Author

Topic: Does anyone feel like playing some RaffleBit? (Read 2500 times)

member
Activity: 64
Merit: 10
August 13, 2011, 07:37:21 PM
#34
Rounds are getting bigger, folks! Current raffle is for 15+ Bitcoins, and is already more than 10% full. But, don't worry, there's more raffles to be had when this one ends.
newbie
Activity: 52
Merit: 0
Nice to see more activity, I hope you guys are enjoying the game.

A new round started again yesterday and the pot is already 70% full!

Good luck to the soon to be winners!
sr. member
Activity: 406
Merit: 250
QUIFAS EXCHANGE
Just won almost a full bitcoin on the last round and this one is already at 50% So far the easiest coin I have made so far. More people need to get into this so we can have higher jackpots awarded. I would love to come home to a nice 25btc in my wallet.
member
Activity: 64
Merit: 10
Congrats to our last round's winners on http://www.RaffleBit.com!!! Payouts for last round were .89, .53, and a whopping 2.14BTC to our first place winner! Current pot size is 1BTC, with exactly 50% of tickets left for sale this round. Get in now, it's gonna be a fast one!
member
Activity: 64
Merit: 10
Alright, folks! Got a few things added to the http://www.RaffleBit.com system. We now have proof-of-honesty, where each raffle's winners are picked before the raffle starts and hashed, then released. When the jackpot is paid, the original string is released and the honesty of the match can be verified.

Also added a pot-splitting feature. Now, 1st place wins 60%, 2nd wins 25%, 3rd wins 15%. Everybody wins Smiley


So far, we've had quite a few BTC run through the system, and it seems to be functioning well. Many bugs have been squashed, and much progress has been made. Thanks for your help and patience, and we hope you continue having fun playing RaffleBit!
newbie
Activity: 52
Merit: 0
It's a fresh lightning round of RaffleBit is up!

Buy your shares for a chance to win some Bitcoin!
newbie
Activity: 52
Merit: 0
These rounds are going pretty fast. The current pot is 50% of the way purchased. You should have good odds of winning right now since the pot totals are kept small for the beta!
member
Activity: 64
Merit: 10
The http://www.RaffleBit.com project is coming along nicely! Jackpots are now split between 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners, with each getting 60, 25, and 15 percent respectively. Congrats to the winners of the last jackpot of 1.4BTC!
member
Activity: 64
Merit: 10
Awesome, I won the first round. Cheesy

I would suggest, however, that you make it clear on the front page how big the pot is going to be. I know you mention a percent commission, but I would be more comfortable with the final winning in clear sight. Also, instead of a percentage of tickets sold, perhaps it should be changed to "x of y(total) tickets sold" or whatever.

I'm trying to limit information that people could use to bot and cheat users out of coin. I'll add that function, so that you see % deducted for RaffleBit maintenance directly displayed in the pot total. Glad you're enjoying the http://RaffleBit.com experience, and thanks for the feedback!
newbie
Activity: 52
Merit: 0
The current round has already sold over 2/3 of the shares available. Hurry up and purchase your shares so the winner can get to their happy ending Smiley
sr. member
Activity: 288
Merit: 250
Awesome, I won the first round. Cheesy

I would suggest, however, that you make it clear on the front page how big the pot is going to be. I know you mention a percent commission, but I would be more comfortable with the final winning in clear sight. Also, instead of a percentage of tickets sold, perhaps it should be changed to "x of y(total) tickets sold" or whatever.
member
Activity: 64
Merit: 10
Made a topic for the folks who've won to provide some proof to the world, and brag about free BTC. Enjoy!

http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=30515.new#new
member
Activity: 64
Merit: 10
It's worth mentioning that the first few beta rounds went off with a hitch or two, but some crucial bugs in the code got worked out. So far, the system's working pretty well. I've got a few revisions in mind, but I'll be toiling away to improve the app and we should be out of beta, and in to full 5-25BTC rounds, pretty soon!

http://www.RaffleBit.com - it's fun!
member
Activity: 64
Merit: 10
Any anti-randomness-thwarting-scheme can have holes poked in it, but I'm taking the approach of transparency.

