How blockchain is decentralizing gambling

Photo credit: stokkete / 123RF Stock Photo.

Gambling is a multi-billion dollar industry and was revolutionized by the internet. Now, online gambling accounts for a significant proportion of all betting.

The internet and decentralization changed the face of many industries. The list includes content, publishing, and music. However, gambling was never conclusively disrupted.

While a kid can now launch a TV show in their bedroom and, with a little tech know-how, reach an audience of millions, the same sort of democratization is not true for gambling.

Mostly, the internet just saw the same big gaming players move their infrastructure online.

However, blockchain technology is set to change all that.

Reimagining the gambling industry

This was the missing piece that protected the established gambling industry. Without a native currency for the internet, the payment rails offer protection.

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.

Founder, Jason Colby, was on the original team that built Ethereum.

“This was never really possible before,” he says. “Sure, we had Bitcoin, but you can’t really program Bitcoin easily. With Ethereum you can just write up a gambling app in a few lines of code. Then you load it onto the P2P network like you would a server.”

Ethereum is a world computer. It’s like a server that no one person or entity own or controls.

The code lives on the network, in other words.

Most interestingly though, no one sits between it and the player.

Competition is heating up