I built a trustless Ponzi scheme with smart contracts (hear me out)

Right, so there's hype around memecoins now because a handful of people are getting stupid rich off it.

The problem is that the current market is very PVP (new retail cash is not coming in) and the money just moves hands.

And if you happen to be less informed than the others – you're playing a harsh game you don't even know the rules of.

That's what brought me to create a PVP game with a level ground for everyone – every single player has the same amount of information about the game.

I even took it a step further and chose to design it as a classic ponzi scheme.

The reason is that it's already familiar to most of you because of all the ponzinomics in crypto. Meaning it will be intuitive to strategize in such an environment.

So the bottom line is… If you want to degen why don't you degen in a game that offers the same potential upside you're after, except you're as well informed as the best player in the game?

That's my twisted thinking behind doing this, so please tell me if this is BS. Now onto the game:

You can host your own or join an existing one. You get your ROI paid by subsequent players until the game expires.

The catch is that you can only withdraw after you reach the predetermined ROI threshold of up to 100% (meaning you lose your deposit if you don't).

And since I know 100% ROI is not enough for most degens (including myself) – I made a special jackpot function.

It collects all unfulfilled deposits after the game expires and awards them to the very last player to join. This jackpot grows exponentially over time and could reach some significant sums.

In a classic ponzi the organizers strip this asset pot to themselves, but in my game it goes to the last player incentivizing people to join.

The catch is that the game expiry clock restarts every time someone new joins.

It's already live on Arbitrum and uses ETH for games.

There's no token or anything like that – just pure fun. I did this a side project and would love some feedback. And yes I'm the creator you can ask for whatever proof you want.

This is VERY risky so don't play if you're not willing to lose. Even I don't know the full dangers and outcomes of such games because I just launched it and even though I'm a self-renounced game theory specialist it wasn't tested with masses of real people yet so it's all only predictions at this point.

EDIT:

These are the contracts – https://github.com/swagamoney/ponzi.contracts

You'll also find the platform link there (for degens only)

35 thoughts on “I built a trustless Ponzi scheme with smart contracts (hear me out)”

  5. These are the contracts – https://github.com/swagamoney/ponzi.contracts

    You’ll also find the platform link there (for degens only)

  6. Already been done. Sure, some minute details are different but this ain’t new chief. See ‘proofofweakhands’, played that shit in 2018

  11. Your project has more real use cases (educational value) than most coins out there. Congrats

  14. That’s actually a pretty good idea. I love the last player jackpot. That would keep the money rolling in, in hopes of being the last person.

  16. >Each new deposit resets the game timer though.

    What stops the host depositing over and over to keep the game alive forever?

  20. I joined crypto in late 2017. I was not a smart investor, though I thought I was. Somewhere around early 2018 the meme coin Garlicoin was created, and with it a very honest ponzi scheme. The creator was very clear that this was a ponzi scheme. You’d send your worthless meme coins to the ponzi address, and you’d be put at the back of the line. When enough new people participated, you got 120% of your coins back, paid for by the new people who joined after you, and could take your winnigns and leave, or send your coins back again, and possibly get 120% of that back. It was a lot of fun, and everyone knew it would keep going until it slowed down, and then everyone would lose their money.

    Except, the creator of the ponzi scheme didn’t wait for the game to slow down. It exploded in popularity, and then he took all the coins and ran. I think he made a few hundred dollars, at most. Everyone was very upset.

    It remains one of the best lessons I’ve ever received. If you’re feeling feverish with greed, and confident that you’ll be able to get out before all the dumb losers get stuck holding a bag/lose it all to the ponzi scheme… the dumb loser is you. With every year I come away feeling like every altcoin is just a prettied up version of Garlicoin. I know that’s not actually true. I actually worked for an altcoin project a few years ago. But it’s true for a lot more coins than it’s not.

  22. There’s a game with 6 participants and min amount 0.003, but the pool is 0.006 at the moment. Sounds off, or am I misunderstanding

  23. This is literally like when Binance did the Bitcoin button thing. The last one to press the button, wins a bitcoin. But every time someone presses, it resets the clock.

  24. >I even took it a step further and chose to design it as a classic ponzi scheme.

    No, you didn’t, and you even refuted that statement later:

    >In a classic ponzi the organizers strip this asset pot to themselves, but in my game it goes to the last player incentivizing people to join.

    Which means it’s not a Ponzi scheme, just a game that borrows elements from them. A Ponzi scheme is defined by the embezzlement.

    If I seem to be pedantic, it’s because the widespread misconception that all crypto is fundamentally a Ponzi is a giant obstacle to adoption. There are Ponzi schemes in crypto, but that doesn’t mean that every way to lose money on the market is the result of systemic embezzlement.

  25. This is cool, did you have any smart contract dev experience before building this ?

  26. Fun idea. Money doesnt flow into fair competitions unfortunately. They love asymmetrical information schemes, especially in the form of asymmetrical information dissemination across pay to win hierarchy’s in discords. Discord tiers are the sign of MLMs/Ponzis.

  30. >require(signer == factory.owner())

    Why do you centralize such a simple contract, if it’s meant to be fair?

  31. Taking a classic pyramid scheme/game and putting a twist on it is always gonna be an enticing gambling game. There was a craze on facebook like 7 yrs ago to join wine buying pyramid groups. You’d buy 2 bottles and can maybe get 12 if u recruited enough people. It grew from there. Having a chance to swap ‘seats’ or get a last in reward is the secret sauce for sure. This could be the next crypto ponzi craze for sure.

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