Lotteries

Lotteries

There are three major features a great online lottery game has to offer to its players in order for it to be trustworthy. These three issues are almost always overlooked in the traditional lotteries sites around the web. In the new era of the blockchain, the issues are getting fixed thanks to the use of the new technologies. But first, let’s have a look at the three main issues.

Fairness

The most important issue with any game of chance, especially lotteries, is fairness. There are a few questions the provider of the game has to answer in order for players to be able to exclude manipulations or fraudulent number randomization. For example, are all online tickets real and fairly distributed? Is the money people play with all accumulated in the same one pool? How random is the Random Number Generator used in the game? Is the jackpot real? Are all prizes paid on time, regardless of their value?

Rules and regulations

Lotteries are illegal in many countries of the world. In many countries, there are government-owned lotteries and some affiliated firms that can issue commercial lottery tickets. Since the demand is so high, there are many organizations that pretend to be the real deal and work by the rules, only to scheme and rob people of their money.

Availability

People are often blocked from participating in Euromillions or any other huge lotteries because of the countries they’re residing in. These users are often limited to playing smaller lotteries with smaller prizes, thanks to the local lottery industry and regulations. Thankfully, there are now a bunch of new, online solutions to these problems. These new technologies allow people to buy tickets for any lottery from anywhere in the world, wherever they might be residing.

Blockchain lotteries

There have been many honest attempts at creating an online lottery but thus far, people are still unhappy with the way online gambling is doing on that. The most popular way is by creating a centralized organizational structure, as in, a server where everything happens at random. This is untrustworthy because nobody can actually check the validity and internal works of the random number generator that sits at the core of the system. Also, no other parameter of the system can be verified for fairness by any interested parties, such as the gamblers themselves.

With the help of the blockchain technology, the server model is an evolved one specifically designed for this task of secured, trusted randomization. This is possible the database structure of the server is a distributed one, with a secured authentication system that can add data and never lose another point of it, as it so happens with normal database structure. Everybody on the network can be a node, which means players get a copy of the entire ledger on their devices. The devices that are in the network are therefore all nodes.

Because of these nodes, users can add or update data on the ledger without having to go through a third party beforehand. The entire power of the network therefore sits in the individual players, as well as in all of them as a network. This makes the blockchain an ideal medium for lotteries. Why? Because it checks all the boxes traditional gambling and lotteries sites will never be able to.

Accessibility and privacy

Cryptocurrencies have become a staple for gambling sites all over the world. Paying with Bitcoins have been taken as a main or at least alternative method of payments against traditional fiat currencies by so many players, it is slowly turning into the new favourite of the world. The advantages are more than a handful. Cryptocurrencies allow you to play your favorite games in total anonymity. You don’t need to check in with your ID, you don’t even have to create an account or chose a platform based on one of these criterias. You just go online, choose the lottery you like and play.

The fairness is as fair as it gets

Blockchains work by smart contracts. It’s a fancy phrase, but it essentially means a digital agreement between parties, enforced by computers and always kept transparent regardless of what transaction might happen between the parties. The network stays impartial and has the obligation to make sure the contract is adhered to, so any potential obstacle will be eradicated by the network.

This means that, once a game is played on the blockchain, you cannot alter its rules. Also, the payouts are guaranteed and instant, so there’s no need to fear you will be paid less or in 100 years from when you win your money. The casinos that work on the blockchain can’t withhold winnings because there’s nobody actually governing the game but the blockchain. The money goes in the contract and then out again if the player wins, without a middleman mingling with the process.