How to Play Dice with Ether

One of the earliest and most popular use cases for Bitcoin is gambling. From simple provably fair dice games to full blown online casinos and sports book, Bitcoin gambling is extremely popular. It helps users circumvent gambling regulations in restrictions. In the U.S. for example, Online Poker is illegal, but the same cannot be said for Online Poker with Bitcoin.

That is why it should come as no surprise that the first Ethereum-based gambling websites are starting to surge. Ethereum, however, is much more flexible than Bitcoin and allows developers to create their own gambling applications on the blockchain itself! These are called Gambling Dapps (Decentralized Applications) and they can function even if the website front-end is not active.

This is done by creating a smart contract that is programmed to receive bets and distribute the winnings according to pre-specified conditions. These conditions can be internal or external (with the help of Oracles) to the blockchain. This makes the possibilities for decentralized gambling endless.

One of the first and most successful gambling Dapps on the Ethereum Network is vDice.

What is vDice?

vDice is a simple provably fair dice game inspired on its Bitcoin-based counterpart, SatoshiDice. Like SatoshiDice itself, the name of vDice is based on the creator of the Ethereum Network, Vitalik Buterin.

However, vDice is fully decentralized and requires no servers to run as the system is based on Ethereum smart contracts. Only the website front end is stored on a server. Although vDice is decentralized in theory it still relies on an oracle that derives information from Random.org to generate and select random numbers.

Although Random.org is a trusted website that has been around for a long time it can still be considered a potential point of failure in the vDice system, which must trust the information from random.org. Therefore, users must trust Random.org. Although one can not confirm if the data is truly random, this website uses atmospheric noises to generate random numbers.

Recently, vDice launched a crowdfunding campaign to further market and develop its gambling platform. vDice issued a limited number of vSlice tokens (VSL), which represent “ownership” in the platform. The profits from the platform are distributed to the token holders automatically and proportionally. You can also invest in vDice by funding the house bankroll and sharing in the profit from the house edge. Click here to learn how.

How to play on vDice

So, let’s play some dice on the Ethereum Network!

Step 1: Click here to go to vDice. No registration required

Step 2: Scroll down. You will be shown multiple addresses.

These addresses each represent a bet. You can see that each bet represents a range of numbers and the odds of that range being winning the bet. For example, the first address will allow you to bet on a number below 500. There is a 5% chance of that number being drawn.

1 is the Ether address of this bet; 2 is the odds of winning; 3 is the number your bet will be multiplied by if you win; 4 is the range of the bet; 5 is the limits of the bet.

Step 3: Once you've chosen the bet you want to make, click on "Play"

Step 4: You will be shown an Ether address for that bet. Send the amount you want to bet (within the limits) to this address

And that's it! It's really simple, right? Now, if you win the bet, your reward will be automatically sent to you. If not, the system will send you 1 Wei.

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