Hi All,
I've put together some responses to your comments and questions. Thank you to everyone who has taken time to review our white paper and provide feedback.
1 - First with regards to Mental Poker:
All players have an RNG in their machine that is used, and all players are involved in card shuffling using the protocol. The issue with Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet was that their software was designed such that their were administrative accounts that could see all private cards for all players. This was a flaw in their software that was exploited by a company insider. This is impossible on Virtue Poker because there is no all-seeing server, and all users private cards are private to players using encryption (see Mental Poker in our white paper:
https://virtue.poker/wp-content/uplo...-DRAFT-0.1.pdf).
Virtue Poker however will utilize our Justice System to store hand histories for player accounts on our platform so that we can provide anti-cheating provisions such as collusion detection, bot detection, multi-account prevention, and account sharing. We will own the hand-history data for compliance reasons and so we can provide these player protections.
2 - You state that there is age and location verification parameters built into the game but if it's fully anonymous how can that be done?
Our system is not going to be fully anonymous. We use the self-sovereign identity application called uPort to do identity validation/registration. Please see the identity management part of our white paper.
3 - I'm still not sure how you would make money on this endeavor. I realize you say that's not yet decided but is the expectation that after each game the winner would contribute some of their winnings to a company wallet as a form of rake? Rakeback Mechanism - Based upon ongoing user testing, Virtue Poker will implement a tokenized rakeback mechanism using VPP. Will these actually have value? How will staff be paid?
We will be charging rake through the smart contracts on the system (fees will go to Justices). We are a company, based in Gibraltar, and are doing our token launch to raise money for our application, we will be paying our employees from that raise. Yes our tokens will have value based upon the market price determined at the end of our sale.
4- How exactly is this different from the myriad of other BTC poker sites that seem to be offering online poker with bitcoins?
BTC poker sites are centralized, they have servers that host their RNG that is used for card shuffling, and players have to deposit BTC onto a centralized site that owns their money, and players still have to request to withdrawal their money.
Virtue Poker is fully decentralized, and uses a P2P game engine using a Mental Poker protocol that involves all players in card shuffling. We also don't store your money. Players fund digital wallets that they control, and join games by sending ETH to a smart contract on Ethereum which escrows games buy-ins and autonomously distributes payouts based on game outcomes. The money is never stored or owned by us, funds are stored on the blockchain, so we remove the risk/trust players must take when depositing onto any other poker site.
5- I'm still unsure about Virtual Player Points and Virtual Dollars. If these aren't really Ethereum then where is the value in them? I also read this on 2plus2forum. Please explain to me where the poster is wrong:
There isn't such thing as Virtue Dollars. Virtue Player Points can be used as chips on the platform. Players can wager using VPP. Also VPP can be staked by users who can become Justices. See more information about the Justice System in the link below. These tokens aren't worthless, their worth is determined by the market.
6 - well they will write a long and confusing paper about why their technology is the best possible way to play poker online. i couldn't tell you why it would be better or worse than using BTC to play on WPN. i highly doubt it will be better, but that's not my problem. the token sale is my problem.
Apologies if our white paper came off as confusing, we tried to be very thorough. Please check out Mental Poker and how we use Ethereum smart contracts. We put in visuals to help illustrate our solution.
Also, FYI -- WPN partners with DCExchange who handles their deposits/withdrawals using bitcoin. Just like any other poker site, your money is still under control of the operator, it is not fundamentally different than depositing with FIAT, besides the fact that you are using cryptocurrency are charged a 5% conversion fee.
Virtue Poker is fundamentally different. We use smart contracts on Ethereum to escrow buy-ins to games on our platform. A smart contract allows developers to insert computer code into transactions on a blockchain. On BTC, you can move BTC from Address A to Address B. It is great as a store of value, but you can't include any other parameters in that transaction in moving money. Ethereum takes this concept of a decentralized ledger one step further using smart contracts. Think of a smart contract as a "cryptographic box that only unlocks when certain conditions are meant." So instead of moving from A to B, you can say, I want to move money from A to B if and only if condition X is met. For Virtue Poker, a smart contract represents a poker table, essentially it functions as a short term escrow account. All players send their table buy-in to this contract on a blockchain. These funds aren't owned by us, or any individual, they are stored on the blockchain. This contract includes the players stakes, and includes game parameters (buy-in amount, game type, # of players, payout %'s, min bet size, etc). When a game is over (SNG) or when a player leaves a table (Cash), the contract automatically pays out the player back to their digital wallet (see blockchain.info, or myetherwallet for an example of a wallet). Therefore there isn't a traditional deposit/withdraw process on Virtue Poker. You are always in control of your money, and payouts from smart contracts happen in less than 30 seconds. We can't run off with your money, misappropriate it, or misuse it in anyway.
