The winning numbers of traditional lottery tickets are generated by lottery machines. Whether it can truly guarantee the randomness has been questioned. If blockchain technology is used to make lottery tickets, can randomness be controlled?
Not exactly. Using blockchain will only provide transparency while the method that is used will remain the same as if blockchain weren't used and the randomness or better said the provably fair system is only fair if the used method was was fair.
For example the current existing method that gambling sites use for their lottery (usually using HMACSHA512 in combination with user and server seeds) could be translated to a smart contract but that wouldn't provide any additional security or anything like that. It could only automate things and possibly (if done right) make the lottery more decentralized.
You got the point. If I have merit, I will definitely give it to you. Even if blockchain technology is applied to gambling, the organizer still has the opportunity to fake it, right?
Absolutely, by being on "the outside" as a player the only mathematical analysis
we can do is based on maybe:
The Law of large numbers This theorem is a fundamental element of probability theory. The law is basically that if one conducts the same experiment a large number of times the average of the results should be close to the expected value. Furthermore, the more trails conducted the closer the resulting average will be to the expected value
Analysis of lottery numbersLottery mathematics is used to calculate probabilities of winning or losing a lottery game. It is based primarily on combinatorics, particularly the twelvefold way and combinations without replacement.
And in the end as its computerised a lottery can be rigged, they draw the numbers
on their system and most often all picks have to be in 10 minutes for example before
the draw. I'm sure a computer can work out what combination of numbers
has NOT been picked if they decide they dont want a winner on that particular draw.