Illegal Gambling on the Platform ‘Ethereum’

Ethereum is a platform that is mainly developed by programmers employed by the Swiss entity ‘Ethereum Foundation’ and client developers at the English entity ‘Eth Core Limited’.

These developers currently still tolerate usage of their platform that is to a large degree focused on illegal gambling and betting. Since the locations (addresses) of these applications on the platform are publicly known, the developers could, without difficulties, provide exclusion of these illegal applications in their software updates. Despite having the ability to intervene, the developers of Ethereum have so far chosen to allow and support these illegal gambling applications.

The following are just a few examples of these illegal gambling applications:

ponzis: http://ethstick.com , http://protect-the-castle.ether-contract.org , http://governmental.github.io/GovernMental

games: https://www.vdice.io , http://etheroll.com , https://etherdice.io

lotteries: http://ethereum-lotto.com , http://lastis.me , http://ethjackpot.com , http://etherpot.github.io

pyramid schemes: http://ethpyramid.tk , https://ethereumpyramid.com

betting: http://gnosis.pm , https://www.augur.net

This is just a small list of examples of gambling applications that are supported (or not actively prevented) by Ethereum developers. These applications have their own websites, but their code backend is hosted on the Ethereum platform on publicly known locations (addresses) that could easily be excluded by developers in their next software update.

Although Ethereum is presented as a decentralised platform, it’s developers have recently proven that interventions against specific applications are easily possible as they chose to release software updates that actively changed the state of the investment application ’The DAO’. This has created a basis for liability and responsibility for the applications that run on the platform they develop.

While the Ethereum platform offers numerous interesting and promising use cases, illegal gambling should not be tolerated. We encourage a thorough examination of Ethereum and it’s applications. At the same time we want to state clearly that we do not encourage to limit the technological advances that Ethereum offers, nor to burden its developers. Nonetheless, this technology has to operate within legal boundaries and the support of illegal gambling applications should not be tolerated.

Ethereum is interacted with through a variety of software clients. You will find a list of the clients and their main developers in the addendum ‘References’.

References: . . .

We now know that we can still easily interfere with dapps and we should use this chance to clean this blockchain of dubious dapps. This will help Ethereum to attract large companies and investors, who otherwise would have to risk a tarnished reputation. I think we have shown that our community is willing to take action against inappropriate actors on the blockchain and I hope we can have a future for Ethereum that is focused on legitimate uses and dapps.