Quote from: espringe on October 12, 2014, 03:01:34 PM

Quote from: Dabs on October 12, 2014, 02:41:23 PM

That's how my lotto works. Secrets from the future. Provably fair for everyone.

I had a look, it's quite a nice scheme -- but how do you handle one of the secret providers not revealing the hash? e.g. the site is down, they lose the seed etc.

Imagine this, BitSaloon secretly buys 50% of your tickets, then they have a 50% chance of winning. If they don't win, instead of revealing the seed that would prove so, they lose it (or suspend the site). As I understand it, you'll be forced to do a redraw, which would effectively give them a 75% of winning with 50% of the tickets

Actually, I had a look recently, and I think a few of the original secret providers are dead, BitSaloon is one of them, dead now.

But to answer your question, the draw would not happen in the first place, and they would not know if they won or lost. If they lose their seed, they will have problems on their own site, because it's being used for their game.

SatoshiDice is still around, for example, they are not going to lose their seed, unless they stop operating.

When I resume my lotto, I will probably trim down the list of secret providers. In fact, I really only need one other. It was fun including seven of them, but if you think about it, random.org is all I would really ever need.

If I wanted the game to be more "bitcoiny", and remove dependence on anything else except bitcoin itself (the network), then I will simply use a future block hash. It is extremely unlikely that some powerful miner or mining group or pool would bother to try to manipulate this.

My own secret is committed, and I'll reveal it after I get the block hash. My original problem was time synchronization, but if I have my own website, then I could just use my own time. (I'll try to stick to whatever the atomic clocks says, within 1~2 seconds.)

A previous lotto (that died as well) used the results of a government real life lotto. I could do that, but what happens if the draw is delayed? (Not likely, they will probably announce something.)

Actually, I'd like to hire you, but based on your posts, I think I can't afford you.