Decentralized Poker Outline
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Decentralized Poker Outline
by BluMnkyHugr Sun May 18, 2014 11:15 pm
Nothing to special here just a general outline for the purpose of creating discussion...(http://www.reddit.com/r/poker/comments/2585hl/decentralized_poker/)
Intro
The solution proposed in the paper “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electonic Cash System” has undoubtedly changed global finances and global economics forever. Bitcoin as an evolution of currency technology has changed the possible business models available to today's society. The arrival of bitcoin, as a solution rather than a currency, has caused the poker players' community and other interested parties to reevaluate the problems facing the poker economy today. This paper is interested in the answers and solutions to the question of whether or not poker as an economic model can be decentralized in either an entire or partial fashion. It will focus mostly and specifically on the existence of all relevant and technical solutions needed to address the main problems and issues that the general inquirer might put forth. It is not necessarily on the feasibility or practicability from a development or site perspective or the specific technical details to each solution, but instead to present without reasonable doubt there are no unsolved aspects to the decentralization of poker. It is important to understand that with new technological change new and different models may or may not be based on evolutions of old models. There must be caution then not to make the assumption that a decentralized poker solution, must carry all of the aspects of the old centralized poker model (or the centralized poker model as a business). With the inventions and solutions brought about from bitcoin there seems to be great manoeuvrability in this regard. The solutions to this entire problem of decentralization can possibly be approached in its parts without compromising the integrity of the holistic solution, and so one approach might be to start by separately addressing the four main aspects of decentralizing poker from the game play (or players) stand point, separating these issues from the problems that arise from a business model viewpoint. These four point are seen as the decentralization of cards, chips, deposits/Withdrawals, and the exchange of cash for chips and chips for cash.
Decentralization of Cards
It has been shown in the paper “MPF (mental poker framework) A new family of practical and secure Mental Poker protocols”, that all significant and relevant issues of passing a deck between players without compromising the integrity of the game have been solved. The authors conclude “In this thesis we have proposed a new framework to create secure mental poker protocols (MPF).”... “As far as our knowledge of state of the art in mental poker protocols, PHMP/ECMP are the first to provide acceptable performance for common card games over the Internet.” There is still work to be done and expansion on the protocols and the problems specifically give, but it is observable that the significant issues and the previously unsolved aspects of mental poker (decentralization of cards) have been presented with clearly defined and viable solutions.
Decentralization of Chips
There are likely many ways to decentralize chips and it may be that even previous to the implementation of crypto-currency a new decentralized chip solution was not needed. Regardless the decentralization of chips can really be seen as a sub-problem of the decentralization of a deck of cards. The problem of decentralizing chips in a poker game can be as seen as an identical but smaller version of the decentralization of cards. It doesn't seem to need a solution that isn't already quite apparent. Passing chips around from player to player is less complex than passing a deck of cards in a trusted yet secure manner.
Decentralization of Deposits/Withdrawals and the Exchange of Chips for Currency and Currency for Chips
The decentralization of deposits/withdrawals and the exchange of currency for chips (whether cash game or tournament) in the current centralized poker model are seen as separate issues that require separate solutions. The problem of decentralization can be approached from this vantage point yet it can also be viewed from slightly different angle as it seems more convenient to group these two seemingly unrelated processes together for the purpose of a decentralization solution. Also, the system chosen to handle sng's and mtts, in which chips don't immediately hold a cash value, might not be the same solution for cash games in which actual crypto-currency could possibly be used. In 'real world' poker 'real currency' can conceivably be used to replace chips, however, much of the convenience of chips is in their ability to be divided for the purpose of bets. One of the benefits of crypto-currency is to provide this specific convenience.
The immediately identifiable solution is to use bitcoin or crypto-currency in general. Looking at deposits and withdrawals specifically, bitcoin as a solution was specifically meant for this kind of decentralization. This creates one possible model that has no central authority (or site) where player's would deposit their money to a poker bankroll: player's can keep their own poker bankrolls in their own digital wallets. This outlines two types of traditional-like exchange of crypto-currency for chips: an exchange of (crypto) currency for chips for cash type game and an exchange of crypto-currency for either entry chips to a tourney or sng/mtt.
With the former there is the question of whether or not the exchange process can be skipped completely and actual crypto-currency can be used on cash tables instead of chips. Unfortunately, at this point in time, bitcoin block-chain technology does not support the rapidity of transaction need to facilitate this kind of exchange. Other altcoins are being developed that have a specific and tailored purpose to their creators (and the community to which they are intended to serve), some of which already process transactions at a faster rate than bitcoin. At present time, with currently identified technology, players are able to use decentralized chips at the cash table and in the future they will be able to create their own poker chip as an altcoin. There is more to be expanded about on this but it does not fall into the scope of this paper.
