Bitcoin Forum

Hi Everyone,

As the nights draw in, I have been spending my evenings working on a little project to raffle 1 BTC. I would love to get some feedback.

http://www.stakeabit.com (http://www.stakeabit.com)

 The idea

The idea, I think, is fairly simple. A grid is divided into 3000 999 squares or "stakes". Players can purchase a stake for 0.00035 0.0015 BTC. Once all 3000 999 stakes are purchased a random stake is selected and its owner receives the 1 BTC prize.

Keeping it safe and trustworthy

As all payments are sent to the same address, the blockchain is used to prove inbound and outbound payments. All payments and payouts are sent via BTC so there is no need to signup, the BTC address that deposited funds acts as the players id and the payout address.

Feedback

I would really appreciate any community feedback on the site!

Do you think this would benefit from being secure (SSL)?
How should go I about encouraging users to visit the site?

Thanks everyone.

[EDIT]

03/10 - Based on the comments from the community to have more prizes or a lower winning point, I have added "MileStakes" to the grid. These are points in the game where an ever increasing milestake prize gets raffled to all current players. There are multiple milestakes so a single player has multiple chances to win. I will explain in more detail below.

03/10 - To speed up the game the grid has been decreased to 999 stakes @ 0.0015 BTC each

03/10 - The random winner is now calculated based on the hash of the last transaction. The last 3 numeric characters are concatenated and the result is the winning stake. This creates a provably fair winner.

your idea is really good.
I would suggest decreasing the grid size( with 100 squares), in the beginning, it would be good to start with small size, once it becomes more popular you could increase the size of the grid.

and how do you generate a random number?

To increase the number of users, recommended doing some giveaways in games and round section.

Thanks

How can we trust you the payment will be sent out?

Thanks for your feedback YOLO_LIFE. You could be right, I don't want to increase the cost of each share but maybe i could reduce the prize fund and in turn the number of shares.

The random number is generated by RANDOM.ORG between 1 - 3000 , I plan to post a transaction to the address with a description showing the random number that was generated. That way the winner is stored on the blockchain for any other user to see.

I like the idea of giveaways..  ;D

Thanks for your feedback!

Great point, I think I need to complete one round. As the winner will receive the prize from the deposit address, any user will be able to lookup past rounds by referencing the blockchain. This will clearly show every user that deposited, and show the 1BTC prize being payed out. I plan to provide links to all previous games.   

Thanks for your feedback!

Using random.org? Come on mate, you should use more transparent and provably fair way to draw the winner. Make sure each draw is verifiable, using random.org wont attract many users as it cant be faked easily. I dont mean to say that you will cheat the draw but people will not trust any raffles using that randomizer tool because players are unable to verify the draw. You should consider this because it is the main important thing on a raffle/lottery game IMO.

That doesn't stop you from running away with that 1BTC.
You need an escrow, I'll volunteer if you want to :P

This was I supposed to say that using random.org would really not caught the interest of people on here on this forum itself and as we have seen on the past lots of raffle or lottery based sites do have the same system too which they do easily die and gone because people arent really interested at all and for sure this site would really be destined on that way if they wont really changed on how they would show up the results on a transparent way.

Can you use escrow before you collect 1 btc for raffle?

Yep that's a fair point! So.....

I've been having a think how to create a provably fair number. The only acceptable way would be to generate the random number from the blockchain somehow. Am i right in thinking that you cannot guarantee the time that a transaction appears on the blockchain? If that is correct, do you think the below idea could work?

Take the minutes and seconds of the transaction that purchased the last stake ( e.g. 14:45 )
Calculate the number of seconds in the time frame ( e.g. (13 * 60) + 45 = 825  )

The winning stake would be 825.

For this to work there would need to be 3600 stakes as 60*60 = 3600

Would this be acceptable?

That's true! I'm not sure what the answer is here. How can I trust the escrow service not to run off with the BTC leaving me to cough up the prize. Hopefully users will trust the service as more rounds are played. Especially if I can prove the payouts occurred by linking to blockchain.info for previous rounds.  :)

I am pretty sure you can trust users from this list https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=276897.0

How can we trust that you won't run away with money?

Are you going to use escrow or not, 4300$ is not so small amount

edit* as already mentioned, random org is not good way to pick winner, find other way.

In which case, yes I would be happy to escrow. I will contact some of those users, thanks for the link!

Apart from obvious concerns like, lack of 100% provably fair system which will determine the winner or escrow or way to prevent the owner of that lottery from running with the money.
This concept is one of the freshest ideas for a game I have seen recently. I really wish for it to succeed, but I am afraid it might share the fate of every other bitcoin lottery and it will fail.
From what I see bitcoin crowd is kinda not interested in lotteries because 1. it's hard to win 2. it's hard to find provably fair lottery 3. there is higher chance that owner of the jackpot will run off with the money.

Thanks for the feedback Slark!

A Fair System

I think I can find a 100% provably fair system,  The only acceptable way would be to generate the random number from the blockchain. I think by taking the recieved time of the last transaction in the game I can achieve it. Any user can look at the blockchain and follow the below formula to calculate the same result.

Take the minutes and seconds of the transaction that purchased the last stake ( e.g. 14:45 )
Calculate the number of seconds in the time frame ( e.g. (13 * 60) + 45 = 825  )
Use the returned number (825) as a seed to generate a random number between 1 - 3600

For this to work there would need to be 3600 stakes as 60*60 = 3600 possible seeds.

Escrow

I am up for this, i will contact a few of the users in the list marlboroza posted.

Chance of winning

I'm going to introduce a smaller prize game, with less stakes. Hopefully this will make the game easier to win!

Thanks again!

If you make your site provably fair, choosing a winner from a block hash for example and having the money into escrow, then you have at least minimum chances to have players.

IMO with using random.org and having such a big Raffle edge you have no chances.

I saw that there is around 3550 grid there, but there only 1% being sold. And the price is much more cheaper too. And it said that if all being sold the total will be 1.065 btc and you give us the 1 btc payout. I do really matter with it since you opened the platform for us. But hoe about if there is not being sold all of the grid? How are you going to pay us? How are we going to know if you are not scam us? I assume that you are not holding any bankroll here which is you need people to buy your grid so you can pay us

Thanks BigBoy89, your feedback is appreciated!

Yes, the grid has changed size and there have been a few updates based on feedback. You are absolutely correct the 1BTC prize relies on the grid filling up. However I have just added "MileStakes" these will allow players to win prizes much earlier on in the game and wont require the grid to be full.

And now you changing it again to 0.0015 per grid which is 999 grid for max now. Why do you need to keep on changing? So how about if last time  I bought with a lower price? Does it be not fair for anyonr for buy it today? Like last time I bought 10 grid with 0.0035 but today the grid is changing to 0.0015 which mean I only got around 2 grid with the same coin

The idea is good.
But if you do some changes then it may get better response IMO.

1. You have to make sure that the system is provably fair.

2. You can keep the option to buy stakes in several values. Such as BTC0.00010000, BTC0.00050000, BTC0.00100000 and so on.
    In this case, you may bring add funds system instead of direct buying / deposit option.

3. At least make 10 winners in a round instead of 1 winner.

4. Escrow some funds for some months to gain trust from your users.

5. The platform should be highly secure as the users will make deposits.

6. And the last thing will be needed is a good marketing plan.

0.0015*999=1.4985BTC total stake and only 1 winner who will get 1BTC, means that you will take .4985btc for every draw? I dont what I should call this, maybe fees or house edge but it is just too high for such raffle. You are going to take more than 30% of the total stake. How could you think that it will attract players? I do not even think it will happen after months or years, you should reconsider and revise your project.