Etheroll is an Ethereum blockchain-based, provably fair, smart-contract dice gambling game and casino
In my previous post, I wrote about the back-story behind etheroll.com, an Ethereum based dice game that I built using smart-contracts on the Ethereum blockchain soon after first learning about the Ethereum protocol and smart-contracts.
Etheroll is based on an Ethereum smart contract. It is executed by the Ethereum protocol, which enables it to operate in a decentralized fashion as well as provide a transparent, provably-fair gambling platform for its players. All of the game code is open-source, which makes it provably-fair. Etheroll features a very competitive 1% house-edge, which can compete with the biggest of online dice games.
The game
Players are betting on the result of either a high or a low 100 sided dice roll. The result of the dice roll is either within a low roll range (1-50) or a high roll range (51-100). If the number the player submits is within the result range (high or low); they are paid 1.99 to 1 instantly. If the number the player submits is outside the result range they are not paid.
When a player places a wager with the contract, the Ethereum smart-contract waits for a few blocks, allowing other players to continue placing bets, much like a roulette wheel. When this time period is up, wagers are no longer accepted, at which time Etheroll makes a call to random.org via oraclize.it to provide a random number.
Our random number is the only external dependency (via Random.org and Oraclize), as the nature of the blockchain makes it unsafe for us (not you) to calculate random data inside the blockchain in a secure way.
Once the Etheroll smart contract receives a new random number from random.org, the results are calculated and winning bets are paid out accordingly. A 1% commission is taken from the winning payout, which means the actual game itself is truly 50/50 odds.
Provably fair
Randomness is sourced from Random.org — which provides true randomness from atmospheric noise — via Oraclize.it
Oraclize provides players with TLSNotary proof that the data Random.org returns to etheroll has not been manipulated or changed in anyway since etheroll initially requested the random number from Random.org. We continue to strengthen our relationship with Oraclize.it in order to provide the most secure way of generating our random number.
The randomness Etheroll requests is an integer between 1-100 that is served to etheroll by Random.org. The data it generates is a random number from atmospheric noise between 1-100 try generating a random number for yourself here.
Why do we use an external dependancy for our RNG?
We could generate each random number from the actual Blockchain itself (in fact, initially, this is how the dice game operated), but due to the characteristics of the blockchain this could create a security concern (only to the house, not to players) due to the fact that a miner could potentially have a 2nd chance at 50/50 odds by withholding any block that would not return them a favorable result . It is for this reason alone that we chose to utilize a 3rd party to feed us our random number.
In the rare chance event that the Random.org service errors out and returns 0, all bets for that round are quietly refunded and voided for that betting round by the smart contract.
The smart contract also contains an 'emergency' function that only Etheroll can call, so refunds for bets can be issued at any time should there ever be a problem with this external dependency.
Etheroll crowdfunding campaign
Back in June 2016, Etheroll ran a crowdfunding campaign, which was highly successful. In fact, we cracked the top 15 highest grossing crypto-crowdfunds in history within 72hrs of our crowdfunding campaign opening. It was an amazing journey and the interest we had from token holders worldwide was astounding. Ether raised during the crowdfunding campaign was to be set aside as the 'house bankroll', in order to payout winning wagers. Token holders would receive a % of profits the dice game makes, proportional to their ownership of tokens.
It was a 14 day crowdfund campaign, and, on the 5th day, we had raised over 2300ETH when suddenly the DAO 'hack' event made headlines. In the interests of our valued token holders we decided that the safest action to take was to suspend our crowdfund campaign, on our own volition, and refund all Ether that we raised back to our valued token holders. This was the safest option to take. You can read more about that story here.
The future
Now that the events surrounding the DAO are in the past and the Ethereum community has returned back to near normalcy, Etheroll will continue to build out its platform, with the aspiration of becoming the 'Satoshi Dice of Ethereum'. In the very near future we will be running another crowdfunding campaign, and launching the site live. We thought it important to let the recent events surrounding Ethereum to settle down first, and understand the fallout and implications on smart-contract security before we continued on with our mission.
If you would be interested in future crowdfunding campaigns from Etheroll, you can always follow us here on Steemit or Twitter @etheroll to receive updates from us.
If you have any questions or comments on Etheroll, I would be happy to answer them in the comments.
Steemon!