Replay issue (which I am guessing you allude to):

The very reason why the authenticated JSON-RPC APIs of random.org are used, is because of the "requestsLeft" field which is returned by each API call response ( https://api.random.org/json-rpc/1/signing ). This field content is tied to the API credentials specified in the query and is there to indicate how many requests are left in a given day.

If we check all the TLSNotary proofs published on the blockchain (which contain the whole API response!), an independent auditor can verify whether any subsequent number in the "requestsLeft" fields is missing - when that happens, the auditor has a good indicator that something wrong happened (either on the Oraclize side - which sent more requests than expected - or by any external party knowing that specific API key (vDice itself & random.org)). Of course this doesn't say much about the intent in itself (can just be some failure in the HTTP request, which had to be sent again), but in general it provides some level of security against replay attacks.   

Otherwise, perhaps you are suggesting the oracle might have requested random numbers until a matching one >shows up? In which case:

Random.org JSON responses have a consecutive ID, so if we dropped some to advange ourselves in the game, by checking all of the bets and their respective responses it would be evident: at the end of the day, there would be some JSON responses missing, i.e ID 1, 2,3.. 5,6 present but 4 missing.

Further information on TLS notary:

With TLS notary (by the author of it in IRC), the third party has to keep the data to prevent the source from manipulating their data and making it seem as though your captured data is actually not authentic. In other words, a lying "I never said that!" from the webhost people.

It actually is secure because it is like when you browse to a HTTPS secure site, you are able to see provably that they are X company (if you inspect the certificates). TLS Notary is essentially able to record those bytes in such a way that you can play them back later so you can authenticate the bytes again! Very ingenious. (But the math of how it does this in the whitepaper goes above my head. https://tlsnotary.org/TLSNotary.pdf)

the notary server used at the moment is the default tlsnotarygroup1 notary - which is an "AWS oracle", as described here. So there is nobody having access to the secret, as you can easily verify indipendently by following these instructions and giving a look at the actual code for the pagesigner-oracles.

There are some great videos explaining this further. Here is one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4ukd4I8S9A

I could go on forever about this. But, as I said before, it is an issue of centralization v decentralization.

vDice is fully decentralized in that there is no server architecture. There are 3rd party providers that do run some server architecture. But they are not part of vDice directly. They just give it what it needs. So, vDice is still serverless.

wth? If this is your serious reply, I'm starting to suspect another ICO scam coin. My concerns are laid out pretty straight forward:

* random.org  can cheat (by picking any number they want)
* cloudflare can cheat (by signing any number they want)
* oraclize can cheat, by calling random.org as many times as they want and picking the result they most like (or reusing results?)


And not only can they cheat, they can undetectable do so.  And you dodge the question with "You're saying you trust centralized more than decentralized   "

which is beside the point, and I believe nonsense as you're calling centralized services. It's like call "untitled dice" decentralized, as it's a serverless gambling app -- but the reality is it uses a centralized service (moneypot). Same with yours, you might not need to run a server, but random.org, cloudflare and oraclize all need to.

I'm rooting for you guys...

but honestly it doesn't even seem like you read what Ryan wrote at all. 

Just stop trying to make the bold claim that it is 'FULLY' decentralized in every single way.  It's decentralized for the most part.  Just go with that.

I don't understand. You're saying you trust centralized more than decentralized   

We respectfully disagree. That's why we love blockchain.
That's why we made the world's 1st FULLY decentralized gambling platform.

There are technical arguments we both can make.
But I think people in Bitcoin forum understand why decentralization is important.

So looking a bit deeper into this, it seems even more concerning. My understanding is that the player will need to trust

* random.org
* cloudflare
* oraclize

As the code doesn't appear to be using random.org's sequences (?), so there's no way to check how many times random.org was asked for random numbers. It just checks that random.org gave a result. It can give any result it wants, and there's no guarantees (unlike a provably fair scheme). But worse, is this means oraclize can ask it as many times as it wants. But the TLS layer is done by cloudflare, so you also need to trust them (they can change the result if they want). There's probably no problem trusting all 3 (?!) parties, but the problem I see is if one of them cheats, it's 100% undetectable.

