Quote from: earlz on June 19, 2017, 08:42:04 PM

How are the results of the lottery authenticated on the blockchain? What stops me from publishing fake lotto numbers and rewarding myself as a winner?

thanks earlz for your constructive question.

my proposed solution is that the lottery doesnt use the blockchain to generate numbers, but instead uses the winning numbers from a current lottery (e.g. the Powerball lottery in the US)

This means that the founders couldnt fake the winning numbers.

Here's a simple example.

Say $100 of lottery tickets were sold for the week ending 06/17/2017

All ticket sales for that week would be visible on the blockchain - so for simplicity 100 transactions of $1 each.

The lottery prize fund would then be say $95 for the week (if e.g. $5 is to be used for marketing the lottery, paying the founders to run it etc)

Then on 06/17/2017 the Powerball lottery does the draw and publishes the winning numbers http://prntscr.com/flsy7l

The $95 is sent to the winning ticket. This too is viewable on the blockchain.

My idea is that although the tickets are bought on the blockchain, the winning numbers are generated by a real world lottery, so that nobody could fake the winning numbers.