What an amazing couple of weeks. In the 16 days since we (silently) soft-launched our game to a very limited audience, our game has successfully processed almost 7,000 games with a total of >4000 ether wagered. We have already seen players wager up to 75.98 Ether on one roll of the dice. Wow! Check out some of the other large wagers here (current live contract) and here (discontinued contract).

The purpose of the soft-launch was to normalize our smart-contract and website and ensure the various smart-contract design patterns are working perfectly. Good news Great news, they are.

Following our recent and successful soft-launch, the past couple of weeks impressive performance of our game now has us looking towards the future of the platform and what we can do to improve the overall experience for our players and valued DICE holders. The following outlines our development plans and focuses over the next 3-6 months. These are our big-ticket items, and is no way an exhaustive list of items on our to-do list.

The purpose of the following points are to optimize our platform to the point that we can confidently market the platform to e.g. traditional Bitcoin audiences, and beyond. Admittedly, we aren’t perfect (yet), and we still have a lot of work to do, there may even be growing pains, but we are aware of the pain points and we fully intend to iron out the creases over the coming months in order to develop our product until it is the absolute flagship of dice games on top of the Ethereum protocol. Some of the items on our priority list over the coming 3-6 months are;

Reduced Bet Processing Times

We have a few tricks up our development sleeve (which we can’t reveal just yet) that we are researching and intend to work on with our development partners in order to significantly speed up the processing times of our game results over the next 2-3 months. These development improvements should also provide an array of benefits which will occur as a side-effect, including; improved game stability, transparency and reduction in gas (transaction) costs. More details to come over the next 2-3 months as we continue to develop and test these upgrades. Reduced Transaction Costs

The recent rise in the price of ETH, coupled with the fact that miners have not reduced transaction costs has meant that transaction fees across the Ethereum network have risen due to a rising cost of gas. The average miner is still charging 20 gwei/gas, this should come down to 10 gwei/gas in the near future. Some have already reduced their fees, but not the majority. In any case, we aim to reduce gas costs for our platform by working together with our development partners in order to provide the lowest possible gas prices to our customers, we will achieve this by further optimizing our contracts and improving upon the usage of our oracle. We can’t disclose all the details surrounding our proposed changes just yet (top secret), but rest assured this item is high on our priority list. More details to come over the next 2-3 months. Deployment of the DICE Rewards Contract

In order for our valued DICE token holders to claim their rewards, our ‘Rewards’ contract will be subject to internal testing and 3rd party security audits before being deployed to main-net in anticipation of our first rewards distribution week which opens August 7th, 2017. A new section added to our website will display a countdown showing exactly when (and how) you can claim your DICE rewards. This section will be deployed a considerable time before August 7th. You can learn more about the benefits of holding the DICE token by visiting etheroll.com today. Improved Overall Look and Feel

We will be experimenting with new designs internally through the hiring of a designer and we look to implement a new and improved site design post August 7th after the first DICE rewards period. Mobile Version Deployment

We understand the importance of being able to play our game on mobile. This is a potentially huge market for Etheroll. We look to be added to Status.im and look to have our game available on various mobile Ethereum platforms about the same time we deploy our new design. Full Metamask Support

The Metamask team are working on updates to their core product in order to fix an issue which meant that our players were not being notified of results on the front-end even though in the back-end our smart-contract processed everything perfectly. We have just been notified that they have resolved this issue and we will make an announcement once their update has been deployed by the Metamask team. We can’t wait for our players to be able to use Etheroll with Metamask and we are really excited to offer this improvement to our players (we are big fans of Metamask). DICE Listings

We are really excited to have EtherDelta list our DICE token starting May 15th. EtherDelta are a decentralized exchange, that leverages smart-contracts for trading. No need to worry about your tokens or even the exchange itself disappearing. We love EtherDelta for their smart-contract based exchange, but we need your support now in asking your other favorite exchanges to add our DICE token. For example, do you want to see DICE on BITTREX? Now is the time to tell BITTREX (Twitter) why you want DICE listed. How about Liqui.io exchange? Contact your favorite exchange and let them know why you want to see them list DICE today! Bankroll Increases

Thanks to the success of our crowdfund in February, our bankroll has a total of 18,945 Ether. Our soft-launch game has been loaded with only 200 Ether so far. Over the coming days/weeks/months we will be gradually increasing the bankroll, which will allow our players to wager and win absolutely massive amounts of Ether. Marketing & Advertising

Digital advertising in the form of banner and email campaigns, social media and a presence in various crypto-currency forums coupled with press-releases will allow us to expand upon our current early-adopter Ethereum audience. However, until we optimize our game (points above), we will not aggressively approach audiences outside of Ethereum. When we target, for example, the Bitcoin audience, we believe a game that is playable on mobile, that is fast, cheap and reliable will be the best way to win over new audiences in our target markets. Our primary target audience for the next 3-6 months will be early adopters of Ethereum. Beyond the next 6 months we intend to reach out to audiences of other crypto-currencies, (e.g. Bitcoin) with forum posts and banner campaigns on the various and relevant publishing platforms. High Roller + Low Roller Game

We are starting to discuss the possibility of deploying an additional ‘low roller’ game which will allow players to wager tiny amounts of Ether. The way we will achieve this is to reduce the maximum profit for this particular game to be below 5 Ether for any bet placed. We are still researching this option, and we don’t want to give away or promise too much yet, but it could be something you see coming from us in the next <6 months.

Whilst this may not be a complete and/or detailed description of our development focus for the next 3-6 months, we do believe that it does provide some insight into what we currently have planned. Most of the items we have in the development pipeline, we can’t actually publicly discuss in detail yet, as they are still top secret (and for good reason)!

Support Requests

We are pleased with the level of support requests we are receiving, with only a tiny fraction of players requiring any sort of support from us, and most are related to the Metamask issue (we currently only fully support Mist browser). We are eager to reduce this number further once the Metamask team resolve their issue and deploy their latest version.

Recent Updates

Today we have deployed a new section to our website which displays real-time data about the game, including total Ether wagered, total Ether won, and the number of games played (you will only see this section if you are connected to an Ethereum node). We have also added a new section to our site outlining the benefits of owning DICE tokens. We will be increasing the bankroll this week, and have migrated our entire site to be served via https (SSL) as an additional layer of security and confidence for our players.

DICE Tokens Available May 15th on EtherDelta Exchange

DICE tokens are unlocked May 15th and will be available from this date forward on EtherDelta exchange, so if you missed out on our crowdfund in February, you can still pick up some DICE tokens from May 15th. You can learn more about the benefits of holding our DICE token by visiting etheroll.com today.