Yeah, that's right. Registering an address just means that if you win, I'll be able to lookup the registration and know exactly where to pay you without any further action on your part. (If you use forwarding addresses, this isn't required). And if you don't register an address, it's something you can do after you win (if you prefer)

Thanks Dooglus for writing that up, you do a great job at explaining things.


The odds are derived from the function that converts a hash to a bust point. So if you're a programmer, by far the easiest way is to write a loop that generates a million random hashes and computes the bust of them. Count how many are >= X, and divide by a million. Assuming X is not too big, you'll have a very good estimate without needing to trust any maths.

In untested psuedo-code:


Which should output something like "The game gets to 2x 49.256% of the time"  (and if you add the bonuses, you'll see the house edge is a little under 0.5% in this case)
 


Lots of times people suggest to me using things like this, where everyone has a client seed (or something like that) and they're all mixed together, and a result is formed.  But in general, that would allow me to easily cheat if I controlled one of the accounts (and no one would have any way of knowing if i did).

The bustabit provably fair system is actually quite elegant, and I haven't seen anything that I'd consider better or an improvement on it =)

If you register an address, it'll be permanently registered.  If you use a forwarding address (the easy solution) you can keep reusing it.

You only have to strictly register an address if you won. So you can for instance keep sending money to the lottery address, and only if you win, sign a message proving you were the sender (and where to send the winnings)

Payment for draw #4 will be a bit late, as the winner (boursy, from bustabit) entered an incorrect win address. 

I'm working with him now to sign a message to prove without a doubt that he really did send the transaction, and once I have that published on pevpot i'll pay to the new win address.

The ticket numbers are only really decided after the round ends. We get all the transactions that sent funds to the lottery address during that round, then sort them by txid. For each non-dust satoshi you send to the lottery address, you get 1 ticket.

more details


The actual ticket numbers you actually get are pretty useless, it's just a way by analogy to explain your chance of winning.

As a user, you don't really care. That's because the only real point of the server seed is for the gambling server to protect itself against players who wish to cheat. So even if the server seed was always 0, the game would still be provably fair for you (but the casino would get robbed blind).


And yes, it does vary site to site. Some people even think using things based on the current time is a good idea. But the server seed is to protect the casino from gamblers, so it should be as unpredictable as possible. Using data from /dev/urandom is probably going to be your best bet most of the time, or you can look up some cryptographically random number generators which will also work fine.

I'm pretty sure it's the same guy who won 50 or 60 (I forgot?) bitcoin on my site (MP) before losing it back, so I'm pretty sure it's just a lucky whale and nothing sinister 

There's really not any good way to prove the withdrawal is "real", although it most certainly is. Flowing out of their cold wallet is: https://www.blocktrail.com/BTC/tx/c003d81763450a202b5576ad38090c212539da64815157a726e200c337fcffb9

which is probably the withdrawal (the win + initial money) I'm guessing.

After you realize you're effectively offering up to 100x of your EV to affiliates, will you honor the previous affiliate earnings or cancel them?

The tentative winner of draw #4 is: https://www.pevpot.com/registrations/c63fbed0-13bd-474a-9e4f-06816ca2204f

(Stretched hash: 16a0a5eafcfec90edbf2fb948d885d2c8c45d2b190cef29e6cb48815805ed11f  and winning tx: c0fd4716cf91a7c671f075d6f1ddbad2e440d0380fed8f7c1cb5e67c4220e446)


Which means they put in 0.52 BTC and will get: 10.96536302 BTC + 9.309% of the early bird bonus pool


Pretty crazy that every time so far, the largest player has not won the draw! I think I'm accumulating a lot of jaded whales =)

With our 4th draw coming near to a close, now is your chance to get in! There's not much early-bird bonuses left, but still can't beat the <= 0 house edge we offer!

