Before we may begin to understand what makes a casino provably fair, we need to study how the basis of online gambling works. Simply put, players bet on the outcome of randomly generated numbers.

Formerly, these random numbers were generated solely by the host of a game, leaving complete control in the hands of operators. Participants had to trust the host not generating results in favor of anyone. Casinos operating on these merits caused conflict of interest for those seeking a fair gambling experience.

Due to lack of transparency, the essence of provably fair gaming was born. Corresponding concepts provide a way for both the operators and players to contribute to randomisation, which in turn removes any possibility of deception or cheating.

The foundation of fair gaming algorithms were laid by pseudorandom number generators, utilising seeds which determine the outcome of wagers.

A seed shall be equally influenced by players and hosts, meaning that the result of each bet at a provably fair casino is a team effort. The house is no longer in complete control of randomisation.

So, wouldn’t this mean that players are able to manipulate results in their own favour?

Commitment Schemes

To prevent malicious behaviour, hosts must not show us their actual seed at first. Instead, they present a commitment of their own seed to us. Similarly to envelopes, these commitment schemes seal and conceal messages contained by them. They cannot be altered or revealed without consent from the sender. For example, hosts may commit a seed by using a one-way hash function or public key cryptography.

Hosts shall provide transparency and proof of authenticity by revealing their actual seeds at the end of each game. Anyone in possession of a host’s commitment may verify the immutability of the corresponding seed.

Bets shall be reproducible once the host seed gets revealed. Players can constantly audit the behaviour of hosts by comparing random results calculated by a host and themselves.

Proving that the outcome of a wager is computed fairly and transparently should be performed by anyone at any time. We strongly believe in widespread use of provably fair algorithms throughout the gaming industry.

If you would like to learn more about the technical workings of provably fair algorithms, you can download my whitepaper found here.