Alert! Will Fomo3D destroy Ethereum?

Miscellaneous
22

You reminded me that I should be very clear I am not a developer or even a moderator of any kind. I’m simply someone who has been watching this team closely as I think they have some of the best solidity developers in the world. In the grand scheme of things, I have not seen many multi-billion dollar projects do what this team has done with virtually nothing but time and diligence.

I think you make some great points with your comparison, especially with the potential for a third party market. The unknown human element occurring alongside smart contract game theory is a large part of the excitement I have. I wish everyone viewed this with an open mind instead of bias or wishes of failure. Regardless which of the countless outcomes occur, it will be a very interesting ride– one which will potentially influence other game theory smart contracts. Should it succeed in popularity, this could be the dawn of yet another smart contract application (albeit unexpected) not too different from rise of browser games from the unprecedented creations of Shockwave and Flash.

26

https://medium.com/@epheph/what-fomo3ds-real-exit-scam-might-look-like-ac5794f72099

Article describes how the Fomo3D creator’s, Team JUST, have the means and opportunity to exit scam. Only question is whether the do exit scam or not.

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29

Hi, @inventor, you know what? When I read your code, it reminds me of cancer (I do cancer genomic research for years before be fascinated by blockchain). Basically, cancer starts from a single cell which has accumulated a lots mutations, mostly by randomness, and suddenly gets a superpower to escape apoptosis(programmed death) and could divide infinitely. I guess if the initiator cell has a thought, it may feel itself a god, far beyond other regular cells who cannot divide freely or do something else (maybe write some code?). But the fact is, cancer does not get eternity. It exhausts the host and dies with him.

And actually, @inventor, you haven’t invented anything. As @Planck put it clear: Dollar Auction game has been found and studied for years. The true invention is Ethererum which create the possibility to make this game worldwide and trustless played. Even more, the developers, you and your partners, can make a fortune from it and do not need to worry about persecution. BTW, you guys are excellent coders, top class.

Let me tell you something else about cancer. When the tumor continuously grows, cells among it mutate fiercely (since the genomic instability has been broken). Then there will appear new sub-clones, and the most aggressive one dominates others.

We know fomo3d’s key price go up very slow, and it would not drain ETH liquidity. But followers(several have gone online and hundreds on their way) could adjust parameters to swallow ETH far more quickly and make itself harder to stop even by mining pool.

If we couldn’t find a systemic way (hack a buggy game doesn’t count) to fight against these black holes, Ethereum, such a lovely free space for creative developers and social experiment designers, will be destroyed. Is that the situation you @inventor have expected and wait to enjoy?

From the start of fomo3d, I know my intelligence has been squeezed. But I wish and call for intelligent people, especially game theory experts and may including you @inventor, to find a way out for us.

30

And I have reassemble an volunteered team, with Ethereum dev expertises. If someone could find a sound strategy to fight against fomo3d scheme, we’d be happy to implement.

31

Why do you hate this so much? Because of the deflation it will bring to the ETH network?

32

What do people think of the suggestion in this piece of building a smart contract to auto-bid “forever”?

33

I don’t see how this would work. In the first part you imply that people behave irrationally due to human nature and in the second part you propose a solution that needs them to behave rationally.

34

Medium post wasn’t mine, but the point was that given people will keep bidding “forever”, if there is a contract that is meant to always bid last, it becomes irrational for anyone to ever bid, because the contract will bid after them. This doesn’t solve the miner issue, though.

35

And I have reassemble an volunteered team, with Ethereum dev expertises. If someone could find a sound strategy to fight against fomo3d scheme, we’d be happy to implement.

Simply from a grammatical perspective, I’m not positive what your point is, but I will make some assumptions that it involves censorship, collusion, and favoritism. Surely you can see the irony that a member of an open-source, public, and freely competitive platform would encourage this behavior. To borrow from your alarmist cliché, this does indeed remind me of cancer, only not from the reasons you suggest.

2 Likes
37

if there is a contract that is meant to always bid last, it becomes irrational for anyone to ever bid, because the contract will bid after them.

I am amazed that the same facts need to be continually stated to such an educated community. Please take the time to read the contract before making statements. As you suggest, if a contract is programmed to always bid last, that does not mean it will have enough liquid ETH to be able to run indefinitely, nor does it guarantee this activity will result in a timely confirmation. Additionally, since key holders are paid a type of reward for their holdings, subsequent purchases would in fact further their financial gains. In other words, you don’t have to be the last purchaser in order to “win” in this game. Please, I beg you, stop spreading false information. The false claims about this platform are becoming embarrassing.

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38

There’s a counterstrategy to such a contract. People could bid with transactions having a lower gas price than the contract. This way they’d come in later in a block and buy the last key. And if the timer is low enough and the next Ethereum block long enough, they’d win and the auto-bidding contract would lose.

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40

No, of course. You’d have to fund the contract continually.

True. The only effect in this case is stopping the contract from spilling the pot.

Sorry, this was not my intention. I simply thought the ideas proposed in the piece were worth considering, and your counter-arguments make a lot of sense.

41

I feel like it may have been a better idea to deploy that one first before sucking up 20K ETH into a contract :sweat_smile:

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42

I mean a game against a game, no censorship, collusion or favoritism. Understand before make a comment, OK?

44

Maybe I’m a little bit emotional. But I don’t hate fomo3d or it’s developers indeed. Dollar Auction (and there maybe some others ) could be regarded a defect of human rationality and a problem decentralization will face sooner or later.

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45

Hey lyullot, I’m the one who wrote the medium article. To your question, there’s no good theory of when people are rational or not partly because, oddly enough, that sort of formal utility function would be undecidable (basically a halting problem). But it’s clear that people do both and, in most cases, behave more rationally over time in a given situation.

The beauty of the contract solution I proposed is that it’s pretty much costless until the irrationality settles down. If I had written one yesterday, it wouldn’t have cost me a single cent since the timer hasn’t gotten low enough. It would seem that people will have to get “rational” eventually because their money will get locked up, at which point the irrationals won’t be able to outbid a suitably funded commitment contract.

I’ll write up a new version with a little bit of math that helps explain it better. If someone who knows the F3D game well is willing to help me check it against the actual rules that’d be great (shoot me a message on here.) From what I’ve seen the “teams” and the other features of the game don’t actually matter for this, but I’d like to be sure.

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46

Not sure what you mean by “what you asked in your first post too”

48

With all due respect I think you’re still not properly valuing the “dividend” component of the contract. Funds are not “locked up” per se, as there is no implication that one’s initial investment can ever be withdrawn.

49

You’re correct, the rules say the winner gets 48% no matter which team they choose. A buy of one key adds 30 seconds to the timer.
I’m referring to line 199 and 249-252 https://etherscan.io/address/0xa62142888aba8370742be823c1782d17a0389da1#code

50

Hey folks! Justo (Team Just Head Designer) here, Inventor our primary solidity programmer is already in this thread and very much enjoying the commentary on his work.

We’re heavily invested in the very intelligent and well thought out theory crafting and component analytics in this discussion thread. Genuinely these ideas and concepts, things like pricing out the collusion of miners, network attacks to take the pot, bots designed to snipe keys at the last moment and even block time or exploitation are heavily discussed internal concepts we already agreed would be an absolute certainty while designing the game.

If i may ask to spur a conversation on the topic. What would you all say is a missed opportunity with the game, a feature or mechanic that could be improved or amplified?