Deploying a FunFair casino on IPFS?
IPFS makes sense for something like file sharing/storage but I'm curious (1) how/if an application like FunFair could be deployed on the IPFS network and (2) the legal implications.
To what extent could a state/country have jurisdiction to enforce existing online gambling laws when IPFS uses content-based addressing as opposed HTTP, which used location-based addressing and does this place a casino operator in similar territory as Kim Dotcom (Megaupload) and Ross Ulbricht (Silk Road)?
Edit: It appears this question was asked last week on FunFair's Discord Server. Here's the response:
FunFair-James - Last Monday at 7:48 AM @CadelFistro @Yakelo no easy answer to that.... most regulated territories will expect to you have a licence if you're accepting customers from their jurisdiction regardless of where your hardware is located. I.e. you may have your servers in Curacao but if you are accepting customers from the UK you'll need a UKGC licence. "Circumventing censorship" is another discussion entirely....
FunFair-James - Last Monday at 7:50 AM It'll be interesting to see just how "central authority resistant" the likes of IPFS turn out to be as I suspect you will find unlicensed casinos making use of it. Decentralised networks may be hard to shut down but the people using those services not so much.... especially if those people are targeting territories that like to arrest people at airport
FunFair-James - Last Monday at 8:01 AM You guys have hit on an interesting point re hardware location. Most gambling legislation that I've seen is predicated on regulators identifying exactly where gaming servers and components are located. That approach isn't really compatible with blockchain.... Same goes with data protection law
Posted Jan 25, 2018, 4:43 PM UTC · edited
We intend to allow casino operators to host their web sites on any web server - including the decentralised servers like IPFS and Swarm et al. It should be possible. We've yet to try it, and there's a good chance it will work (but we've not experimented).
The initial FunFair version still will want the casino operator to run or have access to an ethereum (geth or parity) full node (for Turing Complete 'Fate Channels'), but since these nodes are generic and the same as every other full node - nothing to do with gaming - that shouldn't be too hard.
Next issue is the Fate Channel service needs to sit somewhere. Short term it probably has to live on a cloud server at a known ip address - its course grain decentralisation (ie, one fate channel server, per casino operator), but long term it'll be fully decentralised to a finer grain, which should add more privacy.
One fate channel server per casino operator seems like it might be vulnerable to DDoS type attack if several State Channel between the FunFair client and server were opened at once - would this have any effect on gaming sessions already in-play, or would it just bog down until the transactions could eventually be verified?
Now that I'm thinking about it, does any of this matter once the serverless v4 Fate Channels are implented?
It's so cool when the CEO just casually drops by to clear things up :) Thanks for everything!
I mistakenly downgraded the resilience of the tech - forgive me.
I recall ollie telling me only a few days ago that the casino operator is able to run multiple instances of the fate channel servers, to support high availability so I suspect theyre not too susceptible to ddosing as my previous note might've implied. so scratch that.
since each channel opened has a cost to the person opening it some real cash, its probably not too vulnerable to multiple channel opening attacks. attacks get real hard when it costs something not insubstantial for each attack attempt. and to overload the servers, that are designed for hundreds or thousands of simultaneous players would sure get expensive for the attacker... so I think we've got this one covered.
Do you intend to subsidize fate channel server hosting for casinos if they need it?
Don’t think it will be necessary. Casino operators will find running a FunFair powered casino to be far lower cost than a conventional casino