For that latter of the two in regards to exchanging crypto-currency for tournament chips, player don't need to carry chips from a certain cashier to the tables but could use a tournament ticket. As only an attempt to prove the existence of decentralized poker as a solution neither system would be preferred over each other, but it might prove useful to point out that player's might exchange crypto-currencies for an encrypted game ticket (the inner workings should not be needed to be explained).
Another helpful solution can be a secure escrow service for crypto-currency. Currently there are already free open source models which require no 3rd party for any centralized trust. The benefit of escrow is that funds can be preloaded to a first escrow (functioning as the equivalent of a present day players bankroll on a poker site), and players can set up another escrow to hold their crypto-currency in exchange for either cash chips, tournament chips, or tickets. An escrow service can also serve a double function by automatically distributing payouts to mttsng or tournament winners based on their finishing distributions, as well as handling the exchange of cash game chips back to crypto-currency held in escrow (used to previously exchange crypto-currency to chips). There are currently many online exchanges that function in a similar way that hold their own 'coin' for purposes of trading within the exchange. Some of these coins are intended to hold or create value and some are not.
Decentralization and Domains
Although the problems of the technical solutions to decentralized poker have been presented in relation to each, entire scope of the problem of decentralization or the issues relating to the motivations behind decentralizing poker might not have been fully addressed . In relation to the players money, and for the matter a central lobby, there is still the fear of malicious 3rd party attack on any centralized domain that serves the interest of decentralization. This can be combated, or shown to be an already solved problem, by the example of Namecoin. Namecoin seeks to decentralize domain names, making it impervious to a 3rd party attack. In the spirit of decentralization, there is still the possibility of central access to decentralized information. This makes using an escrow service, as well as creating a lobby quite reasonable solutions to the complete decentralization of poker.
Collusion and Uniquely Identifying Players
It seems quite reasonable to accept there will always be a non zero amount of collusion. The most effective and fundamental way to end collusion or cheating might be to either to make colluding less desirable than not colluding (harder, less profitable, or more punishable) or to make not colluding more desirable than colluding (either fair player is more profitable, or colluding elsewhere is more profitable etc.). Neither of these will be addressed but are viable fundamental solutions to address the issue of collusion. It only needs to be shown that decentralized poker is either equal or superior than the current centralized model on the subject of collusion and there doesn't seem to be anything a centralized model can do that a decentralized model cannot.
The most fundamental solution for uniquely identifying players might be to use certain national unique identifiers (government issued ID) coupled with a players' location encrypted and passed into a decentralized system for verification. Although it is not a perfect solution it only needs to be shown to be equal or less secure than its current equivalent. Current and future advances in technology likely already have, or will, completely solve the problem of player identification in a way that collusion in this context is not possible (or feasible). For instance, DNA codes seem to be more reliable as a unique identifier and difficult to forge, player integrity check systems can be developed, and certain accepted location beacons might be developed and used (that allow a person to uniquely identify themselves and their location to a decentralized system without giving away their name, location, or any personal information in any insecure manner).
Feasibility, Growth, and Operations Costs
The decentralized model does not have the same scalability issues as a centralized model. This should be expected as the power of a decentralized model is exactly that. Since the developers and operators do not have to tie each solution together in a centralized fashion, they are solvable and implementable in their parts. Regulation issues dissolve in the same manner. The spirit of decentralized poker is the ability to verify ID's while retaining anonymity from any malicious third party. So any solution to the decentralization of poker would completely eradicate the ability for 3rd party regulation. Legal fees like arbitration between the poker business and its customers, start-up legal fees, and any other legal fees also do not necessarily need a solution. Decentralization creates a model in which there is no entity to sue, and no specific entity to gain licenses rights from or for. The decentralized poker model doesn't exist in any shape or form that any legal jurisdiction can find precedence over, nor can any player or owner be identified or named for the purpose of a legal process since one of the specific purposes and solutions of decentralization IS anonymity. Operating costs seem to disappear in a decentralized model as well, but for the purpose of this paper it only needs to be noted out that there are no significant extra operating costs added because of the decentralized model.
Conclusion
The purpose of this paper is to show the question should not be whether or not decentralized poker is a possibility (since it quite seemingly is) but instead how might the actual implementation of it come about, what private interests (if any) might take on the development of the task, and what might be their motivations or business model for doing so. Once laying to rest once and for all the possibility of a technical solution to a decentralized poker model perhaps some other party might eventually present a working solution to the implementation of it.
https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
http://www.dc.uba.ar/inv/tesis/licenciatura/2010/lerner
http://namecoin.info/
Decentralized Poker
Decentralize 1. To distribute the administrative functions or powers of (a central authority) among several local authorities.
