DAO.Casino is aiming to create the first casino run by a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO). In early May, it published a whitepaper outlining its plan to use blockchain technology to build an online gaming ecology that will automate trust.

According to the whitepaper, DAO.Casino aims to dispense with the need for a trusted third party between players – ie. online casinos – which have historically represented a roll-of-the-dice with regard to fairness. The open-source DAO.Casino, on the other hand, enlists Ethereum’s smart contracts technology to completely automate trust between players and enable truly peer-to-peer gaming.

A recent press release explained, “The casino software, which is written in solidity contracts on Ethereum, expresses a practical business logic to support the growth of a fair and sustainable gaming and gambling industry.”

DAO.Casino aims to provide both an automated value distribution protocol, expressed in its system of Ethereum contracts, along with unpredictable pseudorandom numbers for the games themselves. The platform is effectively open to any kind of game, not just classic casino ones, so long as some of the logic is expressed via solidity contract, and random number generation is used. DAO.Casino will also display the games, providing a flow of players.

The company claims that by providing a blockchain based protocol they will address additional key issues in the online gaming industry, such as: the high entry level for game developers and the high costs of running online casinos, such as overheads like payment systems integration.

Profits will be shared between game developers, casino operators, referrers and the platform (comprised of token holders). According to the company website, “No participant has power over another. Whoever contributes value gets automatically rewarded by the system.” Internal tokens will be used as a point system for incentivization as well as a sub-currency for use in the games.

Ilya Tarutov, the CEO of DAO.Casino, commented, “DAO.Casino offers an autonomous economy, in which no one single party has power to decide whom to pay, and all the resources are distributed automatically, exactly how the protocol governs it and ‘wants’ it to be.”

The platform will allow developers to fork and create their own front-end casino, using the same smart contracts, which they can source from audited DAO.Casino libraries. Help with game promotion can be sought through a referral system, which also runs on tokens.

In March, the company announced that it will distribute 3 percent of all tokens among the first 30 teams that develop games using DAO.Casino governance and finance logic. This move is in line with the company’s core aim to create a scalable P2P environment where developers get to monetize their work without giving up their IP. The bounty affords developers an active participation in the system while allowing full control over their own content.

The token, called a BET, is an ERC20 token. Keys to the BET can be stored by players in platform wallets, in any Ethereum client, or in a paper wallet. As a subcurrency, it should prove less prone to theft than more common crypto-tokens, such as Ether. If the system is compromised, it becomes worthless. According to the company, an interoperable token makes sense as it eliminates the need to maintain user account balances. Interoperability between games also makes the token useful for players, without it having inherent value.

DAO.Casino plans a crowdfunding period of 28 days for June, during which they plan to release 74 percent of BET tokens. This period is to begin following the implementation of the system’s core components on Ethereum Mainnet, and after the completion of an external audit. Following the crowdfunding period, no more BET will be issued. The MVP for the protocol is planned for launch soon after.

The stakes are high and if the chips fall as planned, DAO.Casino may very soon be changing the face of online gambling – for game developers, players and operators – while also acting as a proving ground for DAOs in general.

Picture from Wikimedia Commons.