You could also hash the end block hash a few quadrillion times to make it impossible for miners to predict the result in a reasonable timeframe.
True. If you had 30 minutes of hashing post-block, it would pretty much guarantee no blocks would be tossed in the name of the lottery. Chances are, another block would be found in those 30 minutes, so no miner would hold it while quadrillion-hashing it to find out whether it contains the correct hash. The downside is, you'd have to set a specific block number or date/time interval as the "lottery" block. I would like to see a solution where the block that a transaction is included in is the block that determines whether that person is a winner. It'd be more or less as "instant win" as one could get with a lottery based on the block chain. Simply browsing over to blockexplorer, then clicking on the transaction hash and comparing it to the block hash would be ideal. |
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Public ledger is scores better than block chain. It's a term that actually makes sense to people in the business and financial world.
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I don't think it becomes an issue no matter what size the lottery is.
Think about it. If the prize is 100,000 BTC, and the tickets are 1 BTC each, then for a lottery that is set up properly, there'll be a less than 1/100,000 chance that the block hash will match a transaction hash that a miner might try to match (say, their own entry). So a miner would have to come across a block that both matches the difficulty criteria AND matches the 1/100,000 chance in order to win on their own ticket. And no one is going to throw away a 50 BTC block on the off chance that they might find another block with the right 1/100,000 hash.
As long as the ticket cost is less than the block reward, there's no reason to worry about a miner purposefully trying to alter the outcome of a lottery.
The only issue would come from lottery where reward rolls over if their is no jackpot winner but the tickets are good for one drawing only (like all traditional real world state lottos). In that instance it is possible for each ticket to have a greater than 1 NAV (i.e. a 1 BTC ticket could be worth 1.2 BTC). A creative miner then could submit a large number of tickets and attempt to mine blocks until he wins. Still even then it would require a significant amount of hashing power to be a plausible attack and would only be viable when the lotto award is greater than average chance to win (i.e. 1 in 10,000 chance to win jackpot on 1 BTC ticket but jackpot is estimated to be 11,800 BTC). Hmmmm... not sure that I agree, but let's see what the calculations say. If a miner bought 1,000 tickets for 1 BTC each on a 1 in 10,000 chance jackpot, then he technically has a 1 in 10 chance of the next block matching one of his tickets. Now also say he has 10 GH/s of hashing power, so he has about 1 in 800 chance of finding the next block. In total then, his chances of himself finding a block that matches one of his tickets is 1 in 8,000. In order for him to toss his block and find another one, the jackpot would need to be at least 50 * 8,000, or 400,000 BTC. Otherwise, it wouldn't be worth it given his chances - he would rather take the 50 BTC from finding a block. Even if he had 100 GH/s of hashing power, the jackpot would need to be at least 50 * 800, or 40,000 BTC, in order for him to toss his block. If he had bought half the tickets AND had 100 GH/s of hashing power, the jackpot would need to be at least 50 * 160, or 8,000 BTC, in order for him to toss his block. That last scenario might be what you were envisioning. I don't think the jackpot has to necessarily be greater than the odds, but it just depends on how much hashing power the miner in question has. I suppose the NAV would have to be low enough to ensure that it wouldn't be worth tossing a block even to the person with the greatest amount of hashing power, no matter how many tickets are bought. To protect against Tycho using his 3500 GH/s of hashing power maliciously, for instance, the jackpot would need to be less than 228 BTC with 1 in 10,000 odds. Tell me if I'm wrong, but this makes sense to me at any rate. |
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I'm not really interested in continuing to argue with you. It's obvious neither of us will change the other's mind.
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Yes, I think part of the allure is that they contain actual bitcoin value that you can use.
