I built an Ethereum-based decentralized casino

4 min readFeb 15, 2021

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For the last couple of months I’ve been working on a very special project and now I’m happy to present it to you! Welcome Honest99.

Honest 99 - the casino you don't have to trust

Ethereum-based guess-the-number game with big prizes

honest99.bet

The main idea was to make an autonomous algorithmically fair casino that has no single point of failure and is transparent by its nature. There is no “house” to play against to. There is no authorization. There are no free-spins. Only pure math and a little droplet of Web3 magic.

It is very simple, but I believe it could be very entertaining:

Connect your Ethereum wallet (Metamask and WalletConnect are supported)
Bet some ETH on a number between 0 and 99
Press ‘Make a guess’ button
Wait for the transaction to get submitted and immediately see if you were lucky
If numbers are the same receive x66 of your bid!
Press ‘Claim’ button and check your wallet balance :)

The casino is completely decentralized and secure. This means that it can’t fool you. You can always see the current prize fund value and you’re guaranteed with a fair chance of winning. And this is what makes this casino different from many others — it is transparent. You just connect your wallet and play.

Check my technical explanation, if you want to know more of what is going on under the hood.

Building An Ethereum-based Decentralized casino: How I Did It | Hacker Noon

There are a lot of different gambling platforms out there. Many of them are somehow related to cryptocurrency space…

hackernoon.com

Yes, right now there is not much money locked in it (I only had $500 for this project total), but you still can transform your $2 into $120 in a matter of seconds, if you’re lucky enough, and the more people play it, the bigger will be the maximum prize. It’s also very gas effective, so even with these low bids you will do reasonable profit.

Current expected value makes the casino to slowly accumulate money in the prize fund. After its value reaches 400 ETH, the prize multiplier will switch to x99, balancing the expected value and making it even more profitable to play!

I’m working on this project alone, so please don’t judge a book by its cover. The UI is not very appealing, but this is temporary. It looks much better when you’re visiting it via your smartphone. And mobile is the preferred way of interaction with the casino — you can use your mobile wallet if you choose “Use WalletConnect” option on “Connect wallet” page.

If you want to try it out, but don’t want to risk you money — just connect your wallet and then switch to Kovan network. This way you can use your testnet ethers to safely check the casino out.

What comes next

There is much more coming! The casino itself is only the phase one milestone. I called this project special because there will be a whole DAO around it, members of which receive weekly dividends and are able to directly affect the protocol by voting (collectively execute some smart-contract function in order to change system parameters). For example, they are able to change the casino’s prize multiplier, or even elect a new DAO leader (CEO, basically) if the current one doesn’t work well. There are already proper algorithms around to achieve this — check my another tech article.

All I need is a good team. And as I get a passable cashflow from the casino, I could afford such a team and bring the phase two to live.

About my profit — I receive 3% of each prize. This means, I’m not making any money, unless you make some. So, please, be lucky. Phase two will change even that — all the profit will be split (and in control of the DAO) between current DAO leader and their development team (like salaries) and other DAO members according to their shares (like dividends).