7- i skimmed the white paper and read the part about game security which is obviously one of the biggest issues. instead of hiring a staff to monitor game security, they're going to farm it out to random people online and reward them with VD.
This is untrue. We've hired a game security expert already who currently works with our team, see Peter Marr:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/peter-marr-b21b9539/?ppe=1 He's previously worked in game security for major operators such as Full Tilt. He has an account on 2+2, i'll let him respond to this thread and reply to your questions about our game security.
Also, hand histories will be stored by Virtue Poker. We will use our team of game security experts to review that data to detect patterns of cheating. The Justices are a means to log game-level data for all players and all hands played on the platform. We also recently hired a former PokerStars dev to our team who is helping us use machine learning to set up these systems to detect cheating.
8 - what they really need these people for is additional nodes on their network (like miners for bitcoin), pretending they will help catch colluders is a clever way to disguise it.
See the how the Justice System will work here:
https://medium.com/@VirtuePoker/info...r-3cac71e8bbcb
We will be storing the hand-histories and having our team of game security experts (including Peter Marr) review this data to detect patterns of cheating (including collusion). At a high level this is done by using uPort to verify each individual players identity, then using the Justices to store all of the hand-histories for all players on the platform. Check out
https://www.uport.me/
9 - the idea of a poker room using a blockchain and smart contracts is a great idea. i don't want to crap on that idea. but the fact that they're using a token sale to fund their business is where it becomes a quasi-scam.
Over $1.8 billion dollars have been raised this year via token launches on Ethereum. Ethereum itself was a token launch. It is a means to fund decentralized applications built on Ethereum.
10 - they're going to create VD, virtue dollars, but they won't sell all of them. for example, let's say they create 1 million virtue dollars. they might sell 300k VD in their token sale and then keep 700k in a piggy bank. once a bunch of people pump real currency into VD, the 700k VD they created out of thin air now gains actual value.
Our token, Virtue Player Points will be sold during our token launch. The unsold tokens from the sale will be used to grow the platform, and acquire players via guaranteed tournaments and freerolls where we will be giving away tokens to our early users. It is not going into our pockets, we are going to use our tokens to reward our players and retain our players.
11 - a token sale is a form of fundraising but they sell you a lie. they pretend they are selling you an item that has value but it's an item that might have value, 10 years down the line, if the best case scenario plays itself out. in the mean time, they will use your real currency to fund their business, and you may or may not hear from them any time in the next 3 years.
$1.8 billion dollars (more money than has been raised via Venture Capital), has been raised this year using token launches. The SEC has condoned the activity, and governments around the world have approved token launches. Major venture capital firms such as Union Square Ventures have participated and supported token launches on Ethereum. Andreessen Horowitz helped fund Polychain capital, and fund created specifically to invest in token launches.
It is a mechanism of fundraising that was created by Ethereum, and has helped fund 100s of projects with new ideas all looking to build decentralized applications and new technologies using blockchain technology.
12 - they do it this way because nobody will give them money via the traditional methods because they don't have anything close to a functioning product, proven idea, or apparently, a full staff.
This is entirely untrue. We have had million dollars worth of private funding offered to us over the last few months. We have been funded by a company called ConsenSys for over two years. ConsenSys was founded by Joe Lubin, a co-founder of Ethereum, and ConsenSys is over 350 people. Virtue Poker is one of many projects that has been funded by ConsenSys over the past 2 years. Over $2 million so far has been invested in our project and our team.
We chose to do a token launch to raise money for Virtue Poker because we believe it gives us the best chance to build a successful business.
Peter and I will continue to respond to your questions. Thank you all for taking an interest in our project, and we appreciate your feedback.