Again, what can you use 0.1BTC for? Does any vendor sell anything for so little? Can you withdraw such a small amount? You can hold it like a penny stock. I agree, it's not much use. But it's a heck of a lot more intriguing than being worth nothing. |
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So... let me get this straight, LordGreynick - your chain of logic is thus: Jeremy lies and cheats on an auction he posts -> Jeremy has supporters come in to defend him with past transactions that have nothing to do with the auction he lied and cheated on -> Therefore his documented false advertising and lying is OK because he's not cheated other people in the past. That about sum it up? Perhaps you should reassess who is the actual "tard" here, if you think your chain of logic is anything other than retarded. But you go on believing in the honesty and integrity of Jeremy! It's fine with me, I'm sure he'll swindle someone else someday, I just know it won't be me!  The bottom line is, Jeremy fucked up and he's completely unwilling to own up to his mistakes. As I said, all this could have been avoided if he'd even bothered to contact me. But as I've already said, he made absolutely no effort what so ever to even work out any problems or contact me in any way, shape or form. He just saw an opportunity to grab more BTC and took it. Yeah, definitely the kind of person I want to do business with! I think you need to take an objective look at the situation again. As far as I can tell, you and one other person are the ONLY people who think Jeremy scammed anyone. Did you ever think that you might just be wrong about this? And that's why everyone else is against you? |
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I have a simple way to make it nearly impossible for anyone to cheat (including operators of large mining pools).
Your methods mostly stop the users from cheating. There would be nothing that prevents the operator from cheating either by not submitting blocks or even sharing the secret password/key with a small percentage of people. I tried that method to. Ultimately I ended up moving to using mega million numbers for the "cheat proof" element. Using block hashes is good enough AS LONG as the reward is smaller than the block reward. Even if the prize was bigger it would make more sense for someone to mine for 50 BTC than to throw away a block for a slim chance of winning 100 BTC. BUT as the prize gets really big it becomes an issue. I don't think it becomes an issue no matter what size the lottery is. Think about it. If the prize is 100,000 BTC, and the tickets are 1 BTC each, then for a lottery that is set up properly, there'll be a less than 1/100,000 chance that the block hash will match a transaction hash that a miner might try to match (say, their own entry). So a miner would have to come across a block that both matches the difficulty criteria AND matches the 1/100,000 chance in order to win on their own ticket. And no one is going to throw away a 50 BTC block on the off chance that they might find another block with the right 1/100,000 hash. As long as the ticket cost is less than the block reward, there's no reason to worry about a miner purposefully trying to alter the outcome of a lottery. |
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To others: The time I logged is from straight working on computers. It does not involve the time I spent driving around picking up materials, it doesn't cover gas, it doesn't cover wear on tools, it doesn't cover time spent on this project besides working directly with the computers, it doesn't cover internet costs, it doesn't cover insurance costs, and it doesn't cover property taxes, to name a few things it doesn't cover. And that's just my things it doesn't cover. The value from the contractors is straight time paid, it doesn't cover workman's comp, it doesn't cover the materials they donated, it doesn't cover gas, it doesn't cover their insurance, and it doesn't cover their fees, to name a few things it doesn't cover.
So here is the ultimatum: I will give you a total time logged. I will give you the activities that that time was spent on. I will give you a (non-comprehensive) list of materials that were donated or borrowed that otherwise would have had to have been bought.
Or I will sit down and basically audit myself and account for every screw, every plug, every wire, every second of my time, and bill the company for it all. I will ask the contractors for bills. These bills will be far greater than just time worked (which will also be on there, except at their actual working rates, far greater than the $30/hour or so I am giving them). I will gladly post the proof of these bills from the contractors. At that point there will be no going back, and the contractors will be paid their bills to the best ability of this company. Their bills will be far greater than the $10,000 we could expect to make from the liquidation. Investors will not see a single cent of it.
Perhaps some of you aren't grasping the magnitude of how much was given to this company to make it work. I didn't collect dividends so this company could get off the ground. I didn't charge for time spent so this company could get off the ground. I called in a lot of favors from a lot of people to give me help for free so this company could get off the ground. I am tired of people acting like that did not at all contribute to the company being profitable, and that it did not contribute to the dividends the investors got, and that it didn't contribute to the growth we were able to experience.
So here's the deal: say the word, and I will put up a motion concerning this. I won't vote at all on this motion, it will be purely an investor vote. Just keep in mind, if that motion goes towards asking for bills, there will be no going back, and there will be no money left for investors.
