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Author Topic: How are the bitcoin block hash generated?  (Read 1081 times)
jaitor (OP)
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October 12, 2014, 07:05:54 PM
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Are they trully 100% random (generated by hardware) or is it pseudo-random (generated by software)?

Can i rely on it or any other blockchain data to make a 100% trustable raffle?
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Each block is stacked on top of the previous one. Adding another block to the top makes all lower blocks more difficult to remove: there is more "weight" above each block. A transaction in a block 6 blocks deep (6 confirmations) will be very difficult to remove.
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October 12, 2014, 09:20:01 PM
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Are they trully 100% random (generated by hardware) or is it pseudo-random (generated by software)?
They aren't random. They're a pure function of the data in the block. They are not (believed to be) predictable in advance, but miners can influence them by changing the data in the blocks to get different results. This is how mining works.

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Can i rely on it or any other blockchain data to make a 100% trustable raffle?
The security of doing that is limited. If you entire raffle process is known in advance miners can cheat your raffle at some cost by throwing away otherwise valid blocks that would go a direction they don't like in your raffle.

There are ways to avoid this (e.g. first publishing a commitment to a secret which is combined in the selection) but really, to be frank, if you're asking very simple questions like this you likely have a long way to go before you're ready to design a cryptographic protocol for other people to use. You probably need to spend some more time reading.
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October 13, 2014, 02:42:17 PM
Last edit: October 13, 2014, 02:54:02 PM by deepceleron
 #3

I have info about using the blockchain for such a raffle picker here: http://we.lovebitco.in/raffle - If using the Bitcoin blockchain and if the reward is not on the order of 100 BTC+, then even a 50% miner who bought 50% of the tickets would not find profit in discarding a block that would make him a lottery loser.

The risk is much higher that the lottery operator is dishonest. The raffle runner can purchase their own tickets with sock puppets for free and can increase the odds that they pay the reward to nobody.

If there are a fixed number of tickets, say 100 0.01 BTC tickets for a 1 BTC prize, than it can be fairer vs operator sock puppets. In this case you are buying a 1% chance of winning regardless of who owns other entries, but it is likely the operator disappears when a legitimate winner actually wins if he is a scammer.
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