Yesterday a new Steem app was announced called "SteemLoto", and today I when to test it out and played with 15$ that got me 1500 tickets. And it happened what I knew it would happen, and here's my report on this experiment.
The Pros:
- It's a nice website (in beta), and the overall experience is good.
- The transaction (deposit / payout) are very quick (almost instant).
- It shows some information regarding who's playing, when and how much tickets they've bought
- The creator and developers are "public" regarding steemit username.
(Created By:/
// Idea By
)
The Cons:
- The game creator and developers openly claim that the game IN NOT Provably fair
and that it's the exact opposite. It's "Unprovably Unfair"
If you don't know, here's the definition of "Provably Fair"
In online gambling provably fair describes an algorithm which can be analyzed and verified for fairness on the part of the service operator.[1] Provably fair algorithms are often used in the operation of an online casino.
In a provably fair gambling system, a player places bets on games offered by the service operator. The service operator will publish a method for verifying each transaction in the game. This is usually by using open source algorithms for random seed generation, hashing, and for the random number generator.[2] Once a game has been played, the player can use these algorithms to test the game's response to his in-game decisions and evaluate the outcome by only using the published algorithms, the seeds, hashes, and the events which transpired during the game.
The benefit of a provably fair system is that third-party verification and auditing is usually unnecessary. Its major flaw is that it is susceptible to unscrupulous players or competitors who can claim that the service operator cheats. It could also potentially expose the operator to hacking attempts if there are undisclosed security flaws in the open source software.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
And regarding "The creators of this lottery will never play in it.". To that, I say that you can't claim it and wait for the world to believe in it?
- Again no way to verify results leads to questions regarding how the winner is picked. For example, I was waiting for the results to came and I was taking screenshots and when the counter reached Zero the winner wasn't even on the list of players. (ok it may have some problems regarding the page refresh, I can dig that...).
- I checked to check if the player made any deposits, and yes he had done one deposit seconds before the game ended:
https://steemit.com/@ekitcho
https://steemit.com/@steemloto
Doing some math, he bought 7500 tickets with 75$. The total in the pot was 403$ so he had an 18.6% chance of winning, nice odds but even so, quite intriguing being the last deposit and being the winner...
Conclusion
In order to gain credibility and transparency, steemloto has to implement a Provably Fair system! It's not an option nowadays, it's a mandatory requisite if you're doing anything related to gambling or betting.
On steemloto, every game result must be verifiable or else no one really knows what is happening behind doors.
More problematic is not having any kind of tool to confirm how the winner was picked. Basically, steemloto is asking to all their players to believe in their word, to believe that they will never do anything shady or illegal. This could make sense 10 years or more ago, but now we're in cryptography age and these tools exist exactly to bring trust in the ecosystem.
How do we know that the result isn't fixed to give the final prize to a dummy account that has been created and it's impossible to link to anyone in the steemloto project? It's very easy to create dummy accounts and guess what, those dummy accounts will win the lotto and everyone will lose money except the house!
Until you have a fully transparent system with verifiable results, your project can and will be pointed out as a possible scam. Notice that I'm not claiming that "THIS IS A SCAM!", but I know I'm totally free to claim anything regarding this project because, there's not one simple evidence that can assure any player that the game isn't being rigged.... and I give the benefit of the doubt, maybe the creator and the two developers are honest people and don't want to scam anyone, but guys, until you can prove you're not cheating you'll have a lot of post's like this coming.
Sincere Advice
A Provably Fair system brings Transparency, and that builds Trust. Trust will make the project grow to reach the desired Success!
Disclaimer: My goal with this review, is not to bash and flame the project or its creators, I'm trying to point out necessities that this project has and trying to make a constructive critique. I hope you can read this and think twice about the strategy and what will make it or break it.
Disclaimer2: I posted about this even before the results at least on 2 different post's and I always said openly that I was playing with 15$ to test it out. I knew that those 15 would be VERY PROBABLY be lost, and I did what you always should do if you're going to play at steemloto, "NEVER BET MORE THAN YOU'RE WILLING TO LOSE!"
my 2 steamdollars & over n out