Now contrast this to going to a bitcoin gambling site, say PrimeDice:

* I deposit money
* I play using a proper dedicated interface, and have instant bets
* I check my results
* I withdraw


So in the vdice case, I'm trusting 3 parties who can cheat me (?) but if they do, I'll never know. And they know I'll never know.  Now contrast to PrimeDice, which you do need to trust with the amount you deposit, however it's impossible for them to undetectable cheat you. This provides extra incentive for them to be honest.


Anyway, I'm sure i'm missing something as AFAICT it's strictly a step down from current bitcoin gambling?   (Disclaimer: I'm very unfamiliar with ethereum and greatly dislike it, so my reading of the contract is likely totally mistaken)

Is it really? In your contact code, I see references to api.random.org

At that point, is it really FULLY decentralized? And is there any mechanism to stop random.org cheating your investors, or is the assumption that they should trust random.org ? And what about gamblers? Do they need to trust random.org?


Anyway, you should also create a "technical description" that explain in high level how it exactly works, and the trust model. As it almost seems incongruent to call it "fully decentralized" and "only trust the blockchain" and have API calls to that are hitting a centralized and non-provably fair server, random.org

vDice is the world's 1st FULLY decentralized gambling platform.

It is already live!
It works and is processing bets on the Ethereum network.

So, it is already successful.

Others make promises and whitepapers. We deliver secure, production ready code.

The market will now decide what that is worth. And, the success of the crowdsale.
That is the job of the free market

The crowdsale is the way to proceed with our development roadmap here:
https://blog.vdice.io/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/vDice_Development_Roadmap.pdf

The crowdsale is successful if the full vision of decentralized gambling, on the blockchain, is realized.

Read the roadmap and you will see full details.

One question, how success will Vdice crowdfunding be?

If it is successful, what makes it successful?

Thanks

Cool.

Also, check out this one:
https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/ethereum-developers-re-imagine-betting/

Wrong section but ill take a look at the article.

FULL decentralisation is not possible with bitcoin. You need smart contracts and oracles. Sorry.

FunCasino marketed itself as first decentralized Bitcoin casino.
I don't know exactly specifics and technical aspects, but they hyped the fact that they are decentralized in some way.

They have a thread on bitcointak also  you can see this announcement post here: https://forum.bitcoin.com/gambling/fun-casino-first-decentralized-bitcoin-casino-t8403.html

That's not true at all. This is taken from our development roadmap:-
https://blog.vdice.io/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/vDice_Development_Roadmap.pdf

Specifically we refer you to:

a.  "Nested" Datasource & Partially Encrypted Queries:-
b.  Multi-TLSN Servers.
II. Vanguard Phase
i). ‘0-Conf’ Precomputation.
ii). New Proofs.
iii) Status Page for vDice Administration.

We are serious developers and we know what we are doing.
That is why we have built an launched the world's 1st Fully Decentralized gambling game and made it live.

While others write whitepapers, we deliver and launch production ready code. 

lol, haha, it is called hype in ico, to make more money from ico. The dev is ok, one of the original ethereum team member.

The first fully decentralized one, yes.

There have been blockchain gambling games on Bitcoin.
SatoshiDICE was the first. It was very successful. But it was not fully decentralized.

There was still a server doing the randomness.

With the power of Ethereum and Smart Contracts we have now made this fully decentralized. No server architecture processing bets at all!

- vDice.

This is definitely one of the most interesting gambling related projects I've seen in a long time.
Would this be the first decentralized crypto gambling site out there?

vDice ICO Update - Code Audit - October 21st

This ICO update October 21st covers the vDice game code audits.

The vDice Crowdsale (ICO) is soon. It starts November 15th.

Code audits are important. Code must be secure.

Making secure Dapps for Ethereum is our job. We do it well.




vDice Code Audits - ICO Update October 21st
vDice is one of the most popular Dapps. vDice is secure.

We show how strong and secure is vDice code.

We work with Peter Vessenes.

Peter has been in blockchain forever. He is one of the most respected security people. Peter knows code. Peter knows security and blockchain.

Peter is a big fan of Ethereum. Read his important contributions to Ethereum here.

All the top developers in Ethereum know Peter's work.

Peter is a big fan of vDice. He was very happy to Audit the vDice game code.