Transparent would be, if everyone can reproduce your result. To do so, you could publish your algorithm, use something everyone agrees on as input (for ex. the hash of the next block after all ticket slots are filled) and show all valid tickets.

That's certainly do-able. Smiley
newbie
Activity: 18
Merit: 0
Any anti-randomness-thwarting-scheme can have holes poked in it, but I'm taking the approach of transparency.

Transparent would be, if everyone can reproduce your result. To do so, you could publish your algorithm, use something everyone agrees on as input (for ex. the hash of the next block after all ticket slots are filled) and show all valid tickets.
member
Activity: 64
Merit: 10
Well, as they say, the proof is in the pudding. By starting http://www.RaffleBit.com at tiny raffles of .5-2.5BTC, I'm gaining some trust from the community when they start seeing payouts come in, even though they're in the realm of 1.5BTC.

At the heart of it, this is gambling: whether I'm a scam or not, whether you win the raffle or not, it's all a gamble! I don't know what more to tell you aside from that there's literally no way for me to cheat within the application itself, and that I've listed all buy-ins and pay-outs publicly for your pleasure(or statistical analysis, if that's what you really desire). Any anti-randomness-thwarting-scheme can have holes poked in it, but I'm taking the approach of transparency. Ask me questions, I'll answer. Look at the buyin/payout history, start a thread asking for scam reports, whatever; the idea here is to provide a community service as opposed to screw around with a scam.
hero member
Activity: 672
Merit: 500
BitLotto - best odds + best payouts + cheat-proof
Again, it all comes down to the fact that running a short-term scam would be far less profitable than providing a real service. After all, your slot machine could just pocket your money and stiff you instead of only paying out if it were more profitable to engage a short-term scam than a long-term service. As it stands, my random number schema is less controllable than a casino's slot machine.
I disagree. Yours we take on faith that's what you are doing. Most slot machines are heavily regulated and a lot of places have pretty strict guidelines to prevent fraud. The internet in a lot of places doesn't have that. There are a lot of scams. Yes yours may be random but no one can know. They just have to believe you.
member
Activity: 64
Merit: 10
So, to answer your question, my system is designed in a way that would prevent me from cheating, but even if I did it would be a lot less profitable than running a legitimate service over the long run. It wouldn't be worth the effort of making a real raffle system like I did if I were just going to cheat my users. Wink
It's not designed to prevent you from cheating. As long as you control the random number you control who wins. Because it's anonymous we have no idea who is actually winning. You can take jackpots for a very long time with your method before anyone can prove or show you are cheating. Sure you could say it's better to be honest, but why add the uncertainty when you can make it impossible to force yourself to win. I just thought you may want to fix it.


Well, I guess I see your point, but again I designed the system so that I have no control over the randomness of the game once the app is running. All number-of-tickets-in-round & winning-ticket decisions are made by a unique random generated at function runtime by random.org. Again, it all comes down to the fact that running a short-term scam would be far less profitable than providing a real service. After all, your slot machine could just pocket your money and stiff you instead of only paying out if it were more profitable to engage a short-term scam than a long-term service. As it stands, my random number schema is less controllable than a casino's slot machine.
member
Activity: 64
Merit: 10
This belongs in the gambling section.

I was going to post it there, the subject is primarily software development. The RaffleBit discussion topic goes in gambling, yeah, but this is a call to beta-testers much more so than gamblers.

No, you are asking people to "beta test" by putting up their own coin to your raffle.  That's gambling no matter how you want to spin it.  If that's not the case then by all means send me some coin and I'll be glad to test your software for you.


