Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by mmmeff 2618 days ago
How is a blockchain a practical way to ensure no cheating? Why not just write software that doesn't let you cheat? Or referees....
3 comments

Speculating here... A game with rules encoded in a blockchain is transparent, and publishing rules clarifications is also transparent. You could play on a game in the blockchain, have everyone's moves be encoded on the blockchain, and never have to trust a server wad cheating. A few year's back, UltimateBet.net, a poker site, was caught rigging the poker games being played. [1] Even if UltimateBet.net had open sourced all of their software, one wouldn't be able to trust their servers were actually running that software. With a game on the blockchain, there is no server to trust.

[1] https://upswingpoker.com/ultimate-bet-absolute-poker-scandal...

From your link:

> The cheaters relied on a superuser account named “Auditmonster2,” that would observe tables and was able to see everyone player’s hole cards.

So.. the game was played exactly by the rules, and the full visibility would not have helped. After all, it was purely info exposure.

But you may say: in blockchain, we'd design special cryptosystem that will ensure other players do know know cards too early, as well as a verify that game is played according to the rules

My answer would be that if you have designed such a cryptosystem, you don't need blockchain anymore! Keep existing infrastructure, but apply encryption and verification at each client. After all, you do not care about world consensus for your poker game -- you just care about consensus between players. You will get all the advantages of centralized solution (high speed, very scaleable, low device requirements, easy upgrades), and server won't be able to rig the games.

It gives you an immutable record of what happened, which becomes more useful as anti-cheating measures improve
Blockchain is that software that doesn't let anyone cheat in a P2P architecture. If you have another option please tell.