Click Here for the full Audit of the vDice game code by Peter Vessenes.

Peter is also auditing the code for our ICO.



vDice ICO Logo - vSlice
This is the vSlice logo above.

The vDice token is called vSlice. This is an important token. It is the token for one of the most important Dapps in Ethereum ; vDice.

Hold the vSlice token and get your slice of vDice profits. Or trade it on leading exchanges.

Coming Soon...
In the coming updates:

• The ICO Code.
• The ICO Code Audits.
• Exchange Partnerships.

Follow our social media and ICO website to stay informed.

All we're doing is taking what Classic SatoshiDICE started.

Then going to the next level of decentralization...

http://crowdsale.vdice.io

It's a new paradigm for sure. And we're at the very beginning of it.

It's about the database processing this stuff.
Can an open blockchain database like Ethereum be as quick and cost efficient as a centralised one?

If so, why use a centralised one if you're a player?

That is, if the decentralized one is as efficient, fast, well designed etc., etc.
You can just interact with the decentralized one and not have to deposit anywhere. Just play straight from your wallet. Don't have to trust anyone.

We've already got on-blockchain bet Tx down to 3-5 seconds. This blew even us away (on Morden test-net).

Cost and speed are just gonna keep getting more efficient.
And Ethereum pace of development is FAST. This is all happening super quick.

You don't need too much vision to see where this is going.

View Phase III of our dev. roadmap here:
https://blog.vdice.io/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/vDice_Development_Roadmap.pdf

We anticipate a lot of developers writing these smart contract gambling dapps soon. The rewards will be great for them.
But it will be too costly and time consuming for them to run the things, ongoing. So, we'll be the home for them...as we build out the brand.

The DAO was WAY too ambitious for where Ethereum is at. There codebase was enormous and complex.

Ours codebase is super short and is orders of magnitude simpler. Simplicity is the friend of security. We like simplicity.  

We get this sort of stuff a lot. Which is surprising to me. I never hear this stuff levelled at other software engineering teams working with open code-bases.

It's come to the point where all I can really say is, do it! We've been keeping an Ethereum Dapp live and working for a while now. We know what it takes. And we are very confident it needs a pretty damn significant team of professionals. Run a Dapp and you will see.

We're 2 years into Ethereum and we're the only live, functional, working, production gambling Dapp of this kind.

So, if it were that easy. Wouldn't someone have done it already? I really hope you or someone does do it. We'd love to work with you / whoever pulls it off.

That's not even getting into all the none engineering work it takes to grow a brand, etc, etc.

Guys, I'm not against you, just give my opinion on it.

I perfectly understand smart contracts and their limitations. However what's more important I also understand legal implications of such business. Money laundering and terrorism financial. And when such operations will go through your contract, you\your company will be the one who will be prosecuted. And when it comes to AML\CFT general prosecutor will not give a damn how smart-contract works, you and your actions allowed bad guys to do what they did. Period. Currently there's no legal framework, there's no precedent and such situations plays against all the players. Legal institutes treat the technology on their own understanding.

That's was the worst part And I really hope nobody will get into such situations. On the other hand there's great perspective for such developers as you are. Smart contracts is the future of FinTech and demand will only raise. You can easily put your experience on solving real FinTech problems and earn a lot of money with it.

Regards,
Alex

If people would like this concept of decentralized casinos - even despite its restrictions. So this mean we might see era of cloned smart contract casino application from now on?
Gambling apps where the only difference is House Edge? And another question - is it really secure? I mean The DAO was hacked...

First of all, I think what you're doing is incredibly cool from a technology point of view. I think it's awesome you guys are pushing forward on that front.


That's really not remotely comparable. Let's say I make a copy of bitcoin, it has little to no for anyone because it's not bitcoin or interoperable with it and doesn't enjoy the network effect, blah blah blah.

But now let's take a smart contract gambling service, let's say I duplicate it and change your 1.9% house edge to 0.1%. Which I can sanely do, because I don't have any development or operating costs. Now from a users point of view, they are two services which have the exact reputation and trust required (same code) but one means they will lose 19 times less on average. I personally would gamble on the 0.1% edge on, I guess you're counting on people like me being in the minority?

