As per a recent research study, over the course of the next seven years, the global online gambling & betting market is projected to grow from its 2020-2021 valuation of around $74 billion to over $158 billion. Not only that, it is also estimated that by the time 2028 comes around, the online gambling industry will continue to expand at a CAGR of 11.4%.
In this regard, thanks to all of the advances that have been made in the field of digital gaming and online remittance, an increasing number of gambling enthusiasts seem to be migrating to the use of cryptocurrencies and other digital tokens. Furthermore, it also bears mentioning that over the past decade, the size of the Bitcoin gambling market has increased quite considerably, with there is no reason to suggest that this trend will not continue in the future, especially as crypto adoption continues to increase globally.
That being said, when dealing with online casinos (and even physical ones for that matter) a pertinent question that tends to linger in the minds of many players is whether or not they are not being taken unfair advantage of by the house? For example, in recent years, many individuals have filed and won sizable lawsuits against major casinos for indulging in a variety of different shady, manipulative, and unethical practices.
Enter ‘provably fair’ casinos
For sizable markets, the result of any sort of cheating can have drastic consequences for all of the parties involved, both from a legal as well as financial standpoint. And even though most players partaking in any sort of gambling activities are well aware of the risks they are undertaking, the least they expect is to be given a fair chance at winning.
Provable fairness, in its most basic sense, can be thought of as a concept that enables end-users to authenticate the fairness of a “particular process” through the entirety of its lifecycle. Within the framework of digital gaming, one can see that casinos that make use of this feature allow their users to verify their results — i.e. the entire process through which their particular result was arrived upon.
Even though provably fair games are a little more complex to develop and release for widespread public use, they offer players many clear advantages over traditional online betting portals.
The advantages
Trust
Quite like the idea that drives most cryptocurrencies today, provably fair solutions essentially help players maximize their gaming experience since they no longer have to worry about being taken unfair advantage of. Furthermore, thanks to provably fair algorithms, players don’t need to depend on third-party vendors in order to verify the operational fairness of a casino.
FortuneJack is one such gaming platform that has its core values firmly rooted in the ethos of fairness and security. By coupling a secure financing system with a wide selection of provably fair games, the platform can help maximize the trust that exists between casino operators and their players.
Transparency
There is no denying that ‘transparency’ lies at the very core of blockchain technology. In that sense, all provably fair games revolve around the concept of a blockchain-based ledger that is able to help execute an “SHA-2 hash algorithm” which ensures a fair and final outcome. Simply put, once the final ‘hash value’ associated with the final result of a game has been generated, there is no way for anyone to tamper with the outcome.
Eliminates scope of human error
Since provably fair games rely on smart contracts for their execution, their internal operations are totally automated, thereby completely negating the scope of any human interaction or error. Not only that, since smart contracts are immutable, they cannot be changed — so as to affect the outcome of a game — once deployed.
Financial clarity
Most blockchain-based casinos offer payouts in the form of crypto to their users. All of these transactions are publicly recorded on a blockchain ledger and thus it is possible to confirm whether a casino actually pays out the house edge that it claims to be doing (as part of its online advertising campaigns).
The future of gaming is decentralized
As we move into an increasingly digital future, it seems as though the concept of provable fairness will continue to garner an increasing amount of mainstream traction across the globe, especially amongst online casino operators since it helps tackle the age-old issue of ‘trust’ that has plagued the casino industry for more than half a century now.
In fact, as more and more people continue to become aware of blockchain technology and the immense transformative power it possesses, traditional online casinos may start to face an increasingly difficult time — both in terms of attracting new customers as well as raking in handsome annual profits — if they do not adopt the concept of provably fair games moving forward.
