It does indeed look like there might be some kind of bot playing on our site. Notice, however, that even bots do not really have an advantage, and they are actually taking a big risk of not entering a block, and losing their entire deposit.

Additionally, even the bot might *just* miss being the last transaction of a game, so all a bot is really doing, is taking big risks, and we believe that in the long run, it would not be any more, or any less profitable than playing manually.

In any case, we have been offline for a few hours while we made some improvements for everybody, and we're back online now, so we'll be glad to have you all back and playing.

We had a bit of a technical issue earlier... but everything is back to normal... come join the race to the next block!

SatoshiDice is not 100% on the blockchain as it uses their own odds generator to determine who wins or loses... see my response #18 above

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=504694.msg5583689#msg5583689

BlockRace does not rely on anything other than tansactions and blocks on the blockchain. Even if we take the site offline, and come back a week later, we can determine the winners and pay them accordingly. Nothing is needed on our part to make this game work, except pay the winner... which is also on the blockchain.

No, SatoshiDice is not 100% on the blockchain, as it uses their own odds generator to determine who wins or loses.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/SatoshiDice (Random Number Generation section).

Our game relies simply on the last transaction to enter the next block to determine the winner. No external information other than what's on the blockchain is needed to play the game, and at any moment, one can visit https://blockchain.info/address/1RaceBKYh5saS5D54vbNzPrLjWENviBMR to see the past winners, past prizes, current players, current game state, etc. 100% on the blockchain. That's what this game is

That's just how bitcoin works. Sometimes it's because the transaction didn't include enough fees and the miner didn't pick it up. It could be because the transaction didn't propogate enough to reach the miner. It could be that it uses an unconfirmed input etc. That's why we add a generous 0.0005 BTC fee when we pay the winning transaction, to get the miners to pick up our transaction, plus the previous transaction, in case it didn't include enough fees.

Sorry about that... wanted to get attention to our cool new concept... and in fact, I did play and win 0.04BTC, and in fact, I did not think of this myself (my partners did)... but the point is - nor I (even with my control of the site), nor anyone else, can really cheat here... I would be taking the same risk as anyone else if I send in money, and I have the same chances as everyone else to win.

That's how elegant the idea is. Even I can play and I wouldn't have an advantage over the others.

Anyway, we're working on more functionality all the time. The clock that Joohansson mentioned is apparently a bug, but you can be sure that the actual time the system uses is taken directly from the blockchain.info API. The time displayed in your browser is client side, and is to give the user indication of the length of the block. All transactions are validated, and the winner is determined by the server.

Obviously, all this is on the blockchain, so it's all there for everyone to double-check. We have no intention of cheating, nor the possibility (as funds are released at the end of every round). We're smart enough to realize that if this turns out to be popular, the best bet for us is to keep it honest.

So thanks for playing, come back again... you'll see more cool stuff then.

Nice. Just won 0.04 BTC... Why didn't I think of that?

BlockRace - The first bitcoin game that's 100% purely on the blockchain

Transparent, verifiable, elegant

Race to the end of the Block at http://blockrace.co