Provably Fair as a New Concept of Online Gambling

Rhyker Hackarry

10 December 20

Here is the most comprehensive review of the newest gambling technology. So, if you’re eager to know what does provably fair gambling mean? How does it work? What is a profit for you as a real money player to get? Where to find it? And how it’s going to reshape the gambling industry, then this article is a must-read.

Due to the fact that this is a pretty fresh technology that has appeared on the market recently, there is a lack of data or it’s too incomprehensible information. That’s a main reason for us to write the detailed post to explain it in plain English for real gamblers.

In this guide, we are to reveal the key principles of the games and demonstrate how it actually works. Also, we will list some trusted casinos that offer this type of gambling for customers. Finally, we will touch on the idea of smart contracts for casinos and whether they will mark a new era of fair gambling.

Often, online casino games raise concerns among gamblers. The most popular issues relate to trustworthiness of the casino and reliability of the games. In fact, these fears are not baseless. It’s really difficult to check the fairness of any game without access to the results of random number generators (RNGs). There are cases with rigged software, when online casinos change outcomes in their favor and customers are unable to reveal this. The best part? Reviewed games here are all provably fair! Our personal favorite? Read the review to find out.

Let’s start from the very beginning with the explanation of what it is.

With the rise of Bitcoin gambling and blockchain-based casinos, gamblers all around the world can rest assured that the game outcomes are fair. Now, everybody can check the real results if the chosen casino supports cryptocurrency games. In a nutshell, it’s enough to compare hashed seeds before and after the roll. This concept is known as provably fair gambling which means that both players and casinos can see the results and be sure in their transparency.

How It Actually Works?

‘Provable fairness’ is a new approach in gambling that is based on encryption principles for high-end protection of data. It utilizes three main variables: a server seed, a client seed, and a nonce. A real money casino that is powered by blockchain-based system can create a unique hash seed and send it to a player that will then check the fairness using its own seed. Let’s look at this process in more detail.

How Cryptographic Hashing Is Used in Provably Fair Casinos?

Well, it’s important to agree on terms now. A server seed is an encrypted multi-digit sequence provided by the casino. A client seed is a similar number generated by the player. A nonce is a variable that starts with 0 or 1, and increases by 1 with each new bet. The process of a roll verification includes the following steps:

1. The casino creates a dedicated server seed for a given bet.
2. It hashes this number with SHA256 or other algorithm, and sends it to the player.
3. The player creates its client seed and makes his/her bet.
4. After the roll is complete, the player gets an unhashed version of the client seed.
5. The player inputs three variables to check the outcome.

To check the result, you have to generate HMAC. For example, with this service, you can input your client seed followed by the nonce in the String line. Use ‘aclientseedname-0’ for the first bet and ‘aclientseedname-1’ for the second one if the numbers start with 0.

Then paste an unhashed server seed in the Secret Key field, and choose a hashing algorithm provided by the chosen casino. Press Compute HMAC to get a sequence. You need the first five characters. Enter them in the Convert line here and press To Decimal. Finally, use any calculator or Google to solve this: theconvertednumber%(10000)/100.

Alternatively, you can use an automated verifier. With this tool, it’s enough to input all variables, and the software will calculate the results for you. There are dozens of verifiers for different casinos, e.g. DuckDice.

The randomness in traditional and provably fair casinos is similar. All sites use pseudo-RNGs with computer algorithms. True RNGs based on radioactive decay are used rarely.

What Is a Profit for Real Players?

This revolutionary technology brings total transparency and fairness in the gaming process. Therefore, real gamblers get never-before-imagined profits and the main of them are:

• fairness of gameplay;
• accountability;
• public ledger;
• anti-cheating guaranteed;
• instant payouts.

Are There Any Casinos that Already Apply It? Use Cases

Actually, it is surprising that traditional casinos still survive in the world of provably fair gambling. Right now, it may be a bit difficult and weird for gamblers to manually check the game outcomes using all these seeds and hashes.

But the approach will become simpler over time, as even now there are browser extensions that do this job for you. Provably fair casinos have the upper hand and their number is increasing. Let’s look at the best of these gambling platforms:

FortuneJack Casino offers 4 in-house made provably fair games to play for bitcoin or any other crypto. Thereby, you can try your luck playing Dice, Plinko, Mines and randomly fair Adrenaline game. In Dice, you should specify the bet amount and conditions. It’s also possible to enable auto roll with the increasing bet size.

Hi-Lo is simple as that: you choose if the card dealt is higher, lower or the same as the previous one; each variant has own odds; make the right shot to win. Playing Plinko, bitcoin gamblers can adjust the risks selection out of 3 modes: Low, Medium or High risk. Here you’re to make a bet to start the game and watch the ball falling to win cash.

In Mines, you have to select the bet amount and number of mines. There are 25 boxes, with from 1 up to 24 mines hidden. The more mines, the higher the value of coins. You pick boxes one by one revealing coin or mine; you can cash out the winning at any time. If you find Mine, you lose and the game is over. A random opening is available.

Adrenaline is a unique BTC game with the highest HE (house edge) of 2% that can make your heart beat faster. The game starts with the growing heartbeat (on the screen). It’s the moment you’re to decide if you keep on holding and increasing your winnings or withdraw the bet and grab the money. The heartbeat in BPS (beats per second) marks the coefficient of possible winnings.

BitStarz casino provably fair games collection can make you play for hours. It’s the largest game library out of the top three casinos listed that contains about 800 titles. Here you will find as common for bitcoin casino items like Rocket Dice, Plinko, Wixx along with the bitcoin slots on offer.

The variety of games and their features is amazing. In Plinko, you choose the bet amount, risk multiplier, and the number of lines; auto betting is supported too. Playing Dice, you need to specify the conditions, place a bet of the chosen size, mention risk and click Roll to get the outcome; autoplay is available.

