Bitcoin Forum

We've launched a new Bitcoin lotto site at http://minilottomayhem.com/!

Mini-Lotto Mayhem turns every single block of the blockchain into a new lotto. We take all the transactions sent to us in that block, and from among them, pick a random winner who gets the whole pool, sans a 1.9% rake.

We're pretty excited about this idea and would love to know what you think of the site.

Thanks,
Andrew

Cool, it's actually provably fair!

But games like these will die out when there's few / no players.

Plus, 1.9% is a bit high for risk since you take on no risk. Peebet does 0%.

Thanks for the feedback! Would you personally play it if the rake were lower? I can't imagine someone playing at .9% but not 1.9%, but I could easily be wrong about that.

What do you suggest for the first problem? What about a bot that always plays a little into every pot?

Neat. But 1 block is relatively short. Good for impatient players, but won't attract the big whales. Maybe you could have a 6 block version, (1 hour) or a 10 block version. You know, just like Satoshi Dice, you have options to pick from the smallest time window, to the longest time window.

So you could have 24 addresses, each one corresponds to one block mini lotto, 2 block mini lotto, ... ... 23 block mini lotto and 24 block mini lotto. But maybe 1 block increments are too small past 10, so maybe it could go something like 1 to 10 is 1 block difference, then 20, 30, 60, 144 (for 1 day). Then have a 2 day, 3 day, then 1 week draw. And if your system can handle it, have a monthly one. People are going to get impatient though, so this better be automatic.

Nice, I would make my own version of this, but I don't know how to. So then I'd make all the 1.9% too. hehe.

you're accepting zero confirmations deposits, and this is not good because if I lost I can double spend the coins.

We definitely want longer lottos, but figured we'd try to get it off the ground with the single-block lottos first. Then we'll add the longer ones.


That's not true. Each lotto corresponds to a block. Your deposit is only included in the lotto if it gets included in that block. If it doesn't get included, we roll over to the next lotto until it gets confirmed.

Having a lower house edge gives you a competitive advantage versus Satoshi Dice. However, given how satoshi dice is now a 1 confirm game pretty much..

Still, with big amounts people could double spend it after a confirmation.

nice, so this must be stated in your site as I take this conclusion just seeing that the entries had unconfirmed deposits.

By the way, liked the way you show the winner just after a found block.


two suggestions.

- put a link on each entry pointing to the transaction in blockchain.info
- to avoid double-spents you should only pay the winner after 6 or more confirmations

Thanks! Yep, it's in the FAQ. Should that be clearer?


First one is done already. You have to click the amount. The link won't work if blockchain.info hasn't seen that transaction yet. I think a double-spend on 1 confirmation is pretty much impossible, since we wait about 15 seconds before announcing the winner anyway. By that time it's too late for a Finney attack.

People are going to double spend if they lose, and not double spend if they win then.

1 confirm is good enough for most gambling sites, unless you're dealing with a few hundred BTCs.

I missed where you said: "The valid lotto deposits that got included in a block constitute the entries in one lotto; if your transaction didn't get included by the miner, it'll mostly likely make it into the next drawing."

it's clear enough to me.


in this case I was onlying referring about the house not losing money because of double spends, like bitmillions is doing

Ok, I'm probably making a Satoshi Dice competitor next. What do they do to protect against double spends?

It seems really unlikely that someone could pull one off after 15 seconds, unless they collaborated with someone who had mined a block.

Go add the 1 hour or 6 block lotto already... It will be interesting to see 6 times the bets, 6 times the jackpot, and have an easier method to verify the winner or losers. Also, explain in the site in prose, how the winner is chosen. Is it a hash against a "secret" that will be published or something like that?