Ethereum-based DApp Ponzi Games Ranking Highest in Daily Usage 🚨 This article is 6 years old...
Ethereum-based DApp Ponzi Games Ranking Highest in Daily Usage
2 min read
Updated: Nov. 25, 2019 at 4:24 am UTC
Photo by Luis Salazar on Unsplash
As self-proclaimed “scam” games experience the most usage amongst all decentralized applications (dApps), the emerging technology might be finding unsteady footing in the market.
The triumphant success of Fomo3D and PoWH3D describe themselves as “exit scam” and “smart-pyramid” games — managing to draw attention to the whimsical state of dApps.
Created by developers Team JUST, the dApps soared to 1st and 3rd most popular by user base and volume and hauled in nearly 200,000 ETH ($90.7 million) in the last seven days. Both were created in irony.
The team is open about the satirical nature of the two games, detailing the message behind their gamified exit scam, Fomo3D:
“Fomo3D is a parody of the cryptocurrency space as a whole, namely the seeming requirement of all ICOs (initial coin offerings) to run off with large amounts of unaccountable cryptocurrency.”
The two games revolve around the promise of dividends, playing on the controversial tactics of classical Ponzi and pyramid schemes — an increasingly heated subject in the cryptosphere, after such spectacular failures as BitConnect’s January 2018 exit.
Where the anonymous Team JUST consider the games as a bit of light-hearted fun, some might perceive their prolific success as cause for concern. As pointed out by Preston Byrne, decentralization advocates may be celebrating even the most superficial usages of blockchain technology:
The sad thing about the FOMO3D and POWH3D scams is that the Ethereum community is *so* eager to see Eth DApps with healthy DAU numbers that they're willing to blind themselves to the fact that they're being victimized by literal, affinity fraud-Ponzi schemes.
— Preston Byrne (@prestonjbyrne) July 23, 2018
And amongst the top 20 (dApps) by usership, novelty indeed appears to be a winning formula. Alongside Fomo3D and PoWH3D, there’s the notoriously Ethereum-consumptive CryptoKitties, dice2win’s “simple and fair dice game”, or HyperDragons’ “cute dragons collectible game”.
DApps: The State of Play
As one of blockchain’s most embraced usage cases, dApps are often regarded as the future of computing — a decentralized, censorship-resistant, transparent and immutable alternative to the applications of today.
From Mainframe’s censorship-resistant messaging platform, to the DAO’s Decentralized Autonomous Organization — dApps could well be central to technology’s next paradigm shift.
Judging by the current manifestation of dApps, however, it may be some time before additional life-altering applications of the technology are realized.
