Re: [ANN][XCP] Counterparty - Pioneering Peer-to-Peer Finance - Official Thread
yes the prize amounts cannot be the same as powerball since it is unrealistic to use fixed pay outs unless this is being done by a large entity who already has the funds. the payout as i mentioned above should ensure that at least 33% of the tickets get something. does it do that?
You're going to need a big bankroll regardless, if you want to run any sort of lottery. That's because, by definition, if you're working with fixed probabilities there's no guarantee reality will follow exactly the expected distribution. What if only one person enters, and they win a prize? (The situation is different with a raffle, where the probabilities and payouts change together.) Real lotteries solve this problem by buying insurance and things like that.
I originally followed the probabilities of the real Powerball for payouts, which means that you have about a 1/35 chance of winning a prize. I just pushed a change giving the ability to payout on fewer matched numbers, so that you can bring that number down if you like. If you give a small payout for even a single match, my back of the envelope calculations say people should have about a 50% chance of winning.
