How Provably Fair Gambling Protocols Work

Over the last couple of years, Bitcoin-based gambling has become more and more popular, with tons of online casinos now supporting the digital currency. One of the biggest advantages of bitcoin-based casinos is often the fact that they are provably fair. In this article, we will attempt to explain how the general provably fair protocol works, why it’s beneficial to players, and whether it is possible to cheat.

What is provably fair?

Provably fair can be described as an algorithm which can be analyzed and verified by players in order to determine whether the casino is interfering with roll results or if it is fair to the users.

Provably fair casinos often tend to be more trustworthy. That’s because players know they’re not being cheated and consequently are encouraged to bet more.

How it works

At this time, there are several implementations of the provably fair protocol, yet the most common calculates roll results using a total of three variables: the server seed (provided by the casino), the client seed (provided by the player’s web browser, with adjustment possibilities), and the nonce (a number which increases by one after each roll).

On provably fair casinos, before you start gambling, you will be given an encrypted hash of the server seed. As it’s given before the first roll, casinos won’t be able to change it later, yet neither will you be able to decrypt it in order to calculate the results in advance. Your browser will automatically generate a client seed, which you can adjust before you start rolling to make sure that the casino does not know it in advance.

Once you’ve started betting and rolling, these three variables will be used to calculate roll results. While the server seed and the client seed remain the same, the increasing nonce guarantees a different roll every time.

If you wish to verify your roll results, simply request a new server seed. Once this is done, the old server seed will be provided without any encryption. From here on out, verifying roll results is fairly easy. Simply head to a provably fair calculator and enter the variables mentioned above. The calculator will then proceed to give all roll results according to the nonce, so you can simply compare these results with your initial bet outcomes.