The day before yesterday, comments from PASA netizens continued on the topic of blockchain gambling platforms.

The topic originated from a question asked by a user on PASA, and I replied there. Today, I am continuing the content of my reply.

To be honest, when blockchain and WEB3 first became popular, they indeed seemed quite impressive.

Back then, people started creating on-chain dice games, claiming "draw results verifiable on-chain," and for a while, everyone thought that perhaps the decentralized transparency of blockchain could replace those traditional centralized gambling platforms. After all, on-chain draw results, contract logic, and immutable data—it all sounded much better than those opaque operations.

But later, we slowly realized something:

Users don't really care "who conducts the draw."

For instance, when two consecutive draws of the Macau lottery had the exact same numbers, anyone with eyes could see it was rigged, yet players continued to bet. Why? Because what they care about has never been fairness, but credibility—"others are playing, so I dare to play"; "a big platform wouldn't scam me"; "if something goes wrong, we all go down together."

Thus, the "absolute transparency" of blockchain, in the face of this trust mechanism, turned out to be not so important.

Later on, GameFi rose, and that "play-to-earn" game from the Philippines went viral. People were feeding monsters and buying coins on their phones, initially making real money. But what happened later?

It was a classic case of hot potato. Early joiners sold to newcomers, project teams massively harvested the community, coin prices crashed, and the ecosystem went out of control, bursting the bubble of blockchain games overnight.

Now, a new round has started. Stake, Rollblock, BC platforms, each emerging with different gimmicks. They've got a more respectable packaging, securing English Premier League sponsorships, advertising in leagues, and creating token pools like traditional financial models, even introducing "coin holding dividends, destruction mechanisms, on-chain profit sharing."

But the essence is still the same old path:

Gambling combined with Ponzi schemes, exchanging traffic for capital, and packaging confidence with promotions.

You ask if the funds are safe?

Runaway blockchain games also claimed "smart contract lock-up";

You ask if it's transparent and open?

Whitepapers are beautifully written, but with a frontend change, data manipulation still happens in the dark;

You ask if it's about using coins?

In the end, most people still recharge with USDT and withdraw fiat currency, with the blockchain merely acting as a pass-through account.

Blockchain gambling, no matter how it's packaged, is essentially old wine in a new bottle. Eventually, it all moves closer to traditional gambling platforms, also introducing fiat currency deposits and withdrawals, involving "non-blockchain" game manufacturers, and starting to manipulate data.

The dragon slayer eventually becomes the dragon himself.