Re:Electronic Lottery Tickets as Micropayments (1997)
by wolfram74 on Tuesday November 14, 2017 @09:12PM
(#15700980)
How hard do you think this would be to implement on top of the Venmo or stripe API?
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Re:Electronic Lottery Tickets as Micropayments (1997)
by DennisP on Tuesday November 14, 2017 @09:25PM
(#15701025)
I don't know but I'm working on an Ethereum implementation right now, and it's pretty easy.
Re:Electronic Lottery Tickets as Micropayments (1997)
by tgb on Tuesday November 14, 2017 @10:00PM
(#15701156)
I don't know anything about this, but how do you make randomness in Ethereum? I assume it has to replicable across any computer and therefore would be pseudo-random and predictable. Do you use something like the NIST randomness beacon at a specified future time?
Re:Electronic Lottery Tickets as Micropayments (1997)
by zaroth on Tuesday November 14, 2017 @11:53PM
(#15701538)
Google "provably fair bitcoin lottery". They typically are based on a future block's hash value combined with a published random seed.
Here's an example: https://github.com/hmel/bitcoin-raffle
Re:Electronic Lottery Tickets as Micropayments (1997)
by themadryaner on Wednesday November 15, 2017 @12:12AM
(#15701613)
In theory, a miner could try to manipulate the hash of the future block to change the outcome. It is much more difficult with Bitcoin, where valid blocks are more rare and produce a high income, but with Ethereum blocks are so frequent that it might be possible to collude with the mining pools is done on a large scale.
Additionally, how does this deal with Proof-of-Stake algorithms? Ethereum is heading there, and as far as I am aware the blocks would no longer publish hashes.
Re:Electronic Lottery Tickets as Micropayments (1997)
by rrobukef on Wednesday November 15, 2017 @04:43AM
(#15702625)
A sybill attack would greatly increase the probability. And has cheatingly other gains.
Re:Electronic Lottery Tickets as Micropayments (1997)
by kobeya on Wednesday November 15, 2017 @02:26AM
(#15702057)
No need for a future block. Recipient commits to the hash of a value. Payer signs a value. Hash the preimage (revealed in claim) and the signed value together. If less than a threshold, pass.
Re:Electronic Lottery Tickets as Micropayments (1997)
by infogulch on Wednesday November 15, 2017 @02:39AM
(#15702095)
As long as neither party has any way to manipulate the hash. Should probably add a 0th step where the payer commits to use a specific signature.
Re:Electronic Lottery Tickets as Micropayments (1997)
by kobeya on Wednesday November 15, 2017 @05:37AM
(#15702815)
The signature doesn't matter. Allowing the payer to change it only increases (potentially) the odds of them having to pay, which they won't do. In some constructions--in others it has no effect.