Do you even understand what a contract is? All of those things you listed, your driving around, gas, wear on tools, time spent on the project, internet costs (aren't you paying for internet anyway??), insurance, etc. None of those things were included in the contract that YOU wrote. If you wanted to be reimbursed for your time, you should have written that in your original contract. If you wanted to be reimbursed for your gas, or insurance, or internet expenses, you should have written that in your original contract. Since you did not write that in your contract, you can expect to be reimbursed for NONE of those things. None. Nada. Zip. Zero. Was that a mistake on your part, that you didn't have those things written in to the contract? Probably. Does that mean you can steal half the company away for making that mistake? Hell no! That's what lawyers are for - to write up contracts that cover everything that could possibly come up. Since you didn't write it up with a lawyer, you missed some stuff, and you'll have consequences because of it. |
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I'm guessing those weren't shipped UPS?
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Can we please get back on topic? This thread's supposed to be about how much I suck.  In the past and when Spendbitcoins was just starting, and I could buy Amazon cards from Jeremy, there was a small hickup in the order with regards to the transmission times. Jeremy was contacted and immediately resolved the issue very quickly and was willing to even do more. From then on, I have used his services with the most pleasing results. For future auctions like this, why not use that Bitcoin ebay clone thing? Ive used it before to buy booster boxes of Magic cards for less that half retail. Biddingpond, thats it. Just watch out on that site too. I won an auction for a raid card and the guy writes me telling me that the price was wrong and it was really 3 times higher and I should pay with Paypal as it was easier for him and also, he forgot to mention that you need to buy 5 sata hdds from him @ $25ea for 80gb drives and pay separate shipping. When I goto email him back, failure to deliver. That's the problem with biddingpond - no one has feedback, so it's a haven for scammers. I'm glad that there's at least a warning up telling you to use escrow now though! |
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If the shares are the IPO shares, they cannot vote. However, if he transferred them to another GLBSE account and back, he can then vote with them, but they are then considered stolen.
Why is the issue of abortion not here? We had discussed that it would be put up here along side this motion yet again there is nothing.
Well, that's a very serious issue. I don't think the Bitcoin folks are really qualified to make any sort of agreement or decision in that realm of politics... |
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So we can assume tawsix controls ~8,000 with which he can do whatever with...
If he votes with those ~8k shares, then we know that he doesn't give a fuck what we think and that we need to take him to court. Yeah that. It'll be pretty clear the course of action that needs to be taken if there's suddenly a huge amount of shares voting towards liquidation. LOL. We got owned on GLBSE as well. Pretty smart to own 51% of the shares so only you can vote. Damn scammer ! Did he vote with his shares? How many shares? |
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Still using this app daily. It's incredibly handy.
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OK, here is a random thought...
What if I sold rolls of 50 of the bitcoin brass coins? The exact same 1 BTC coin, but just the metal part. I could offer this today.
I have like 6,000 of ones with year 2011 left, and have already ordered some with the year 2012 printed on them.
A roll of 50 1BTC blanks, I could sell for as little as 10BTC.
0.2 BTC / coin isn't too bad a price. I probably couldn't buy 50 of them though. But it does sound like a good idea... |
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The 0.5 client seems to be able to send BTC to more than one address with one transaction (via the UI). Does anyone know if that uses 'sendmany'?
Oooh, neato. It must use sendmany - that's the only way I've ever heard of to send to multiple addresses in the same transaction. |
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Just curious... are transaction hashes predictable at all?
This is really a sub-question of a much broader question, which is, could the transaction hash be used to determine the winner of a lottery? In other words, if I said, the first person to send 1 BTC to this address, and gets a transaction hash beginning with 3f, is there any way a person could abuse it to where they only actually complete the transaction if the hash begins with that 3f?
They could simply generate a ton of transactions until their hash matched. You seem to have missed the rest of the discussion. |
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I think the private key should be covered by a hologram or a scratch-off label or something, and they should have no expiry.
I would cover them with a hologram, but they would be too easy to read with any kind of ray that is reflected by the metal. The engraving would change the shape of the metal and would be detectable. So the hologram would be poor assurance that the key has not been read. Compare to my regular coins - I am using inkjet on paper - which I think would be much more difficult to read from the outside. Interesting, didn't know you used inkjet on paper. Does that mean the coins aren't waterproof, or does the hologram hold a seal good enough to assure that the paper doesn't get wet? On the upside, it means that the hologram couldn't easily be floated off the coin without leaving a trace - you'd also ruin the private key on the paper! I still think cheap coins (0.10 or 0.25) with a simple protection (gold scratch-off) would be best. |
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