Check out our list of the best Web3 online casinos.
Web3 casinos are changing the world of online gambling in front of our eyes, and they’re changing it for the better.
These blockchain-based casinos are the next generation that bring instant payouts, complete privacy, lower fees, and provably fair gaming to the virtual table. Web3 casinos are the answer to every major problem the online casino industry faces today, and they also open up a world of NFT and crypto trading that could have much wider implications.
Most are built on the Ethereum blockchain, some are built on Solana and both are paving the way for a faster, more transparent and better gaming industry. Some of these platforms have evolved into full decentralized finance hubs, with their own tokens and hot new takes on online gambling. This isn’t just a different way to pay, it’s a totally different way of thinking.
The advantages of the blockchain are just too big to ignore, this is the future of online gaming, and it’s already here.
Web3 casinos are built on blockchain technology to produce fully decentralized platforms where trust isn’t actually a part of the process. Everything is there on an immutable decentralized ledger, and you can see it.
The decentralized nature means that Web3 casinos are inherently transparent, the smart contracts dictate the outcomes of the games, and each and every round is laid out on the blockchain.That only applies to arcade games like crash and plinko at the moment, but we’re seeing the first casino table games built as dApps on the blockchain now and they do offer provably fair gaming. That is a huge step forward for the gaming industry as a whole.
Because players connect a crypto wallet, and the address can be kept separate, all this information can be displayed and verified by players or outside agencies at any time. Nobody can tamper with the blockchain, so there’s no need for another round of KYC at the casino, and players can stay anonymous. Connecting a crypto wallet means deposits and withdrawals don’t have to go through a bank or financial institution, too, so they’re much faster.
Traditional Web2 casinos, meanwhile, rely on centralized servers that are designed to keep everybody else out and old-world payment systems that are subject to layers upon layers of privacy and data protection laws. All of those laws were well-meaning, but they combined to create delays, endless delays.
Players have to look to licenses, outside game auditors, and user reviews before choosing a casino to trust with their hard-earned money. It’s a massive leap of faith that isn’t a part of the Web3 philosophy, and that will make it easier for people to gamble. This is one of the biggest steps forward in casino history and deals with those nagging doubts.
Rounds of manual approvals, KYC checks and identity verification can take days, even weeks sometimes, with fat currency-based online casinos. Web3 casinos can verify your wallet, and don’t need any of your personal details. You can just make a deposit, gamble and collect your winnings.
Web3 casinos solve two of the industry’s biggest issues, trust and player anonymity, and they are the future of online gambling.
Every Web3 casino is a crypto casino, but not every crypto casino is a Web3 casino. That’s the simple answer here.
The longer answer is that crypto casinos are often built on a centralized server, which is Web2 technology. They then add a crypto payment gateway so that you can deposit funds, gamble and withdraw with certain cryptocurrencies. They do provide anonymity, fast payouts and low fees. Some of these casinos are partially decentralized, and some offer probably fair gaming, but not all of them.
Web3 casinos go to the next level. They are fully decentralized and are built on the blockchain as dApps. These casinos use smart contracts for automated payouts and a lot of the website management, cutting out the middlemen. Web3 casinos often incorporate full DeFi platforms where you can trade crypto, and also support proper and full connections with decentralized wallets like MetaMask and Phantom Wallet for increased security.
Although Web3 and Web2 casinos both have some similarities, there are also a number of key differences between the two.
Feature | Web3 Casino | Web2 Casino |
Payment Options | Crypto wallets only, no KYC | Fiat and some crypto, KYC required |
Game Fairness | Provably fair through blockchain | RNG-based, trust in the operator |
Transaction Speed | Instant on blockchain | 1-3 business days for fiat |
Ownership & Control | Decentralized, user-controlled | Centralized, company-controlled |
Yes, Web3 casinos are legal, but there are some caveats depending on where you live, and they can sit in a legal grey area. Some regions have banned online gambling altogether, while others have banned cryptocurrency transactions. In these regions, it can be complicated to use a crypto-only Web3 casino.
Most casinos are legal and have a gaming license, although many of them come from territories like Malta and Curacao.
Yes, absolutely. In many cases, Web3 casinos are even safer than traditional online casinos. Blockchain technology is more secure than old-style payment gateways, with end-to-end encryption, and you don’t have to hand over your card details at any point. You simply deposit with your crypto wallet, send funds to the casino’s address, and withdraw the same way.
