Ethereum Exit Scam

 A player, who remains unidentified, except by the winning address “0xa169DF5ED3363cfC4c92ac96C6C5f2A42fCCBF85” sent waves through the internet when he outsmarted Fomo3D, the popular ethereum game and won about $3 million in 2018. The online gambling experience seemed unbeatable, and is still one of the most surprising gambling stories, because of its Ponzi scheme type design. 

However, this player outsmarted the system, including human and bot players by observing purchase times, clogging the blockchain, and getting a key when player activity was low.

Fomo3D is a game where players who use bitcoin to buy “keys” in a pot have 24 hours to keep playing, and the last person to pay under this clock gets all the money in the pot. Exitscam.me, the Fomo3D domain describes the game as:

 

“It’s your exit scam

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Welcome to blockchain development

Your ICO is over,

The hype is drying up.

Take the private keys; drain everything.

You will guarantee yourself a fortune

You will take everything for yourself

It’s as simple as buying the last key.”

Once a player makes a purchase, 30 seconds are added onto the clock, and the price of the next key gets higher, that is until the 24-hour clock maxes out. With unlimited plays, these “keys” eventually add up, and each player receives a piece of the pot’s earnings, with the last player getting the most.

“It sounds like the winner carefully studied the behavior of the automated [bots] people had managing buy-ins for them. I watched their behavior. Spent days and lots of ETH testing ways to defeat them and found a moment when no other human players were playing,” the game’s inventor told Vice.com.