Dean
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KIBO bills itself as the world’s first decentralized and smart contract based lotto, and promises to take the concept behind ‘provably fair’ gaming to the next level. In doing this, it provides a textbook example of the power of Ethereum smart contracts and what they can offer the world.

A crowdsale for this new platform begins on 1st October, offering what I would describe as a ‘cryptographically secured investment’ opportunity (I’ll explain what I mean by that shortly). With that in mind I decided to take a closer look.

If you don’t like to read my long articles you can also check out this video for an easily digestible summary of what Kibo is all about, and then skip to the crowdsale section below:

KIBO Platform (english) from Kibo Platform Official on Vimeo.

The World’s Most Popular Game: Why Decentralized Lotto is Better

The humble lotto game remains ‘the most popular game in the world’, with an astonishing 50% of the population of the developed world playing it on a regular basis.

But yet despite its popularity, little has changed in the world of lottos in many years. It is an industry ripe for disruption – especially considering the sizable impact that bitcoin and blockchain technology have already had on other forms of gambling.

The biggest drawbacks of traditional lotto games revolve around accessibility and trust. These core problems express themselves in several forms.

Because the operator of the game is so far removed from the players collecting winnings can often take a long time, especially for larger amounts. In some cases, significant fees may also be incurred by a player claiming their winnings. This puts lotto games in stark contrast to other forms of modern gaming, where instant payouts over the internet have come to dominate. And of course the player must simply trust that the operator will have handled their finances correctly and will still be around to make the payment when the time comes.

To buy a ticket to enter a game, a player must either travel to a physical location to pay in cash or make payment using credit or debit cards. Although this may not seem much of a problem in the countries where lotto is currently popular, it may be an issue in less developed countries where a significant proportion of the population is ‘unbanked’.

Access to games is also usually limited by geographic area too, with most games limited to a specific country or region. Although there have been some attempts by small operators to create a worldwide lotto game, none have so far lived up to the name and none have gained enough trust from players to catch on.

By harnessing the power of smart contracts, KIBO platform tackles these problems head-on, while at the same time offering new and innovative features. It is able to offer instant payouts, a provably fair game that you know you can trust, and completely open accessibility to anyone in the world. As with so many blockchain-based services, players will also enjoy strong privacy protection with no need to create an account, provide personal details, or have your payment details stored on a corporate server.

How KIBO takes ‘provably fair’ to the next level

The idea of provably fair gaming is very simple: the house proves that they aren’t cheating. This is usually done by providing an open and transparent method of generating a random number to determine the outcome of the game. By doing this in a way that the players can themselves check and get the same result, the operator proves that they have not ‘loaded the dice’ in their favour – something which other online gaming operators could do very easily if they chose to act unscrupulously.

By putting the entire game onto the blockchain using smart contracts KIBO is able to combine a provably fair result with total transparency and proof of exactly where the funds are at any given time. Because the rules of the game are written into the blockchain, they cannot be changed in any way or at any time by the operator. What’s more, the KIBO platform is able to offer what looks like a kind of provably fair investment opportunity through its crowdsale.

The ‘ICO’ or Crowdsale

A crowdsale aimed at raising enough capital to take Kibo to launch and bring in users is due to start on October 1st 2016. The way that this works is simple but powerful – anybody who participates in the sale will receive blockchain tokens, and a proportion of the fee from every game played through the Kibo platform will be paid out to the people who hold these tokens. Of course nobody can guarantee that this will return a profit on any money paid into the sale, as that depends on how popular the game becomes. But because the rules are written into the smart contracts which run the game, investors can be sure that they will receive their proportional share of any success (which is set at 4% from the platform’s daily turnover).

You can find out more on information about this crowdsale on the KIBO website.

Social Ownership & Affiliate Promotions

A good product is worth nothing if nobody knows about it and nobody uses it. So part of the money raised by the crowdsale will go into launching an affiliate marketing system.

Regular users will be able to use the tools which this provides to offer free lotto tickets to their friends – harnessing a viral form of ‘word of mouth’ which is much more effective than conventional advertising. This kind of marketing worked very well for Uber. Here’s how it works: If a user invites a friend to KIBO, he will receive 5% of the friend’s winnings. This works for up to 3 levels allowing you to profit not only from the people you invite yourself, but also the people they invite and so on.

Anyone wishing to take this even further can become a program operator. Operators are able to receive 10% of the ticket for every purchase within their network and this includes referrals up to 5 levels deep instead of the usual 3. They also benefit from 10% commission on the profits of any other operators they refer, and this continues up to 7 levels deep, further increasing the potential to make a nice profit. Any partner who invites another partner also gets a one-time bonus of 3 Eth.

Combined with the crowdsale tokens, which already create a form of social ownership over the games, these systems aim to provide a small army of players, enthusiasts and entrepreneurs promoting Kibo and ensuring its success.

To further enhance the appeal, a prize pot is going to be put together to offer a series of high-payout games when the platform is launched.

Get more detailed info on Kibo here.