In comparison with the previous bitcoin casinos, DuckDice doesn’t offer such an extensive choice of these games. Here you can play Dice Game, Daily Duck Lottery, Duck Hunt Interactive Game, and fresh Sniper Game to play with other Ducklings. Choosing Dice, you bet on dice rolls trying to guess the random number in the range from 0 up to 9999, using the payout typing boxes or win chance. There are three betting options, including auto betting and flash betting:

• Manual is the slowest mode with a chance to check stats, change the strategy during the session, etc. Here you’re to place every bet manually using hotkeys and/or mouse.
• Auto mode rolls automatically with 3 speed settings to choose from. Here you have a chance to set up various strategies and check each game statistics that can be reset any time.
• Flash mode allows you place as many bets as you wish instantly, all at once. Note that it’s possible to check the statistics after the Flashbet game is finished only.

These casinos feature a few important parameters that we want to disclose here:

• Fortune Jack. This instant-play casino is licensed in Curacao and unavailable for players from Asia, Australia (New South Wales), Italy, Sweden, the UK, and the USA. It accepts BTC, ETH, LTC, DOGE, DASH, XMR, and BCH. To register, you need to specify your email, username, and country only. Fortune Jack lists four provably fair games, including PLINKO, HILO, DICE, and MINES. It also has a randomly fair ADRENALINE game.
• Bitstarz. This casino is both instant-play and mobile. It doesn’t provide services for gamblers from Asia, Australia (New South Wales), Curacao, France, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, the UK, and the USA. It supports fiat currencies and BTC, ETH, LTC, DOGE, and BCH. You have to reveal more personal info to be able to play here. Bitstarz lists 75 provably fair games with different algorithms for different types.
• DuckDice. The platform with only one main game – dice. It supports cryptocurrencies only, including BTC, ETH, DOGE, LTC, DASH, BCH, XMR, XRP, ETC, BTG, ETC, XLM, ZEC, and USDT. The platform is licensed in Curacao and provides services for citizens of jurisdictions with legalized online gambling. You also can access Bitcoin faucet, coin rains with giveaways, tips, affiliate program, and bonus games. It’s possible to gamble via mobile.

Smart Contracts as a Boost to Provably Fair Gambling

Apart from traditional centralized casinos that accept cryptocurrency and use pseudo-RNGs with visible seeds, there are more innovative gambling platforms. They are completely based on blockchain, so they are fully decentralized and independent of private groups.

Anybody can access them and wager some crypto coins to play games. Decentralized casinos also utilize smart contracts to simplify the gambling process, remove third parties, and deliver even higher transparency. Put simply, a smart contract is a code that includes an agreement with predefined rules and conditions.

It works on condition-based principles aka IFTTT (If This Then That) being self-verifiable, self-executable, and tamper-proof analog to current third parties: processors, casinos, etc. You can find more insights at Blockgeeks.

Thus, a player can deposit money from the crypto wallet into a smart contract directly and play without long registration. Often, smart contracts also oversight the fairness thanks to extra conditions.

Examples of casinos that use smart contracts are as follows:

• Edgeless. This system is based on the Ethereum platform and has native EDG tokens. Smart contracts find and publicly reveal all the events that occur in the casino in real time. Thus, it’s technically impossible to cheat.
• FunFair. This platform provides for creating blockchain gambling sites. The ecosystem is also fuelled by its own FUN tokens based on the ERC-20 standard. The games listed across all FunFair-made casinos are powered by smart contracts and RNG software.
• Wagerr. Unlike casinos, this system is designed for sports betting via blockchain. It uses the Ethereum framework with WGR tokens to allow gamblers to place bets. Each wager is recorded as a single block and overseen by a dedicated application-specific smart contract.

How is the new technology going to reshape the industry? Generally, it is a thing of the future. Old-fashioned casinos are slowly losing the players’ trust while blockchain platforms are gaining it. Once a casino can ensure that each bet and each game are totally unbiased, the players get much more confidence and can enjoy the gameplay without concerns.

FAQ

• What is provably fair gambling?
• “Provably fair” in the Bitcoin gambling community is a tool that gives you the capability to verify the service for fairness and the outcome for randomness. You can check each and every roll, hand, and any other result using the verifiers and/or calculators provided by the Bitcoin casino.
• How can I check that it’s a provably fair game?
• As a rule the provably fair operators provide the players with the needed tools that are available directly in the game interface. All you need is to enter the required information in the fields to verify the game payout and outcomes. However, it’s not the only way. As it was stated above in the article, today there are third and independent websites and services where you can use the data provided by the casino like server seed, client seed and nonce for double-checking. Besides, there are sha256 hash calculators, using which you can even verify if the server seed has been hashed correctly to make sure that no cheats take place. I recommend you to use both approaches and compare the results at the end of the gameplay. Also, you can pick any out of the bitcoin casinos recommended in the post that are checked by me and my team.
• Is the provably fair gaming available for the regular online casinos?
• No. The provably fair algorithm is created on the basis of blockchain and is available for bitcoin online casinos only. There is a list of games with the solution implemented that counts just about 13 titles.
• Should be there any certificates provided to prove the provably fairness?
• Yes. As well as any traditional online casinos, bitcoin gambling houses are to be certified and verified. For now, there is a limited number of the bodies that regulate the casinos with provably fair games provided like the Crypto Gambling Foundation (CGF). Specify if there is any approval that the casino is trustworthy. Besides that, search for the links to the third-party verification to check the fairness of the gameplay.
• What is the commitment scheme?
• That’s an algorithm usually used along with cryptographic hashing by the bitcoin casino operators to make gambling provably fair. By means of a commitment scheme, the seeds sent remain hidden and unavailable for editing by the third parties after the commitment.