Incorrect. And also, a lack of understanding of smart contract operations. Nice handle BTW.  

Sure, not at 10s. But at 1 or 2s they will.

In a few months we've already built technology and got it down to 3-5 on average.
That's on the morden test network now. It's undergoing Peer review.

With Ethereum we will easily compete on time with central database services. And a lot sooner than people think.

We have no custodial control. We are writing software here. We never touch any funds. We just write code and stick it on a p2p network.
Please take a look at where the house comes from and where it is stored. It has nothing to do with us.

You do know how Ethereum works? Right?

You should get some ETH, it's a lot better.   

On a serious note. We're very early in the piece here. Like, super early.

Right now we need to;

1). Drive on-blockchain Tx time down to a level to compete with central database services.
We are already doing that. It will be 3-5 s. by the end of the year, with new Oracle proof. So imagine how fast we'll have it by this time next year.

2). As we drive down processing time, we will also be increasing efficiency, and driving down house-edge.
1% will exist for Ethereum gambling Dapps very soon.

3). There are already pegged tokens on chains like bitshares. They are coming for Ethereum.
Then effective fiat betting will come. We will be leading the charge with that.

Just a little vision is all that is required here. The technology already works.

Sometimes I guess people forget how new Ethereum is.
Or, they haven't worked with it and don't see how much promise it really has.

When you build with it, it becomes very obvious.
And it's quite clear why Coinbase bothered to add it as the only ALT.

BTW, I love how all the negative comments are coming from people with legacy gambling site ads in their pics and banners. No dog in the race hey guys ? 

I would not bet against us, that's for sure.

That's exactly what I'm talking about. It means that there's zero chance they will get any license.

Regards,
Alex.

Is it even possible to regulate decentralized casino like that? I mean it is smart contract - a script working in a blockchain, with not owner behind it.
Isn't regulating service like that quite impossible with our current laws?

Actually as RHavar noticed - people wouldn't wait 10 seconds to make a bet. BitDice has almost 20M bets with 300M ETH wagered within 9 Month. Users love good UI and instant reply. We thought about this model when we've added ETH 9 month ago, but this would kill the joy. Unfortunately your model won't work in casino business.

And as soon as you will even think about regulation, you will have to close it as AML\KYC will require full due diligence and funds seizure. So again, better pivot right now.

Regards,
Alex.

My main complain is House Edge. I would rather trust some old fashioned gambling platform with good reputation and 1% or less House Edge than try to switch to 1.9% HE.
Also no wonder if I never heard about vDice if this is ETH based - I am mainly bitcoin gambler.

The Smart Contract is what requires reputation. As you are sending your bet Tx only to that. So it is reputation of code, NOT people.
This trivially duplicated argument for code is pointless. Bitcoin can be "trivially duplicated" too. Just ask Charlie Lee. An experience is more than just its code base.

In terms of UX, well; the game functions EXACTLY as Classic SatoshiDICE for Bitcoin. That did pretty well.  Did you ever play that pre-2013.

Otherwise, the bet processing times need to come down. That is a fair point.
 We're already testing new proofs with our Oracle. We will have that down to 3-5s on blockchain, by the end of the year.

Sure, in the same way that someone can just replicate the bitcoin code base too. But, as we all know, in open source, a Dapp is more than just its code base.
Go for it though. We'd welcome the competition. We're quite sure we would win the business and operations side of things.

"Decentralized Gambling sounds vague."

-- Why?

"In Layman's terms,there is no owner of the website or anyone can be the owner of the website."

-- The website displays smart contract addresses. The website isn't the game. The smart contract code is the game. It lives on the Ethereum blockchain.
The logic and code for each game is verifiable on the blockchain. There is no server architecture. The blockchain is the database processing bets.

"According to Colby,no one touches your coins or the bets,it's only the smart contracts which does all the processing. Well,where does the money go ?"

-- The money goes directly from your wallet, to the smart contract. The smart contract code receives the Tx directly and the logic executes (that's how Ethereum smart contracts work.
Then, if it wins, it sends you back your win. If it losses, it sends back one wei. The "house" is also stored at the smart contract.

-- House edge ? Who takes the profits ?