As for the games themselves, an increasing number are built on the same blockchain and have provable fairness baked in. With the help of cryptographic hashtags, players can see that each round is random and fair. That’s such a big step for casino technology that it’s hard to overstate its importance to the industry.
You should do your due diligence, as crypto casinos are a new breed, and there will always be bad actors in any industry. So check for a solid license, which for crypto casinos means a crypto-friendly territory like Curacao or Malta, and also read the user reviews here and on UGC sites like Trustpilot and Reddit.
If you’re new to crypto, then you should read up on securing your wallet, consider investing in a hardware wallet rather than a simple app on your phone, and also think about using a separate wallet for online gambling and purchases where you only keep what you want to spend at any given time. That can also help keep your gambling under control as it allows you to set strict spending limits.
Web3 is new technology, and Web3 casinos offer a range of games that are growing and developing all the time. It’s important to differentiate as it’s not as simple as you think. Some games aren’t yet provably fair in the truest sense, for instance, and so here’s the basic breakdown of Web3 casino games:
Until very recently, the provably fair games were limited to the simple arcade games like bitcoin dice, crash, and plinko-type arcade games. Now that’s changing with Shuffle and other casinos bringing us provably fair roulette and working on a complete range of provably fair casino games.
Graphically, these games are a step back in time at the moment, and they have that late 90s Solitaire vibe about them, but they will get better as the technology improves. For gamblers, it’s less about the aesthetics and more about the fact they know the game is fair, and they’re not losing money to a rigged game.
This is a whole new genre that is taking shape in front of our eyes, and NFT games include slot machines, card games with new characters, and simple arcade games with NFTs as prizes.
Everything you’re used to seeing, from slots, blackjack, roulette, and poker, is present and correct in Web3 casinos. As it stands, very few of these games are provably fair, and they’re largely the same games you see on Web2 casinos from the same casino game providers. In the future, we expect to see more and more blockchain-based casino games, but for now, they’re very much in their infancy, and they’re a novelty rather than the norm.
This is another fledgling aspect of Web3 casinos that we’re not even close to exploiting yet. Smart contracts and blockchain tech mean that we can play games with and bet directly against other players. This takes the casino out of the loop entirely and brings a whole new element to casino games and sports betting. Side bets could become huge in sports betting, private high-roller poker rooms, and blackjack grudge matches could happen at all times. We expect to see this tie in with streaming and more advanced social media.
The blockchain started out as a support system for crypto, but the technology behind cryptocurrencies has turned into an even-more important discovery. Now national voting systems, financial services companies and, of course, Web3 casinos, are built on the blockchain. But what is the blockchain really?
In its purest form, the blockchain is a decentralized ledger that records transactions across a network of computers simultaneously. There is no central record, the blockchain operates on a peer-to-peer network and is always transparent, secure and effectively it cannot be altered or tampered with. Think of it as a shared Google Doc with no editing, but all the updates are listed and immutable.
Every block contains multiple transactions that are essentially time-stamped and linked to the next block with cryptographic hashes that make it impossible to change a single block without consensus. The way the information is displayed means it’s transparent, too, which means it’s a way fairer system for recording information, but that’s just the genesis of the blockchain. It does way more than that.
Bitcoin was designed as a payment system, nothing more, so it was an innovator with built-in limitations. Ethereum was the blockchain that changed the game with smart contracts, which suddenly opened up a world of possible uses for the blockchain.
The blockchain could control complex transactions based on conditions being met, it could project manage and take human approvals out of the process. Ethereum also supported peer-to-peer payments, and suddenly we had a potent tool on our hands that has had major impacts on everything from supply chain management to healthcare. Instant transactions, sharing curated information with authorized people with the in-built smart contracts and total transparent and permanent records have uses far beyond igaming.
Now the Binance Smart Chain and Polygon are both essentially offshoots that both plug into the Ethereum network for cross-chain compatibility. So, the developer community and existing infrastructure all favor Ethereum as the building block of the digital future. Ethereum is brilliant and has the potential to shape the world, but it’s slow. The much vaunted Ethereum 2.0 switch in 2022 hasn’t made it faster and congestion on the network is also a growing issue that raises doubts about its scalability.
The Solana blockchain can process 65,000 Transactions per Second, compared to Ethereum’s 15-30 TPS, and comes with all the same type of smart contracts and dApps. That speed could give scalability and a lot of opportunities to developers to make better games and future systems.We’re already seeing Solana-based casinos, and with the help of the Phantom Wallet it brings added security, phishing protection and instant transactions with low costs. The blockchain doesn’t eat energy and it’s a simple, light alternative to Ethereum. Solana could be going places.
