In a Shocking Bid, Two ‘Self-Sustaining’ Pyramid Schemes Are Crowned King of Ethereum DApps

By Sumedha Bose

It is common knowledge that Ethereum, the popular blockchain platform hosts decentralized apps. They are nothing but platforms where any commodity, service or economic transaction can be tokenized and conducted in a decentralized manner via Ethereum. This week’s top DApps witnessed ponzi schemes, Fomo3D and PoWH 3D, assuming the spotlight.

What’s shocking is that Fomo3D and PoWH 3D which held number one and number two spots respectively on DappRadar, the data monitoring site, have pushed the ‘legitimate’ decentralized exchange IDEX to the third position. These two pyramid schemes which are basically games, have collectively accumulated a trading volume of 20,000 ether ($9 million) in the last 24 hours

So what are these two DApps?

Fomo3D is a TeamJUST game launched on July 8 which follows the “The Button” experiment on Reddit, dating back to 2015. The objective of the game was to keep a button running, which had a 60 second timer attached to it, which would reset if someone pressed the button and would run out, if no one did. After two months and over 1 million clicks, the timer finally ran out. With Fomo3D, the action of pushing the button costs money. To simplify, the game’s wiki says “Players receive a stream of passive income from the game as keys are bought during the round. These rewards can be withdrawn anytime.”

PoWH 3D on the other hand stands for ‘Proof-of-Weak Hands.’ It describes itself as “the original autonomous pyramid, improved” and also the world’s first three dimensional crypto where users can earn just by holding tokens. So what basically happens is that the users hold a token called P3D and with the use of a custom decentralized exchange, the tokens can be bought and sold. Every time a transaction is made, it levies a 10 percent fee which is then distributed to everyone who still has the token.

It is no surprise that people are hugely investing in these schemes since gambling is so inherent to human nature. The crypto world is split over what this means. Some crypto experts believe that these are cleaner alternatives which can be considered whereas some are alerting users to this blind ponzi scheme. 

Crypto expert JP Koning has tweeted in favour of these two DApps.

Whereas blockchain technologist Preston Byrne lashed out against it.

Sumedha Bose

Sumedha uses words as her crutch to get by in life. She takes a keen interest in debating, dancing and destroying the patriarchy in her free time.