Two Ethereum ponzi games have raised over $46 million – and they’re still growing
FOMO3D and PoWH3D are blatant ponzi games that are sitting at the top of the DApps charts.
Two decentralized apps (DApps), the biggest on the Ethereum blockchain, have amassed $46.6 million worth of ether by tempting players to join an intentional exit scam, designed as a jab at the cryptocurrency ICO space.
The DApps, FOMO3D and PoWH3D, were created by Team JUST and often devour a significant proportion of the Ethereum network’s daily trading traffic. For example, on Friday last week, FOMO3D and the contracts connected to it consumed roughly 40% of ETH network traffic at one point during the day. At the time, the game’s trading volume exceeded 31,000 ether. PoWH3D has broken blockchain records and continues to grow.
P3D Is spiking to record highs, up and up! pic.twitter.com/yK0pD7ovB2
— Team JUST (@P3D_Bot) July 23, 2018
The two DApps currently retain a combined balance of $46.6 million in ether, according to DappClap’s statistics.
FOMO3D
In this game, players purchase keys and choose strategy-based teams, hoping to be the last person to buy in before a looming countdown timer expires and the accumulated prize pool is distributed among participants.
The ponzi-style game is designed to mimic the beginnings of an initial coin offering (ICO) and then play out like an incidental exit scam. There are also passive user referral benefits and random ether air drops.
PoWH3D
This DApp is a cryptocurrency exchange which allows participants to trade ether for P3D tokens. These tokens reward holders by paying out ether, directly, whenever anyone else buys, sells or transfers P3D digital coins.
Rewards are generated via a 10% flat transaction fee applied to all trades.
“Many holders often report earnings between 0.05%-2% of their holdings on a daily basis, though this fluctuates heavily based on transaction volume,” according to the Beginner’s Guide to POWH3D.
In a recent financial blog post, JP Konig noted that the games provide an “admirable amount of transparency”.
“They aren’t ‘schemes’ as I earlier defined them. They are ponzi games,” Konig said. “Because they are implemented transparently as smart contracts, they can’t be disguised as an investment. Nor can the administrator perform an exit scam. So these are safe, perhaps even innovative, zero-sum games for gamblers to participate in. They’re certainly superior to the alternative: scummy underground ponzi schemes.”
…It is human nature to seek out gambling opportunities like ponzis. Till now the only option has been shoddily-run offline ponzis. If Ethereum’s relatively clean ponzis displace the bad ones, the world is (a bit) better off. I wrote about this here. https://t.co/fRizFx9CxK
— JP Koning (@jp_koning) July 22, 2018
A new cryptocurrency research report has revealed that the overwhelming majority of initial coin offerings (ICOs) last year were determined to be scams, while only a small fraction successfully traded on an exchange.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has released a warning to potential buyers and traders of “utility coins” or “consumption coins” and tokens, cautioning against rushed decisions and a lack of research.
A recent mid-year research report has revealed that there has been significantly more malicious cryptomining, commonly referred to as “cryptojacking”, than ransomware attacks during the first half of the year.
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