Hard-Fork to make us have a have a FREE Universal lottery system

[deepceleron]

I'm done here. it's obvious that OP reads like he quotes, taking the first sentence of a statement without reading the explanation and then replying in contradiction to what was just explained without an articulate reason of his own.

[remotemass]

I'm done here. it's obvious that OP reads like he quotes, taking the first sentence of a statement without reading the explanation and then replying in contradiction to what was just explained without an articulate reason of his own.

That's a pity. I actually found your comments very helpful for the discussion. I wish I could have answered you better. I try my best to reason, answer and articulate for the discussion to be worthy. I'm open to discussion and don't claim to have all the reason in any way. I actually don't want to contradict. Just want to make my case clear and find interesting solutions to make such a FREE lottery possible.

What bewilders me the most is that once we have such free lotteries we can gamble in any of them independently and keep having more chances of winning in them, generally.
If you spend 100 BTC in your lifetime in free lotteries you get the same chance of winning whether you play them all at once or in different lotteries in a cumulative way.
The more that you play, the more likely it will be that you end up without having lost money.

I also like the idea that it reduces the burden of games like SatoshiDice as people would be playing more in these new lotteries that don't cause spamming of the blockchain.

[remotemass]

I had another idea that would make this lottery even more popular and remarkable.
The burn address, that is, the address to where you would send coins to participate in a lottery contest, would simply be:
1234567891234567891234567891234567

It ends in 7 (considered by mystics a number with magical proprieties), no zeros, 34 chars.
So simple. But it is good to use. Everyone can type it using a telephone for instance.
And we have to agree that no one will ever be able to spend with the corresponding private key.
Do we agree on that? Good.

So this would mean that one rule less would have to be enforced, namely you wouldn't have to enforce that transactions to our burnt address could not be valid.

Now we just need to convince the community that the same amount of all coins burnt to that address should enter circulation being given to our random winner, given that in that randomness it would be included a factor unpredictable by
miners like a third party factor given by twitter API, for instance, as does bitmillions.com; by random.org API, or similar.

To enforce all miners to include an extra coinbase a hardfork seems necessary: so that incompatibilities could arise in the majority of nodes if miners tried to avoid those rules.

Please send 1 satoshi now to 1234567891234567891234567891234567
if you like it



[EDIT] Ouch! That address is not valid.

[Razick]

This just isn't the purpose of Bitcoin. Gambling can be implemented outside of the network, but a built-in lottery system would only add strain with no real benefit.

[itod]

This just isn't the purpose of Bitcoin. Gambling can be implemented outside of the network, but a built-in lottery system would only add strain with no real benefit.

Add strain to what - Bitcoin network? Don't we want more transactions with fees, not less? And it can't be implemented outside the network, since sending to unspendable addy would reduce the number of bitcoins significantly if it catches up and many people start to play, the only way to recover those burnt coins is through alternative coinbase.

[cr1776]

This just isn't the purpose of Bitcoin. Gambling can be implemented outside of the network, but a built-in lottery system would only add strain with no real benefit.

Add strain to what - Bitcoin network? Don't we want more transactions with fees, not less? And it can't be implemented outside the network, since sending to unspendable addy would reduce the number of bitcoins significantly if it catches up and many people start to play, the only way to recover those burnt coins is through alternative coinbase.

It can be implemented outside the network, just not using a burn address like this. 

[itod]

This just isn't the purpose of Bitcoin. Gambling can be implemented outside of the network, but a built-in lottery system would only add strain with no real benefit.

Add strain to what - Bitcoin network? Don't we want more transactions with fees, not less? And it can't be implemented outside the network, since sending to unspendable addy would reduce the number of bitcoins significantly if it catches up and many people start to play, the only way to recover those burnt coins is through alternative coinbase.

It can be implemented outside the network, just not using a burn address like this. 

And what do you suggest using instead of burn address with keeping it 0 trust?

[btchris]

Add strain to what - Bitcoin network? Don't we want more transactions with fees, not less?

Why are "more transactions with fees" desirable?

If you start with the assumption that the purpose of Bitcoin is to make money for miners, then yes "more transactions with fees" would be desirable.

But the purpose (or at least a purpose) of Bitcoin is to permit transactions and permit stored value. In other words, the decentralized transactions themselves, as well as the stored value of bitcoins, is the purpose of (capital-B) Bitcoin. Miners are just a necessary component in securing Bitcoin. Transaction spam, whether it includes fees or not, is still spam.

Technical discussions aside, OP's idea has problems for at least two other reasons.

First of all, I don't like lotteries. I like blackjack. I therefore think it would be unfair for zero-trust lotteries to be added to the blockchain unless blackjack is also added. Would anyone else like to add something? (Poker would be pretty cool I think.)

Secondly, unregulated lotteries are illegal in many (most?) jurisdictions. Although transactions can be used for either legal or illegal purposes, unregulated lotteries would always be illegal in those jurisdictions. The fact that something is illegal isn't reason enough to avoid it, for example if it were added to right some terrible evil, but I really don't see lotteries as an inalienable human right that Bitcoin should concern itself with.

[cr1776]

This just isn't the purpose of Bitcoin. Gambling can be implemented outside of the network, but a built-in lottery system would only add strain with no real benefit.

Add strain to what - Bitcoin network? Don't we want more transactions with fees, not less? And it can't be implemented outside the network, since sending to unspendable addy would reduce the number of bitcoins significantly if it catches up and many people start to play, the only way to recover those burnt coins is through alternative coinbase.

It can be implemented outside the network, just not using a burn address like this. 

