Unstoppable Scams? Ethereum's Gambling Problem Is Only Getting Worse

Already mounting are warning cries from technologists who aren't exactly known for their risk reticence, a group that includes gambling dapp developers themselves.

Such was the case for Team JUST, the group of anonymous developers behind the infamous gambling dapp FOMO 3D, who warned last week that what looked to be a near identical copy of its game was eating up one-third of the network's total computational power, raising over $7 million in ETH within the span of seven days.

The goal is to give the appearance of a highly popular and legitimate gambling dapp, thereby luring users to engage with their own ether in the hopes of winning big.

Users and analysts alike raised alarm bells on several different online channels over the frenzy of transaction activity caused by the new gambling dapp, said to be LastWinner.

Amberdata, a blockchain monitoring and analytics firm, explained to CoinDesk that as a result of "The clone of the FOMO 3D gambling app" the ethereum blockchain has been under a heavy load. "Overall, about $50.7M of value has transmitted through this contract," the firm estimated as of August 16.

Because while both gambling dapps have clear instructions on the rules of their game, the source codes responsible for actual game deployment have yet to be fully disclosed and verified.

Of course, this is not the only potential danger that exists for users engaging in gambling dapps like those described above.

Elements of scam accusations put forth by Team JUST against the alleged LastWinner dapp have raised lines of questioning that lead back to the intentions of the original game.

Even for ethereum developer Lane Rettig, such determinations about the nature of activity generated by the alleged LastWinner dapp can't be certain.

What can be said, at least on the part of Amberdata CEO Shawn Douglass, is that gambling dapps and their respective clones don't seem to be going away anytime soon given their allure to a growing base of users on ethereum.