Jez San, founder of FunFair Ethereum casino platform

Blockchain and cryptocurrency powered online casinos are beginning to gain traction in the industry. Jurisdictions like the Isle of Man and the UK  have already implemented regulatory framework  to allow operators to trade in cryptocurrencies.  Jez San, founder of the now defunct poker operator PKR, has launched a new concept that he believes to be “the future of gaming”.

FunFair is a B2B online casino platform with its own suite of in-house developed games. Although still in the prototype stage, the Ethereum driven platform will soon be marketed to operators. But as many are still skeptical of the lack of regulation behind blockchain, what about FunFair might appeal to traditional online casino providers?

EGR Technology: Why use the Ethereum blockchain?

Jez San (JS): Because bitcoin does one thing really well and that is use money. You can send funds from point to point b in a number of minutes or hours without getting the bank involved. That’s where it stops. Ethereum uses smart contracts, programmes that can be sent to the blockchain. Once they’re there other people can use them as if they were normal programmes. So it’s extending the functionality of the blockchain to do whatever you want. What we’ve done is built and entire casino, in part in smart contracts, so it lives on the blockchain and not through servers. The servers we use are not gaming servers. All the infrastructure costs that existing casinos have includes hundreds of servers on a remote island somewhere. We don’t need any of that. The miners that mine the blockchain are effectively our servers. Our costs are significantly lower than any existing online casino.

EGR Technology: Why might FunFair appeal to operators?

JS: There are huge markets out there that are hard to access, either because they’re unregulated or monopolistic. This technology lets anyone who wants to be an operator operate a fair game. It’s very private like any cryptocurrency.

It will be a benefit for operators because they will have lower costs and therefore more to spend on their players instead. The main things we bring that are new, are fairness and player protection, which are unparalleled. In the old days of casino games there was no transparency at all. Regulators and auditors can see some of it, but that’s only done periodically and players don’t have access to any of that.

Bitcoin casinos invented ‘provably fair RNG’ which is a random number generator and they can prove it picks the numbers fairly but they couldn’t prove what they did with the numbers and whether the game was fair. All they could prove was that the random numbers were fair. The game decides whether you win or lose and the game has programming logic in it to spin the reels of a slot machine. All of this is done in a black box by a server on a remote island. What we’ve done that is different is we’ve done it in a smart contract that’s on the blockchain and is completely transparent.

EGR Technology: Is that generally a concern?

JS: There’s a perception among players who don’t think it’s safe to play online. They can’t tell if they’re being cheated or not. We can eliminate that doubt and now it’s not even about trust, it’s about transparency. The affiliates will love it because they never trust the casinos or believe they are being paid fairly for the traffic they send, but now they can see every game and hand that the player has played, meaning they can get paid in real-time.

Once you’ve got a programme that runs in a transparent fashion on the blockchain everyone gets a fair crack at it. The next thing is player protection, right now people must make a deposit before they play. What we’ve done is different, the player never makes a deposit, but instead plays from their own wallet. In our games you can play live directly from your own account and any winnings go directly back to your own account. This risk is worse for Bitcoin casinos because they are de-centralised. For merchants there is no risk but for players it’s not so good because you’re depositing into an unknown place and you’re at the casino’s mercy. There have been scam casinos set up and regulated somewhere that doesn’t have player protection. This system allows players to play without risking their funds.

We’ve built a technology called “fate channels” that lets the games play in real-time, so they’re not slowed down by the blockchain and there’s no delay. They can run as fast as any existing casino game.

We’ve also built a suite of launch games, but the platform can run anyone’s games and so we’re encouraging other developers to put their own games on the platform. We image that other developers will be attracted to our platform, so we’ll be able to offer a big suite of games. All the games will have the same benefits for everyone in the ecosystem and it’s all already running today.

EGR Technology: How will operators integrate your platform into their own systems?

JS: It’s just a website link, so affiliates will send their affiliate code along with the player. In the existing system white label operators have to spend a fortune configuring, but this will just be a doddle. The integration should be really painless, especially for those able to take crypto currencies today.

We use our own tokens called FUN tokens, but they are easily interchangeable with Ethereum, so they could be exchanged very easily. I stress though that the exchange is not done by us because we want to keep our own token, however third party payment providers could bridge it to support traditional credit cards. They could bridge it both ways, paying players back in their native currency as well. If you already have the cryptocurrency, the process is really simple because it runs on a browser. There’re no user names or KYC. That would allow games to be marketed virally, so you could invite friends to play in your own casino and personalise it. This hasn’t been done in the casino industry.

The technology that we use doesn’t need a registration system because it runs on the blockchain, but it’s fully compatible with whatever registration system people have. There a companies working on identity systems that will let people do KYC on the blockchain in a safe manner. Identity technology is the next step in blockchain and we will fully support that. When you start integrating with existing operators that are already using KYC then we will fully support that.

EGR Technology: How are you going to market it to operators? 

JS: So the next step is to complete our funding round, which will give us the funds to invest heavily in the games and the marketing to operators and affiliates. After that we’ll be appearing at various conferences and exhibitions showing it off, and engaging with the eco-system and seeing how we can help them.

EGR Technology: Why use your own FUN token currency over Ethereum’s?

JS: With Ethereum they let you build your own tokens on top [of the blockchain], so you get all the benefits of the platform and blockchain but you can have your own currency used inside the game to pay for various services. Externally players will buy FUN tokens to play the game. The affiliates and operators will also transact with FUN tokens. There is a technical standard for the tokens called ERC 20 token. Exchanges can list them easily and people can swap them easily. It’s a very liquid way of doing things. Payment services will take fees for it [as they do for any other payment method].

We’re having a token creating event at the end of the month to show what we’ve been working on, but we’re not quite ready to launch to operators yet.