And what do you suggest using instead of burn address with keeping it 0 trust?

Something like what is discussed here:
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Contracts#Example_8:_Multi-party_decentralised_lotteries
and
http://eprint.iacr.org/2013/784

e.g.

As an instantiation of this idea we construct protocols for secure multiparty lotteries using the Bitcoin currency, without relying on a trusted authority. By “lottery” we mean a protocol in which a group of parties initially invests some money, and at the end one of them, chosen randomly, gets all the invested money (called the pot). Our protocols can work in purely peer-to-peer environment, and can be executed between players that are anonymous and do not trust each other. Our constructions come with a very strong security guarantee: no matter how the dishonest parties behave, the honest parties will never get cheated. More precisely, each honest party can be sure that, once the game starts, it will always terminate and will be fair.

[remotemass]

First of all, I don't like lotteries. I like blackjack. I therefore think it would be unfair for zero-trust lotteries to be added to the blockchain unless blackjack is also added. Would anyone else like to add something? (Poker would be pretty cool I think.)

I think you could emulate most gambling games, including blackjack assuming the
players are the best players possible as they would use a computer to decide how
to play and could, for that matter, be automated.
You just need to generate a random number to know the state of the shuffled deck(s) and another random number to know the state of how the players will play (that will only depend on when they enter and leave the game).
It would be very tricky to emulate blackjack with a lottery like this but I'm pretty sure it is possible, if you could concede on the time constrains.
I'll give you an example of how you could emulate a roulette.
You need an address for each of the odds that enforces the rule that when the total amount at sake required for the win of the bet of the first player is fulfilled the winner is decided.
For instance, in roulette, you have bets that have odds 50/50, like red/black, odd/pair, 1-18/19-36.
So, to place such a bet you would have a lottery address designed so that once the total amount of bets surpasses 2X the bet of the first bet placed the winner outcome is decided, sending change of the surpassed amounts back to
the corresponding players.
It is complicated, but I am pretty sure that if you can concede on the time constrains, such gambling games could be emulated to a certain degree.

Secondly, unregulated lotteries are illegal in many (most?) jurisdictions. Although transactions can be used for either legal or illegal purposes, unregulated lotteries would always be illegal in those jurisdictions. The fact that something is illegal isn't reason enough to avoid it, for example if it were added to right some terrible evil, but I really don't see lotteries as an inalienable human right that Bitcoin should concern itself with.

I'm fond of things that liberate people, rather. And I sense something quite liberating about this kind of lottery. You would be able to play an hazardous game without a sense of loss.

[cr1776]

...
I'm fond of things that liberate people, rather. And I sense something quite liberating about this kind of lottery. You would be able to play an hazardous game without a sense of loss.

I too am fond of things that liberate people.  As an aside, if things can be implemented without a hard fork for bitcoin, that is a good thing because then it is a much more difficult target to attack.  If the bitcoin protocol and software itself implemented any type of gambling, it makes it a bigger target.  If they can be implemented on top of the blockchain, bitcoin is less of a target itself and you get the benefits you may have been thinking about regarding another use for bitcoin.

:-)

[Razick]

This just isn't the purpose of Bitcoin. Gambling can be implemented outside of the network, but a built-in lottery system would only add strain with no real benefit.

Add strain to what - Bitcoin network? Don't we want more transactions with fees, not less? And it can't be implemented outside the network, since sending to unspendable addy would reduce the number of bitcoins significantly if it catches up and many people start to play, the only way to recover those burnt coins is through alternative coinbase.

If you are a miner yeah, but the reality is that lottery transactions would push out low priority transactions with lower fees making Bitcoin more expensive for users. Making money for miners is not the primary or even a major purpose of Bitcoin (I do understand why it is necessary, but it doesn't exist for that purpose).

A bigger concern is that the blockchain size would be inflated. We want to encourage USE of the bitcoin network, but not WASTE. A built in lottery would be a waste of network resources.

It couldn't be implemented outside the network in the way the OP proposes, but that doesn't mean it couldn't be implemented somehow.

[Razick]

This just isn't the purpose of Bitcoin. Gambling can be implemented outside of the network, but a built-in lottery system would only add strain with no real benefit.

Add strain to what - Bitcoin network? Don't we want more transactions with fees, not less? And it can't be implemented outside the network, since sending to unspendable addy would reduce the number of bitcoins significantly if it catches up and many people start to play, the only way to recover those burnt coins is through alternative coinbase.

It can be implemented outside the network, just not using a burn address like this. 

And what do you suggest using instead of burn address with keeping it 0 trust?

That's really not important since it's not the purpose of Bitcoin. If someone wants a lottery they can figure out how to do it themselves.

[justusranvier]

Troll/disruption activity seems to be in an increase recently.

[tspacepilot]

Amusing idea. Chance of it getting majority support for a hard fork and being implemented though? Zero.

Exactly this^^^.  While I enjoy gambling and whatnot, not everyone does.  This sort of amusement would make the bitcoin network seem a lot less serious and focused.  You can't build unmotivated larks and games and distractions into a project with the scope and ambitions of bitcoin.

[Razick]

Amusing idea. Chance of it getting majority support for a hard fork and being implemented though? Zero.

Exactly this^^^.  While I enjoy gambling and whatnot, not everyone does.  This sort of amusement would make the bitcoin network seem a lot less serious and focused.  You can't build unmotivated larks and games and distractions into a project with the scope and ambitions of bitcoin.

I don't have a problem with gambling per se, but I can tell you I would be in the majority that would oppose this.