That is TAABL for short
So I needed a good excuse to start scripting on top of bitcoind, as I have a few projects in mind. But them being too time consuming I needed something smaller, which is why I ended up doing this.
What is the TAABL, I hear you ask? Well, glad you asked
It's a lottery, where you bet on the last 5 characters of a specific block hash. I take nothing from the bitcoin pool, it is all divided as follows:
1st prize - 5 characters correct - 50%
2nd prize - 4 (rightmost) characters correct - 6%
3rd prize - 3 (rightmost) characters correct - 8%
4th prize - 2 (rightmost) characters correct - 9%
5th prize - 1 (rightmost) character correct - 25%
bounty pool - 2%
I didn't just take these number out of my ass. They roughly follow the structure of a local state lottery. I can change them if you can convince me I should, though.
The bounty pool is the 'charity' part, and one must always exist to lend some sense of reason to all those that bet. But what bounty will that be? Well, you can vote on what you want to see as recipients of that. This first one will most likely go to bitfaucet, but we also have EFF, some specific bounties that appear on the fora and, if this actually becomes a thing to keep doing, maybe pay for a site facelift or server costs.
For now, everything is open. Three things to keep in mind for the adventurous betters:
- This is really alpha quality code, I tested a bit but not so much to think things will go glitch free.
- The site design sucks, and will stay that way until the server side is fine tuned. My availability to do this is limited, but I'll try my best to keep things running.
- This is running out of an office server, meaning connectivity is far from perfect. Don't be too alarmed if the server disappears for a couple of hours, I promise I'll move this to a real server as soon as I can.
So, some basic rules:
- Each bet costs 1.00
- You can put as many bets on the same character string as you want to
- There is no way to see which numbers others have already bet on... I'm of two minds as to this being a feature or a problem
- Although you put money to bet on your account, prizes are not put there, but rather sent directly to BTCOUT (explained below)
- This first round will have payments processed semi manually, to make sure everything goes ok, so expect delays. It will all be automated later, when I'm comfortable with the process
To use this system you have to register, but what about the anonymous in the lottery name? Well, no personal data is requested, or even allowed. You give me one bitcoin address to which prizes will be paid, and I give you one bitcoin address to which you can send your bet bitcoins. These are BTCOUT and BTCIN respectively. The OUT / IN are always in relation to the TAABL, so it's easy to remember.
Once you register, you can log in using the BTCOUT alone. As an almost random string of characters, I feel that using passwords is unnecessary. There isn't much you can do that is of harm if you use somebody else's account. If you feel otherwise, I'll come up with something better.
When you are logged in, you can bet on the open lottery draw, and you can see the draw details. You can also cancel tickets you bought. All of this gets locked 2 blocks from the end of the lottery draw.
Best of luck to all, and if you do hit the jackpot, you can always share the wealth with yours truly
Check it out at
http://taabl.datlatec.com
