About the recent problems
As many of you already know, there has been an ongoing attack against the bitcoin blockchain that has caused some very strange behavior with most wallets. This has had a direct impact on LuckyBit players, and we would like to provide some information that hopefully will help clear up some of the confusion and improve your experience at LuckyBit.
In a nutshell, the attack is creating
duplicates of transactions and broadcasting them. These duplicate transactions are identical to regular transactions in every function, except they will have a different transaction ID (TXID). When a duplicate transaction occurs,
only one of the transactions can confirm. It could be the original transaction, or it could be the duplicated transaction, and LuckyBit has no way to know which one it will be. Eventually, the one that confirms will be considered a
valid transaction and the one that doesn't is a
ghost transaction. These ghost transactions can
never confirm and should be considered "dead" by wallets - but sometimes they aren't.
If you sent your bet with a priority fee, it will play without confirmation. However, if your bet is duplicated, this will create a second bet that will also play without confirmation! This is where things can get very confusing - since LuckyBit doesn't know which bet will confirm, it simply processes
both of them in a way that only the payment for the valid bet can confirm, and the payment for a ghost bet will automatically become a ghost transaction as well. This is why users sometimes see bets play twice.
Conversely, if a payment transaction is duplicated, your wallet will see two copies of that payment. If you attempt to bet again with those
unconfirmed coins, there is a chance that bet could spend ghost coins and become a ghost itself. This is why some users don't see their bets ever play - those bets became ghost transactions. This only happens when you spend unconfirmed coins, including unconfirmed change.
Many users have complained of lost wagers due to this bug. It is important to note that these "lost" wagers
are in fact non-existent. The official result of a duplicated bet is determined by miners: whichever one confirms is the valid one, and the other one (and any bets that spend unconfirmed results from it) becomes ghosted, and as far as the blockchain is concerned,
never happened. This sword cuts both ways: just as a player might see a big win that turns out to be invalid, there are plenty of instances where losing bets turned out to be invalid as well! Ultimately, this problem
does not affect the house edge or odds of LuckyBit.
Players on LuckyBit have some options to mitigate this problem. The most important thing is to know what is going on - it will help you know what to expect once transactions start confirming. During play, there are two approaches you can take to reduce the impact on your wallet from this issue, and help filter out the potential of ghost transactions. The obvious approach is to simply
not pay priority fees and wait for your bet to confirm. If you do this, LuckyBit won't play your bet twice because it requires a confirmation! The second thing players can do is
wait for all transactions in your wallet to confirm before betting again, and if possible,
don't spend unconfirmed coins. This will prevent the case of spending ghost coins causing a bet to become a ghost before it can ever play.
Remember that LuckyBit staff is always available in the chat room to help - don't be afraid to put
@mods in the chat box to summon assistance!
