Cryptocurrency + decentralized lottery, project for a new protocol.

[LeChatNoir]

Do you guys think it's possible to develop a protocol able to run a cryptocurrency and a lottery with jackpot in a decentralized way?

This protocol will have its own cryptocurrency included but once a week, it will also give its users the possibility to gamble their coins in a lottery with a jackpot that grows over time.
I want to include the lottery future with its huge jackpot in this coin, because i think this can be a huge boost for the network effect of the protocol so that it will have a chance to overcome all the cryptocurrencies out there, bitcoin included.

Think about network effect for very famous lottery as Mega Millions or Powerball.
This lottery will have very low fees or no fees at all depending on how much computer power will be necessary for the network to run the lottery.
I think the whole world can potentially go crazy about this as soon as the jackpots start to grow big.

I'm not a programmer so i'm asking you, would this be too hard to be developed?

[t3a]

Why are you asking if it is possible in the same post that you outline that a new cryptocurrency would have to be created?

Anyways, yes, it is possible with Bitcoin *today*. Here are some IRC logs where gmaxwell partially explained it, and linked to a more in depth thread:

(03:35:06 PM) rfish: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Script
(03:35:08 PM) gmaxwell: No. Scripts have little to do with _outputs_ they control if a coin can be _spent_.
(03:35:11 PM) rfish: Is that implemented in bitcoin?
(03:35:22 PM) wyager left the room (quit: Quit: wyager).
(03:35:24 PM) gmaxwell: rfish: yes, from the very first public release.
(03:37:02 PM) rfish: hmmm, does one exist already?
(03:37:23 PM) gmaxwell: rfish: no, defeats the purpose of a lottery— to make money for its operator.
(03:38:23 PM) rfish: that evert X amount of blocks
(03:39:10 PM) rfish: the none zeros in the hash of Y blocks are summed together, used to pick a winner and automatically gives the loot to the winner
(03:40:00 PM) gmaxwell: rfish: no. you can't do exactly that, but a lottery can be constructed none the less. (depending on block hashes is generally a bad idea, fwiw)
(03:40:49 PM) rfish: why is depending on block hashes a bad idea?
(03:40:56 PM) gmaxwell: rfish: because miners control them.
(03:47:13 PM) justanotheruser: gmaxwell: is there a trustless way to determine a winner?
(03:47:35 PM) sipa: transaction hashes seems even worse than block hashes
(03:47:38 PM) gmaxwell: justanotheruser: players commit to random values by sharing hashes of them. then to redeem you provide preimages and the hash of them selects the winner.
(03:47:55 PM) gmaxwell: oh crap this is in #bitcoin-dev?  (only noticed because sipa talked )
(03:48:51 PM) justanotheruser: gmaxwell: This can be done in a transaction? Also, yes this is #bitcoin-dev. You can tell by the lack of "to da moon"
(03:48:53 PM) gmaxwell: justanotheruser: see also https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=277048.0 and related threads.