Decentralize 1. To distribute the administrative functions or powers of (a central authority) among several local authorities.
Intro
The solution proposed in the paper “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electonic Cash System” has undoubtedly changed global finances and global economics forever. Bitcoin as an evolution of currency technology has changed the possible business models available to today's society. The arrival of bitcoin, as a solution rather than a currency, has caused the poker players' community and other interested parties to reevaluate the problems facing the poker economy today. This paper is interested in the answers and solutions to the question of whether or not poker as an economic model can be decentralized in either an entire or partial fashion. It will focus mostly and specifically on the existence of all relevant and technical solutions needed to address the main problems and issues that the general inquirer might put forth. It is not necessarily on the feasibility or practicability from a development or site perspective or the specific technical details to each solution, but instead to present without reasonable doubt there are no unsolved aspects to the decentralization of poker. It is important to understand that with new technological change new and different models may or may not be based on evolutions of old models. There must be caution then not to make the assumption that a decentralized poker solution, must carry all of the aspects of the old centralized poker model (or the centralized poker model as a business). With the inventions and solutions brought about from bitcoin there seems to be great manoeuvrability in this regard. The solutions to this entire problem of decentralization can possibly be approached in its parts without compromising the integrity of the holistic solution, and so one approach might be to start by separately addressing the four main aspects of decentralizing poker from the game play (or players) stand point, separating these issues from the problems that arise from a business model viewpoint. These four point are seen as the decentralization of cards, chips, deposits/Withdrawals, and the exchange of cash for chips and chips for cash.
Decentralization of Cards
It has been shown in the paper “MPF (mental poker framework) A new family of practical and secure Mental Poker protocols”, that all significant and relevant issues of passing a deck between players without compromising the integrity of the game have been solved. The authors conclude “In this thesis we have proposed a new framework to create secure mental poker protocols (MPF).”... “As far as our knowledge of state of the art in mental poker protocols, PHMP/ECMP are the first to provide acceptable performance for common card games over the Internet.” There is still work to be done and expansion on the protocols and the problems specifically give, but it is observable that the significant issues and the previously unsolved aspects of mental poker (decentralization of cards) have been presented with clearly defined and viable solutions.
Decentralization of Chips
There are likely many ways to decentralize chips and it may be that even previous to the implementation of crypto-currency a new decentralized chip solution was not needed. Regardless the decentralization of chips can really be seen as a sub-problem of the decentralization of a deck of cards. The problem of decentralizing chips in a poker game can be as seen as an identical but smaller version of the decentralization of cards. It doesn't seem to need a solution that isn't already quite apparent. Passing chips around from player to player is less complex than passing a deck of cards in a trusted yet secure manner.
Decentralization of Deposits/Withdrawals and the Exchange of Chips for Currency and Currency for Chips
The decentralization of deposits/withdrawals and the exchange of currency for chips (whether cash game or tournament) in the current centralized poker model are seen as separate issues that require separate solutions. The problem of decentralization can be approached from this vantage point yet it can also be viewed from slightly different angle as it seems more convenient to group these two seemingly unrelated processes together for the purpose of a decentralization solution. Also, the system chosen to handle sng's and mtts, in which chips don't immediately hold a cash value, might not be the same solution for cash games in which actual crypto-currency could possibly be used. In 'real world' poker 'real currency' can conceivably be used to replace chips, however, much of the convenience of chips is in their ability to be divided for the purpose of bets. One of the benefits of crypto-currency is to provide this specific convenience.
The immediately identifiable solution is to use bitcoin or crypto-currency in general. Looking at deposits and withdrawals specifically, bitcoin as a solution was specifically meant for this kind of decentralization. This creates one possible model that has no central authority (or site) where player's would deposit their money to a poker bankroll: player's can keep their own poker bankrolls in their own digital wallets. This outlines two types of traditional-like exchange of crypto-currency for chips: an exchange of (crypto) currency for chips for cash type game and an exchange of crypto-currency for either entry chips to a tourney or sng/mtt.
With the former there is the question of whether or not the exchange process can be skipped completely and actual crypto-currency can be used on cash tables instead of chips. Unfortunately, at this point in time, bitcoin block-chain technology does not support the rapidity of transaction need to facilitate this kind of exchange. Other altcoins are being developed that have a specific and tailored purpose to their creators (and the community to which they are intended to serve), some of which already process transactions at a faster rate than bitcoin. At present time, with currently identified technology, players are able to use decentralized chips at the cash table and in the future they will be able to create their own poker chip as an altcoin. There is more to be expanded about on this but it does not fall into the scope of this paper.
