Abstract

A bunch of participants play a game where each one pays an equal share in order to play and then one of them is selected at random and gets all the money on the table. Except there’s no table: it’s all done just with bit strings over an unreliable, non-confidential, non-authentic, non-anything network, where any message can be overheard, intercepted, delayed, rewritten or deleted (imagine playing this over USENET news). And all the other participants may well be crooks. Third parties (such as banks or more precisely escrow agents) may help convert between money and bit strings but only according to strictly deterministic criteria—they won’t act as casinos and do the random selection of the winner for you. And some players may not trust some of these third parties.

Cyberdice is a game and payment protocol to address the above constraints.

This is a follow-up to last week’s talk. It’s still work in progress and you are once again most welcome to come and joyfully shoot holes in it.