BLOCKCHAIN IS NOT BITCOIN!
ICE Comes to Africa Tom Learmont strolls the aisles and discovers that the future is already here, as Clarion unveiled its inaugural African event. THEY CAME from all over Africa, and all over the world. Some wore robes, some wore suits and some wore jeans and tackies. ICE Africa 2018 served as a gaming industry gateway to a continent which promises to become a rich new market. The overall mood among exhibitors during the two-day event was optimistic and positive. Edward Rall of MP Gaming said, “We have made many contacts at the show. The calibre of the customers who drop in is excellent. The show compares well with the usual South African expo. It’s very good.” And this was the show that first publicised the blockchain breakthrough to the African casino industry. Mark Thomas is one of the Californian computer nerds who founded the outfit known as ZenSports. His colleagues are Etan Mizrahi and Adil Sher. Their plan is to offer worldwide peer-to-peer sports betting, securely based on smart contracts and a blockchain. Bets are paid in cryptocurrencies, as are winnings. This Silicon Valley concept is an idea whose time has come, at an ICE when one other exhibitor is Quanta – an online blockchain lottery. Mark told Gaming for Africa: “Our system is based on Icon, and we’re up and running already – but in a non-crypto format. We’re planning to finance development with a token sale; an initial coin offering. And we’ve generated a lot of interest at this show.” On the Quanta stand, visitors were made welcome by Kostas Farris and the charming Winnie Chan. Like ZenSports, Quanta offers a game of chance which could not exist without the foolproof software which secures and controls its processes worldwide. It runs on Ethereum cryptocurrency and a state-of-the-art random number generator. Kostas said, “We have the first fully compliant blockchain lottery in the world.” He added, “This is a very nice show. I think it will help gaming in Africa very much. I’ll see you next year!” The spectacular Gambee exhibit was put on by a highly-innovative company based in Slovenia. On display were crowd-pleasing slots and roulette set-ups based on cutting-edge technology. The belly glasses and pay tables of these slots appear on huge curved 4k screens; players may select any of four new games. One that stood out was Lucky Sigmund, with a riveting image of a big white cat. With six reels and 40 lines, this volatile game can keep a player busy for hours. Asked for her experience on the second day of ICE, Petra Remec didn’t beat about the bush.“This show has been very impressive for Gambee! We will definitely be back.” Technical support officer Nik Pangos echoed Petra’s words and said that Gambee is a big hit in South America. On the African continent, Nigeria, Kenya and Namibia are good markets, he added. Continued on page 34
ICE Africa panel member Athanasios Marinos told his audience that the South African public tends to confuse blockchain and Bitcoin. The confusion is understandable, since Bitcoin transactions were the world’s first large-scale use of a blockchain, and the two newly-coined words often appeared in the same sentence. When a speculative bubble boosted the price of Bitcoin at the end of 2017, negative commentators were quick to compare the cryptocurrency (and its blockchain) with a Ponzi or pyramid scheme. But Bitcoin is a currency, and blockchain is a record of changes: two very different things. Blockchain development has been pushed largely by cryptocurrencies, but now it is being applied to other, much wider, purposes. Blockchain is the latest form of ledger. The Assyrians made cuneiform impressions on clay tablets; the Victorians penned ink onto paper; today our ledgers consist of bits and bytes on hard drives. The next step is to spread the single ledger far and wide, all around the world, in a network open to all. Distributed in that way, the record will last for ever. This is an improvement, because clay can crumble, paper can burn, and computer files can be hacked. There is no need for a central database, because a blockchain is everywhere and nowhere. This tends to send a shiver down some bankers’ backs, because a blockchain would have prevented jiggerypokery at the infamous VBS piggy bank. Despite being open to the world, a blockchain cannot be altered by intruders. It is protected by cryptography. Here’s the shape of the thing, like a goods train: a line of boxes linked together. Inside each box are the contents, which are available for all and sundry to read. Read only! Let’s say the box contains a smart contract, plus the title deeds to a house, the identity of the owner, what he paid for the property and the identity of the former owner. A link connects to the block behind, which contains the particulars of the house and its previous owner. And this link is the only way into the previous box to make alterations. But you’ll never cook the books with a blockchain. To open it, you would have to find its cryptographic key – a task which would take a supercomputer a million years to complete. If only blockchain had been in use 15 years ago, the Guptas would still be selling shoes in Killarney Mall. Kostas Farris told his panel audience, “Trust! For the first time in history, technology provides trust.” The contents of each block are fixed for all eternity. As circumstances change, a new block is added, and the chain grows. The contents, up until now, have been largely cryptocurrency transactions. But there’s an infinity of records that the right blockchain can handle, from a chemist’s account to stock market speculations. Even the intellectual property rights to an invention, literary work or movie. Now here’s the thing that frightens all the intermediaries such as bankers and lawyers: blockchain is what they call “peer to peer”. As Mark Thomas said during the panel, “When there’s a smart contract in the block, that no one can edit, the middleman’s days are numbered.” After Mark, Kostas and Athanasios had fielded many questions, all the people present knew the score: blockchain is not Bitcoin, even though they both happen to employ cryptography. Blockchain overshadows cryptocurrencies. And it will change our future lives in more ways than we can imagine at present.
December 2018 / January 2019 I Gaming For Africa I 33