Virtue Poker is a ConsenSys incubated that was conceived in 2016 and it is a Pantera backed company that uses the unique features of blockchain technology in conjunction with P2P networking to provide a safe, honest environment to play online poker. Player funds are never held by Virtue Poker; instead game buy-ins are held in escrow by Ethereum “smart contracts”​ while they play, and payouts occur in 30 seconds or less. Virtue's Poker’s distributed peer-to-peer shuffling algorithm provides game security, since the deck never resides on a centralized server and is the first and only blockchain based poker platform licensed by the Malta Gaming Authority.