1.9% House edge at the moment.
The profits go to the people who hold the vSlice tokens. Again, via smart contract.
The ICO is based on a smart contract that creates the token. This token is tied directly to game profits. Those profits are shared automatically with token holders.

Worst of all,it's based on ETH,that's a no no.

-- Lol. Bitcoin maximalist I guess. 7 transactions a second should be fun. I love Bitcoin too. But it's horrible to work with at the moment.
In the words of Tim Swanson; "easiest way to make an Ethereum developer is to put a programmer who wants to build stuff into a room with Bitcoin maximalists for 2 months.
https://twitter.com/ofnumbers/status/781898107361431553

 

The last bet was 26hrs ago, because we have been upgrading contract for the last 24hrs.

The site itself was launched on June 13th and started processing bets, on the live chain.
We had been working on the code many months before that.

We support the claim in our Development Roadmap here:
https://blog.vdice.io/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/vDice_Development_Roadmap.pdf

We are working a new proof with our oracle. It is on the merdern test-net. Once peer-reviewed it will go live.
That is scheduled for the end of the year. Then bets will process, on the Ethereum blockchain (fully decentralized), in about 3-5s.

This puts us well ahead of the competition for on-blockchain Tx processing, through an Oracle.

Take a look around. There is only one other live, blockchain gambling game for Ethereum.
And that does Randomness in a different way. We don't think this method will stand the test of time. We can go into why if you like.

The other blockchain gambling games for Ethereum are just empty promises at this stage. We are live. Our tech. is under constant development

Kibo doesn't exist. We exist.
You can play us right now. Our code is here, for your inspections:

https://github.com/jamesgroton/vDice-Contract-Code

Otherwise, just go and bet and judge for yourself. 

We are FULLY decentralized. The code and logic live on the Ethereum blockchain.
When you send a bet, the Tx goes straight to the smart contract. It is processed by the smart contract.
Then a win is returned by the Smart Contract to the address that sent the bet.

It is the player interacting with the logic on the blockchain. There is no server architecture at all.

We think that is pretty darn decentralized.
Original SD was similar. Only, it was limited by Bitcoin's functionality. So there had to be a server for randomness. We suffer no such constraints.

Thanks dear for posting it here.

@Everyone else, if you People have any question regarding vDice ICO please Ask here: [ANN] vDice Ethereum Blockchain Gambling || Crowdsale

Trustless gambling can be done in bitcoin as well, although it's kind of awkward. I have worked through the logic of how to do a trustless 50% win, 50% lose bet (with arbitrary payouts) on a napkin, and believe it would work


If so, it doesn't sound like a future I'd want to invest in. If it's trustless, there's no need for reputation, and if it's a smart contract it can be trivially duplicated.

I however think the biggest issues are going to be UX ones, it's going to be hard to complete with the sleek experience offered by gambling sites when you are interacting with a smart contract, and waiting on blocks (even if they're every 10 seconds)

Couldn't someone just replicate the smart contracts in this case then? 

How vDice works?

It is a fully decentralized gambling game. It is completely decentralized.

It’s only possible because of Ethereum and the Blockchain. There are no servers.

You send a bet to the Smart Contract. The Smart Contract processes the bet. The Smart Contract sends back your win, automatically.

Nobody touches your money. You don’t have to trust anybody with your money. It’s just you and the Smart Contract. We believe this is the future of gambling.

Decentralized Gambling sounds vague.In Layman's terms,there is no owner of the website or anyone can be the owner of the website.
According to Colby,no one touches your coins or the bets,it's only the smart contracts which does all the processing.Well,where does the money go ? House edge ? Who takes the profits ? Worst of all,it's based on ETH,that's a no no.

"We are at least 18 months ahead of the competition right now"

What supports this claim?  How old is this site?

edit;

Just checked and the last bet was over 26 hours ago.

KIBO also promoted them as world's first decentralized gambling. It would be interesting to see how decentralized these games really are...

Decentralised Gambling Game vDice Announces Crowdsale

NewsBTC recently got the opportunity to interview Jason Colby, the lead developer of vDice, the world’s first fully decentralised gambling game. As we dwelled into the conversation, Colby introduced us with many aspects of their new platform...

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