The lottery revisited in web3, and on our beloved Bitcoin

[MsPinkParrot]

Hello everyone!

A few months ago, I asked myself a question: Why isn't the lottery a decentralized concept yet ?  

Instead of opaque machines drawing "random" numbers, all we would need is to use the price of Bitcoin, inherently unpredictable by nature.

Our lottery tickets would then resemble randomly generated BTC prediction charts. That's a fact.

The drawing of the winning numbers would then take place at a pace of one number per day, over the course of an entire month, for example, perhaps ?

And what if... we could turn these tickets into NFTs using the new ordinal technology... We would even have the possibility to exchange our predictions during the game!

This concept. It is already in motion, and it's called: Purple-eyes.  

Take part in an exciting competition to win the jackpot of the month.

Join us on our website purple-eyes.com in testnet, check out our documentation on GitBook, Discord channel, Twitter. Get in on the action !  
Admin contact : gbisiaux.pro@gmail.com

[dkbit98]

This concept. It is already in motion, and it's called: Purple-eyes.

I never heard about Unisat or Hiro wallets so I can't connect them with your website, and I am not sure if this project is based on bitcoin blockchain or not.

After doing some research I found Unisat wallet that works only on chrome based browsers, and I don't feel comfortable using it, even if they say it's open source.
What is Hiro (comming soon) ?

[MsPinkParrot]

This concept. It is already in motion, and it's called: Purple-eyes.

I never heard about Unisat or Hiro wallets so I can't connect them with your website, and I am not sure if this project is based on bitcoin blockchain or not.

After doing some research I found Unisat wallet that works only on chrome based browsers, and I don't feel comfortable using it, even if they say it's open source.
What is Hiro (comming soon) ?

Hi dkbit98, it is indeed a Bitcoin-based project.

The Unisat and Hiro wallets are wallets that manage ordinals. Unisat is user-friendly, which is why I chose to integrate it first. Hiro and other ordinal wallets will come later.

In the long run, I would like to allow the use of the web app with any Bitcoin wallet, as long as it supports Taproot. (Although I have an idea in mind to work around the issue and open the game to everyone)

I hope I have answered your questions. 

[MsPinkParrot]

I have one important question, how is your decentralized lottery obtain Bitcoin price in decentralized way?

Hi ETFbitcoin,

That's a great question, and we are considering it.
It is important to understand that we are willing to be partially centralized during the development phase, as stated on the website.

However, here is the current process and its upcoming developments:
1- We are on the testnet, so for now, the price comes from Bitstamp, simply.
2- For the mainnet, we will try to average prices from different exchanges.
3- In the future, the ideal scenario would be to post a script on the Bitcoin blockchain to deploy what could be called an "oracle." This way, even if the price comes from an average of multiple prices from centralized or decentralized platforms, it will be obtained in a publicly verifiable manner.

Important note: The price itself is not of great importance; what matters is its reliability and the reproducibility of obtaining it. Everyone must play by the same rules, yes, but whether the price is from Binance or Bitstamp does not change the game.

The purpose of methods involving averages is to minimize the impact of exceptional and local events.

[MrPinkParrot]

3- In the future, the ideal scenario would be to post a script on the Bitcoin blockchain to deploy what could be called an "oracle." This way, even if the price comes from an average of multiple prices from centralized or decentralized platforms, it will be obtained in a publicly verifiable manner.

I see. But Bitcoin script cannot interact with external system without relying on 3rd party (which act as Oracle). That means some degree of trust is required and i expect some people might say your lottery isn't really decentralized. CMIIW.

Thank you for thinking with us

A disclaimer on the website say : "This webapp is a proof of concept. We are working on fully decentralizing it."

Then sure it is partially centralized, we know that we face a long way to create a fully decentralized version, and with our current knowledge, technically we can't do that for a big lottery that involve thousands of tickets.
We need a lot of optimization and training before thinking about the decentralization part, but for me it's possible.

As you say, "smart contract" need oracle, and the oracle himself need to be decentralized, it's not easy to do, and not free of gas. But if we have enough experience with our project, we can imagine a solution with reasonable gas cost for a fully decentralized version.

I am not Satoshi, just a passionated programmer, with low english skills, that want to expand the Web3 usage.

