Scam or Be Scammed? Ponzi Games Are Breaking Out on Ethereum

According to data website DappRadar, both games have amassed 20,000 ether in trading volume over the last 24 hours, a figure that puts them on par with top decentralized exchanges and that exceeds the highest highs of CryptoKitties, the blockchain's most famous viral decentralized application to date.

These particular games make it much more complicated.

While PoWH 3D has been on the blockchain a while, it wasn't till mid-July that it started to really rise on the dapp charts, perhaps helped in part by TeamJUST's followup, Fomo3D. And it may be that the games' very sketchy nature was part of the charm.

PoWH 3D. As the rise of these newer games shows that promise still seems to work.

Fomo3D. Fomo3D, which launched on July 8, is another TeamJUST game that recalls "The Button," an experiment that ran on Reddit in 2015, which itself evoked penny auctions.

In the Reddit game, a simple button was accompanied by a 60-second timer.

If no one clicked it, the timer would run out and the game would end.

Users of the game buy a "Key," and each purchase sets the countdown back by a certain amount.

As the game's wiki explains, "Players receive a stream of passive income from the game as keys are bought during the round. These rewards can be withdrawn anytime."

To massively simplify how this very weird game ends, fundamentally: when the countdown runs out, the smart contract "Drains," or pays out.