Instant transaction finality
Transaction finality on the Digitex blockchain is less than 250 milliseconds. This eliminates the need to wait for 6 or 12 or 30 confirmations, as on most other EVM chains, before being sure your transaction won't be reverted by a chain reorg or a corrupt miner rearranging a block.
This gives us:
- Faster game results
- Faster bet confirmations
- No chance of front running
By using the Digitex blockchain we can deliver game results that are verifiable on-chain instantly. We can confirm that your bet was placed on-chain instantly. We can develop fast-paced gambling games without keeping players waiting valuable seconds for results and bet confirmations as if they're on dial-up internet in the nineties.
This is made possible by the different way that Arbitrum technology works as compared to most other EVM compatible chains. Digitex is built using Arbitrum Orbit and so it works exactly like the Arbitrum One chain works.
On Ethereum and Polygon and most other EVM chains, all transactions are sent to a mempool where miners can pick and choose which transactions to include in the next block and in what order to place them. Not only do you have to wait for confirmation that your transaction has been included in a block, but you also have to wait for multiple blocks before you can be certain that it won't be un-included in that block by a chain reorg. This is why exchanges make you wait for 12 block confirmations before you can use your crypto after depositing it.
To make matters worse, miners can also decide in which order to place the transactions in a block, meaning that they routinely and systematically front-run every transaction that's worth front-running.
For example, let's say Digitex ran on Polygon, and we generated a random number as a game result and then sent a transaction containg that random number to our game smart contract to update the result. Miners would see what the result is going to be and they would place a bet transaction on that result ahead of our result transaction and they would win every time.
To prevent this from happening we would first have to send a transaction to close all betting on the game. Then, only after receiving confirmation of that successful transaction, we could send a result update transaction which also reopened the betting. These 2 transactions would take at least 10 seconds, during which time the player is twiddling his thumbs waiting for the result and wondering what the hell he's doing wasting his time on a decentralized casino on the Polygon network. And if there's a chain reorg in the next 32 blocks there's a possibility that our result transaction could disappear and all settled bets on that result would have to be cancelled.
But on Arbitrum, and therefore on Digitex, these problems don't exist. Validators on Arbitrum chains cannot pick and choose which transactions to include in the next block or what order they are included. Every valid transaction that makes its way to the Sequencer is automatically included in the next block in the order it was received.
Everyone pays exactly the same gas price for every transaction and there is no tipping system either. As soon as the Sequencer receives a valid transaction you can safely consider it to be a confirmed transaction that will be posted onto the parent chain and will not be reversed.
In the example above, we can safely send result transactions directly to our game smart contracts on the Digitex blockchain without needing to close the betting first. The Sequencer will receive the transaction and process it in order, confirming it in less than 250 milliseconds without the risk of it being front-run. The betting game stays open the whole time, the casino is safe from miners front-running bets, gas costs are a tiny fraction of what they cost on Polygon, we're immune to chain congestion and gas price spikes by the CryptoKitties crowd and there's no risk of having to cancel your winning bet a full minute later if there's a chain reorg.
The importance of being able to instantly confirm transactions and eliminate the possibility of those transactions being reversed or front-run is impossible to over state. It's a game changer when it comes to decentralized betting, allowing Digitex to develop fast-paced gambling games and create a user experience that rivals the centralized casinos and helps us to onboard millions of new users to decentralized betting.
Last modified 5d ago