Chinese FOMO Lottery Keeps Grabbing at Ethereum Bandwidth

The high load of the Ethereum network continues for days, as one smart contract habitually consumes more than 30% of gas. The reason for the activity is becoming clearer - according to experts, it was indeed a game similar to the FOMO3D model. This time, however, the game called LastWinner was targeted to Chinese users. The LastWinner smart contract, however, not only relies on players.

It is possible that the thousands of transactions are also bot-generated, in effect faking activity, and also possibly preventing anyone from actually becoming the last player to purchase a ticket.

“The contract address in question was created by a Chinese mobile game developer called LastWinner. The rules of this game are very similar to Fomo3D and its clones which have become very popular in the past couple of months leading to Ethereum network congestion,” said Yo Kwon, CEO of Hosho, a smart contract security firm.

At Hosho, experts decompiled the code, and noted many similarities with the FOMO3D game. However, it is still unclear what nuances the smart contract may hold.

What the intentions of LastWinner are, is still unclear to the experts at Hosho:

“Lastwinner's choice to not publish their source code is one of the major reasons that the FUD and rumors surrounding the contract are able to circulate and are difficult to disprove. However, if the rumors are true, Lastwinner is taking advantage of a non-knowledgeable population -- Chinese mobile users -- with the allure of large payouts of money, to dupe them into buying into a contract that may not be secure,” said Yo Kwon in an emailed statement.

The rumors concerning the game also hold that the flood of transactions is caused by automated bots, swaying the rules of the game against human players.

https://twitter.com/mdjordan911/status/1026983151770292224

For now, there are only a few distributed apps suffering from the congestion and high gas prices, most notably CryptoKitties:

https://twitter.com/CryptoKitties/status/1027629792726679553

But it is unknown how far the game would unroll. At the moment, the dollar equivalent in the smart contract running the game is holding the equivalent of more than $12 million, or more than 34,000 ETH, up from 21,000 yesterday. It seems along with the regular automated activity, someone is sending ETH to boost the jackpot.

FOMO3D games have more complicated rules than simply buying the last ticket - teams and strategies form, and there are dividend payouts along the way. The game itself is not a scam, but may open the door to scams. FOMO games often reappear in new iterations with different countdowns or payout opportunities.