Also, I'd like to encourage sponsors to create an ad: https://www.pevpot.com/sponsors

For next to nothing you can create an ad and get on the homepage. For next week I'll add analytics, so it's possible to get an idea how much exposure you're getting. But with a few bitcents, you can't go wrong =)

Basically the provably fair needs to show two main things:

a) That I've predetermined the outcomes  (so I can't change them in response to players bets)
b) That they come from a fair distribution (so you get the house edge you expect) without being predictable (so players can't cheat)

probably the simplest provably fair scheme would be for me to pick a random phrase, and commit to it (by publishing a hash). Add in some information I don't control (e.g. a block hash) and then use it to seed a pseudo-random-number-generator (preferably a cryptographic one, like Just-Dice uses to prevent leaking internal state that would allow players to cheat me). I could play through a day/week/year worth of game outcomes, then publish the seed I used.  That would satisfy both a) and b)  but kind of sucks, because you have to wait till the end of  day/week/year to do any verification. Also it has a problem with switchovers.



So what we use instead is a really cool chain of sha256 hashes (in our case 10M of them), which has some really nice desirable properties:
a) It's basically random  (so it's good enough to use as a source for the game bust data itself)
b) It can't be reversed (so players can't cheat me)
c) Arbitrary preimages can't be generated (so I can't cheat players)

So basically I have:
1=  Seed
2= Hash of 1
3= Hash of 2
4= Hash of 3
5= Hash of 4
...
10M=  Hash of 9,999,999


So if you know what N is, you can compute all the way down to the last hash. But you can never compute to 1. If you know what N is, you can check that it really was predetermined if  N+1 was really the hash of N. Since players can compute "downwards" it means I need to play the games in reverse. This then allows you to generate all the previous hashes (verify all previous games) without seeing future games (prevent players cheating)


So with the hash chain established, the only important thing to do is create a function which maps a hash onto the correct distribution (and that's the function that Dooglus/Blockage explain a few posts above me.

Exciting development 

Sorry I haven't been around much, just got back from vacation and catching up on things. My understanding is that the new owners will take possession within the next couple of weeks, so after that happens the existing accounts/balances/information will be made available at mp.bustabit.com (but without registration or gambling) for people to access old information, and withdraw any funds. (And of course, you're free to withdraw funds now if you choose)

If you want to get notified after the hand over takes place, please make sure to set an email in your moneypot profile.




Please file a support ticket, and include as much information as possible. If the account doesn't have a balance, it'll probably be a lot easier to just create a new account (there's no policy against multiple accounts)

If you want, there's absolutely no issue with it (it's your money). But I'm not exposing anyones money to the risk of the new owner (it'll never be transferred to them), so it's not required.

Just an update, MoneyPot.com has sold!

However, for the time being it is still under my control under I do the handover (probably ~1 week) in the smoothest way possible.

As a reminder, the hand-over will NOT include balances or personal data (ip addresses, deposit address, withdrawals etc).

After the hand-over is complete, the new site will contain a banner on the top explaining the change.  All old balances will be available at the URL:   mp.bustabit.com  (something that will stay under my control). I will keep that site up for the next 6 months or so.


The new owners will introduce themselves shortly =)

Thanks everyone!

Thanks everyone for participating. I have selected a winner, and the auction is official over. Thanks everyone!

Winner has been paid 6.87664041 BTC!

Thanks again for everyone who played, and sponsored the draw! Looks like draw #4 is going to be a bit bigger =) Get your tickets early!

Shit. I meant "the end of November" but apparently can't count.

Just to err on the side of caution, I'll make it "end of December the 1st"

^ Yeah, that looks right. Which would make the sender of:

https://www.blocktrail.com/BTC/tx/81fe11fd0f44b4ef181a17f2308e46e3a2310d73d25da98cb41d14dff1f1de93?txoutIdx=0

the winner.

I just need to get an external source of data for the transactions before I hand over the money (stupid insight.bitpay api is timing out right now)


Edit: Got Independent confirmation that this is the winning transaction =) Payment will be made shortly

Sorry about the delay, the stretched block hash is: 26d33835054efa572c76332ea937331d74d92eee64d58f1bc839409c29951954   I'll have the winner results shortly =)