For that latter of the two in regards to exchanging crypto-currency for tournament chips, player don't need to carry chips from a certain cashier to the tables but could use a tournament ticket. As only an attempt to prove the existence of decentralized poker as a solution neither system would be preferred over each other, but it might prove useful to point out that player's might exchange crypto-currencies for an encrypted game ticket (the inner workings should not be needed to be explained).
Another helpful solution can be a secure escrow service for crypto-currency. Currently there are already free open source models which require no 3rd party for any centralized trust. The benefit of escrow is that funds can be preloaded to a first escrow (functioning as the equivalent of a present day players bankroll on a poker site), and players can set up another escrow to hold their crypto-currency in exchange for either cash chips, tournament chips, or tickets. An escrow service can also serve a double function by automatically distributing payouts to mttsng or tournament winners based on their finishing distributions, as well as handling the exchange of cash game chips back to crypto-currency held in escrow (used to previously exchange crypto-currency to chips). There are currently many online exchanges that function in a similar way that hold their own 'coin' for purposes of trading within the exchange. Some of these coins are intended to hold or create value and some are not.
Decentralization and Domains
Although the problems of the technical solutions to decentralized poker have been presented in relation to each, entire scope of the problem of decentralization or the issues relating to the motivations behind decentralizing poker might not have been fully addressed . In relation to the players money, and for the matter a central lobby, there is still the fear of malicious 3rd party attack on any centralized domain that serves the interest of decentralization. This can be combated, or shown to be an already solved problem, by the example of Namecoin. Namecoin seeks to decentralize domain names, making it impervious to a 3rd party attack. In the spirit of decentralization, there is still the possibility of central access to decentralized information. This makes using an escrow service, as well as creating a lobby quite reasonable solutions to the complete decentralization of poker.
Collusion and Uniquely Identifying Players
It seems quite reasonable to accept there will always be a non zero amount of collusion. The most effective and fundamental way to end collusion or cheating might be to either to make colluding less desirable than not colluding (harder, less profitable, or more punishable) or to make not colluding more desirable than colluding (either fair player is more profitable, or colluding elsewhere is more profitable etc.). Neither of these will be addressed but are viable fundamental solutions to address the issue of collusion. It only needs to be shown that decentralized poker is either equal or superior than the current centralized model on the subject of collusion and there doesn't seem to be anything a centralized model can do that a decentralized model cannot.
The most fundamental solution for uniquely identifying players might be to use certain national unique identifiers (government issued ID) coupled with a players' location encrypted and passed into a decentralized system for verification. Although it is not a perfect solution it only needs to be shown to be equal or less secure than its current equivalent. Current and future advances in technology likely already have, or will, completely solve the problem of player identification in a way that collusion in this context is not possible (or feasible). For instance, DNA codes seem to be more reliable as a unique identifier and difficult to forge, player integrity check systems can be developed, and certain accepted location beacons might be developed and used (that allow a person to uniquely identify themselves and their location to a decentralized system without giving away their name, location, or any personal information in any insecure manner).
Feasibility, Growth, and Operations Costs
The decentralized model does not have the same scalability issues as a centralized model. This should be expected as the power of a decentralized model is exactly that. Since the developers and operators do not have to tie each solution together in a centralized fashion, they are solvable and implementable in their parts. Regulation issues dissolve in the same manner. The spirit of decentralized poker is the ability to verify ID's while retaining anonymity from any malicious third party. So any solution to the decentralization of poker would completely eradicate the ability for 3rd party regulation. Legal fees like arbitration between the poker business and its customers, start-up legal fees, and any other legal fees also do not necessarily need a solution. Decentralization creates a model in which there is no entity to sue, and no specific entity to gain licenses rights from or for. The decentralized poker model doesn't exist in any shape or form that any legal jurisdiction can find precedence over, nor can any player or owner be identified or named for the purpose of a legal process since one of the specific purposes and solutions of decentralization IS anonymity. Operating costs seem to disappear in a decentralized model as well, but for the purpose of this paper it only needs to be noted out that there are no significant extra operating costs added because of the decentralized model.
Conclusion
The purpose of this paper is to show the question should not be whether or not decentralized poker is a possibility (since it quite seemingly is) but instead how might the actual implementation of it come about, what private interests (if any) might take on the development of the task, and what might be their motivations or business model for doing so. Once laying to rest once and for all the possibility of a technical solution to a decentralized poker model perhaps some other party might eventually present a working solution to the implementation of it.
https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
http://www.dc.uba.ar/inv/tesis/licenciatura/2010/lerner
http://namecoin.info/
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