With the advent of crypto gateways and W3b casinos, customers didn’t have to fill in details and go through KYC procedures. They could simply deposit from their wallet, receive their winnings and stay anonymous. The blockchain was more secure, especially with the like of an Ethereum-tuned wallet like MetaMask. Crypto payment gateways became the norm, but these were still Web3 elements grafted on to old Web2 platforms that are hosted on a central server.
Now things are going a step further, with Web3 casinos like MetaWin, Shuffle and Rollbit. They are built as dApps on the blockchain itself. They are decentralized, utterly transparent and they’re working on provably fair gaming across the board. That’s a work in progress. Right now you’ll find provably fair crash, plinko and Bitcoin Dice, but we’re starting to see the first Web3 casino games as well.
The blockchain visibility means Web3 casinos are totally transparent, and you can see the games are fair without relying on reputations, outside audits and gut feelings. Now you can verify each and every round for fairness on Web3 casinos. That’s a massive step forward, and it’s all due to a decentralized ledger that has grown well beyond simple cryptocurrencies.
The smart contracts mean that instant payments are the norm in blockchain-based casinos, as human intervention and banking institutions aren’t even part of the process. This is a P2P payments system where you send money from your wallet to the casino and start playing. And that is why many of the casinos do no KYC or anti-money laundering checks.
Some casinos are full-blown DeFi platforms, and you can freely trade crypto tokens, buy their own coin, and use an arsenal of 20 or more cryptocurrencies to play the games. Others have a much more limited choice of tokens.
The most popular tokens for Web3 casinos at the moment are:
Besides Bitcoin, Ethereum and Tether, other popular tokens include Solana, Ripple, Dash, Bitcoin Cash, Doge, and Tron. They all have pros and cons as casino payment options, and in time, we expect the Web3 casinos to give you more options.
For those new to Web3 casinos, you might be intimidated by the process. You shouldn’t be, and here’s a simple guide to make it easy:
Crypto wallets are a separate post all on their own, but if you’re a total newbie, then the main thing you need to decide on is if you want a hardware wallet or a software wallet. A hardware wallet, as the name suggests, is effectively a hard drive that keeps certain keys off the internet.
They’re great for security, but they do cost money, and they are also physical items that can be stolen, and then you need to have a secure phrase as a backup in any case. Our picks for the top hardware wallets are:
A software wallet can be as simple as a phone app, and you can download one right now and get started on your crypto adventure. Just do your research and make sure you choose a secure wallet. Then, read up on the protocols and follow best practices. This can involve getting a second wallet for gambling and online purchases to make sure all of your crypto isn’t exposed in the event of a hack.
Web3 casinos are a seismic shift in iGaming and they truly are ushering in a new era of transparency, privacy, and user control. This is the future of online gaming, and we haven’t even scratched the surface of this new technology. It’s going to be a wild ride, and we’re here for it.
Web3 casinos are built on the blockchain itself, which provides a decentralized platform that is inherently more transparent and fair. The way the system works means there are no middlemen like banks to control the transactions; it’s all done with smart contracts. So, you can stay anonymous, too, and simply deposit and withdraw funds with your crypto wallet instantly.
Yes, Web3 casinos are safer than old-style Web2 casinos in many ways, thanks to the blockchain. You don’t need to share personal or financial details, and many of the games are provably fair, so you don’t have to rely on licenses and outside audits. However, you have to do your research and choose a reputable Web3 casino. You should also take steps to secure your crypto wallet.
Not every Web3 casino accepts every crypto token, although some are full-blown Defi platforms where you can trade crypto before you play. Most Web3 casinos accept Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Tether, with some offering additional options like Solana, Ripple, and Dogecoin.
It will help to understand how wallets and sending money work, but that’s about it. Most Web3 casinos will guide you through the process anyway and make it as easy as possible. However, it would help you to read up on setting up a secure crypto wallet and transferring funds so you don’t make a mistake.
Web3 casinos are generally legal, but they can sit in a legal grey area in your specific country. Some regions restrict online gambling, and others have put a strict ban on cryptocurrency transactions in place. It’s down to you to check your local laws before you deposit and start to play, but most crypto casinos are legal, and many have gaming licenses from crypto-friendly territories like Curacao or Malta.