Topic: problem with off-chain "provably fair" games (Read 4790 times)

............................the player would not need to do anything other than bet.

yes that would be the best for both sides, the house and the players. how could this be accomplished?

I meant, for example, for sites that get their results from somewhere or something after the game has ended, but before the results are known. Like if they are based on the next block hash, or the future event (real life lotto, sports, etc.)

yes but the odds are programmed coded adjusted way off what is displayed, imo i think thats what makes these type sites not truthful or honest to players.  

Uh, I wasn't about to involve myself in this rather silly thread. But, off-chain games can be recorded by the player as it is happening, and the results are usually also recorded by the site as the bets are happening.

In fact, some sites display a public log of wins and losses as players are betting. Any one of those players can keep that log on their own computers.

Off-chain is basically saving the blockchain from getting too large too fast. Imagine if all the dice sites are exactly like SatoshiDice? Our blockchain would be a few terabytes by now, and the games would not be as fast as they are now because the servers would be waiting for the deposits to either confirm, or to be broadcast across the entire bitcoin network (or at least from the player node to the server node.)

Yes, you could use trusted third party sites, but that makes the games exponentially slower.

There is a 100% provably fair way to play these games, and I am running a perfect example of that, except my games take 1 week between results (I could shorten it to 1 day, or even 1 block.) The fact that it is on-chain doesn't change a thing, as I can convert the game into off-chain and make everything public anyway.

Would you be willing to wait about 10 minutes to find out if your roll won or lost? It's 100% provably fair by any standard you want to throw at it, as it essentially means no one knows the random number or the secret that will be used until after the bet is in.

To everyone else, do not feed the trolls. They grow yanno. Like watering the gremlins ... ... A ___ and his money are soon parted. There is a ___ born every minute. You can fill in the blank with whatever you want, it will make sense either way.

I also do escrows ... so ...

I would prefer that you thought more about this idea. One of the easiest ways to defeat its purpose is exactly one of the situations you made up earlier: disconnects. Suppose a site claims it's receiving data from random.org, then when you make a bet it picks a number from random.org. Except in those situations where you would win big, then the site says it had connection issues and the first number it asked for was never received, so it had to ask for another one. Truly random data is not repeatable, so you cannot have a seed that would allow repicking an old value. This would actually be a very common situation given frequent DDoS. Also, if you can repick older values a lot of other situations come up..

your site FAILED my randomness test! 

yes, you can be scammed on-chain but everybody will know about it, not just you.
Everybody will see that there's no return transaction, so you can prove you've been cheated.
That's the main difference.

You must be missing something then. Consider an on the chain game X, and make a deposit to place a bet. If the bet amount is above Y, then you never hear about X again. How can that not require trust ? The transaction is recorded in the blockchain, but that doesn't mean you can't be scammed.

it doesn't *have* to be this way.
for example, in satoshi dice and the rest of them on-chain gambling places, there's no need for trust

+1

imho the annoyance is because the guy is trying to rip the site(s) off and he's frustrated plus wants to egg the operators into giving him more info on how they produce their numbers

This thread is ridiculous.  I can understand there being questions of how the math works, but it's been explained at this point.  These casino operators could get their software checked by an ISO 17025 lab, and half of these people would think the casino and lab were working together in the shadows to scam everyone.

The math doesn't lie.  If you use the same seed or a predictable seed every time you play, then yeah, a site could probably make you lose.  We can't fix stupid, pick a random seed.  Or don't gamble, whichever.

Actually providing the best possible random results helps you more than the punters. Once you start doing major volume or big bets people will target you and figure out how you are random but predictable and then if there is enough money in it they will figure out how to take you to the cleaners.

It's happened to some major sites. Once you start doing volume you are under a much more powerful microscope.

I suppose: make hay while the sun shines

That's a matter of passing randomness tests, would you actually be happy if a certain site presented that to the user ? Actually, anyone can reproduce the method used for the rolls, do the rolls themselves offline and apply randomness tests (just make sure you do it correctly). What I think will happen is that another group will come around claiming this adds nothing, it's just a marketing thing and people put way too much trust in the claim.

No such thing as provably fair imho. It's basically a theory that's been turned into marketing thing. People put way too much trust in the claim.

I'd like to see a site prove they are "Provably Random"

it seems this problem is more wide spread and across the board . don't mean to imply i'm singling out ggdice! 

There's no need to complicate the situation. Whenever you make a deposit at any place (this goes way beyond off the chain games), that place is able to do anything with that. The only reason such thing does not happen is because there is no interest in doing so. You can sign messages, broadcasts them, and so on, but since you made a deposit then it's just a matter of trusting the place.

huge flame, but the simple observation I made is largerly missed.

There's a difference between "you know when you've been cheated" and
"when you'be been cheated, you can prove it."

Unfortunately, the off-chain "provably fair" casions provide only the first
type of guarantee, whereas the on-chain ones provide the second type.

I don't think one needs the bitcoin blockchain to solve the problem, but
the current algorithms in off-chain casions do not provide a solution.

Simple. Don't set a pregenerated client seed like most websites do. Just pop up an input-box prompting for a client seed when a player starts.

The client seed can be used until the server secret for that user is changed. This is either daily, at the users request or both. At that time, prompt again for a client seed and don't accept the previously used seed.

thanks for clarifying. how can the casino owner pressure or force a player to change the seed? IMHO many players are just to lazy because they want the action = gambling.