[SharonC]

Hello everyone!

A few months ago, I asked myself a question: Why isn't the lottery a decentralized concept yet ?  

Instead of opaque machines drawing "random" numbers, all we would need is to use the price of Bitcoin, inherently unpredictable by nature.

Our lottery tickets would then resemble randomly generated BTC prediction charts. That's a fact.

The drawing of the winning numbers would then take place at a pace of one number per day, over the course of an entire month, for example, perhaps ?

And what if... we could turn these tickets into NFTs using the new ordinal technology... We would even have the possibility to exchange our predictions during the game!

This concept. It is already in motion, and it's called: Purple-eyes.  

Take part in an exciting competition to win the jackpot of the month.

Join us on our website purple-eyes.com in testnet, check out our documentation on GitBook, Discord channel, Twitter. Get in on the action !  
Admin contact : gbisiaux.pro@gmail.com

Well, actually there's a similar product already. Please, check https://structure.finance/dnt/

[Ucy]

Interesting idea, but how sure are you that Bitcoin price is random? If someone is able to accurately predict the price all the time, he/she will be the winner all or most of the time.  Centralized Prediction Markets wouldn't be fair to such people... they will likely think they are cheating and have their funds seized then try to get them arrested. The player will try to avoid the centralized exchanges for lottery, betting or predictions. This is why I like the idea of decentralized lottery or prediction markets.

Maybe more than one person should be able to win 1st, 2nd & 3rd places daily so it doesn't feel unfair and boring to people who play constantly without winning.

The NFT part should be done on sidechains rather than mainchain though.

[MrPinkParrot]

Well, actually there's a similar product already. Please, check https://structure.finance/dnt/

The world of trading allows you to trade options, the broker only earns fees, it is the sellers and buyers who "fight in the arena". However on this site, it seems that the players bets against the "casino", the opacity of the calculation allowing to place the high and low limits prevents us from knowing the margin which the site takes.

At Purple-eyes, we take a clearly displayed fixed service fee. We have no advantage in this or that player winning the jackpot, so we are much more in the spirit of a site at the service of players, than a site against which the player must win.

[MrPinkParrot]

Interesting idea, but how sure are you that Bitcoin price is random? If someone is able to accurately predict the price all the time, he/she will be the winner all or most of the time.  Centralized Prediction Markets wouldn't be fair to such people... they will likely think they are cheating and have their funds seized then try to get them arrested. The player will try to avoid the centralized exchanges for lottery, betting or predictions. This is why I like the idea of decentralized lottery or prediction markets.

Maybe more than one person should be able to win 1st, 2nd & 3rd places daily so it doesn't feel unfair and boring to people who play constantly without winning.

The NFT part should be done on sidechains rather than mainchain though.

Thank you for this constructive comment, which raises several interesting points.

- ETFbitcoin it gives a good start to an answer, indeed the price of bitcoin is not due to chance but responds to mathematical chaos, it is therefore by definition unpredictable, apart from insider delirium... If someone wants to manipulate this market they must use astronomical sums to have a real impact, so to cheat the lottery it may not be lucrative

- Earning several people every day was an option that we ruled out, simply because our NFTs on Bitcoin are exchanged at a lower cost via our marketplace. So we want to maximize the "prediction exchange" aspect which makes the game much more user-friendly and exciting. Moreover a lottery is much more thrilling if the jackpot is worth it.

In short, we introduce the possibility of developing real strategies and we can't wait to see groups forming to try to win thanks to their brains.

- The NFT part is based on the Ordinals recently appeared on Bitcoin, it is for us the opportunity to offer a first concrete use case of these, the use is simple and the costs are very correct thanks to a prediction compression. Also the principle of "Quantition" that I recently developed contributes to a fluidity of the marketplace while reducing costs to a minimum. I will talk about it just below

[WillyAp]

Some things work better on a centralised server.
No business working in the region needs a decentralised service.
The only positive difference is that you can get data from the public blockchains.

[MrPinkParrot]

Some things work better on a centralised server.
No business working in the region needs a decentralised service.
The only positive difference is that you can get data from the public blockchains.

Correct, and we can offer the possibility to look being the scene, control the math, verify the legitimity

In the future we expect to offer a minimalist decentralized version, while running our partially centralized server