I put my limited coin liquidity into the system already to beta-test, but I'm much more dev than miner so there's only so much I can test with. If I had some coin to send, I would.
hero member
Activity: 672
Merit: 500
BitLotto - best odds + best payouts + cheat-proof
So, to answer your question, my system is designed in a way that would prevent me from cheating, but even if I did it would be a lot less profitable than running a legitimate service over the long run. It wouldn't be worth the effort of making a real raffle system like I did if I were just going to cheat my users. Wink
It's not designed to prevent you from cheating. As long as you control the random number you control who wins. Because it's anonymous we have no idea who is actually winning. You can take jackpots for a very long time with your method before anyone can prove or show you are cheating. Sure you could say it's better to be honest, but why add the uncertainty when you can make it impossible to force yourself to win. I just thought you may want to fix it.
hero member
Activity: 672
Merit: 500
This belongs in the gambling section.

I was going to post it there, the subject is primarily software development. The RaffleBit discussion topic goes in gambling, yeah, but this is a call to beta-testers much more so than gamblers.

No, you are asking people to "beta test" by putting up their own coin to your raffle.  That's gambling no matter how you want to spin it.  If that's not the case then by all means send me some coin and I'll be glad to test your software for you.
member
Activity: 64
Merit: 10
Yeah, all the buy-in transactions are posted publicly so you can correlate the buy-in ticket to the winning jackpot payout. There are 2 ways to cheat on my side with the way the system is designed....1. play RaffleBit like a standard user @ standard odds or 2. send raffle jackpots to myself & buy 1 ticket for each round, after which people would wise up pretty fast and stop playing!

So, to answer your question, my system is designed in a way that would prevent me from cheating, but even if I did it would be a lot less profitable than running a legitimate service over the long run. It wouldn't be worth the effort of making a real raffle system like I did if I were just going to cheat my users. Wink
hero member
Activity: 672
Merit: 500
BitLotto - best odds + best payouts + cheat-proof
Any plans on making it so you can't cheat and pay yourself the jackpots? As it is now, it would be pretty simple to just pay yourself and no one would know. Is there going to be any way people can verify the results?
member
Activity: 64
Merit: 10
This belongs in the gambling section.

I was going to post it there, the subject is primarily software development. The RaffleBit discussion topic goes in gambling, yeah, but this is a call to beta-testers much more so than gamblers.
hero member
Activity: 672
Merit: 500
This belongs in the gambling section.
member
Activity: 64
Merit: 10
Yeah, that's the next phase.... when I'm not concerned about beta-testing the software itself. I'm an applications engineer, not a template designer. Thanks for the feedback though, and go ahead and try the software out when you get a chance. The buy-in and round-speed are optimized for load-testing right now, so it's only .1btc to play with raffles of .5-2.5btc.
legendary
Activity: 1582
Merit: 1002
You can use CMS with templates, e.g. Wordpress. Little time to learn, but website looks professionally. Website's amateur design discourage users and most of them will go away.
member
Activity: 64
Merit: 10
Your website looks like in 90's.

Spent less time worrying about how pretty the layout is and more about the code it's running. Smiley
legendary
Activity: 1582
Merit: 1002
Your website looks like in 90's.
member
Activity: 64
Merit: 10
Updated with cross-browser CSS3 compatibility fixes for Chrome. Enjoy, Googlephiles.
member
Activity: 64
Merit: 10
sorry:
page looks bad and doesnt function...
cant see anything but: Play Raffle฿it!, How to play and F.A.Q.
rest is blacknothing

Looks like you caught me mid-reboot...or something along those lines. I'm doing some cross-browser compatibility stuff right now, but if you're not running a browser capable of css3 (basically anything 2+ years old) you won't see anything except some links on a black page, for now. Chrome has some visual display issues, but I'm fixing those as we speak.

Would you mind telling me what browser/OS you're running?
member
Activity: 64
Merit: 10
Quick reboot on the server, and I'll leave it up for the night so you guys can stress-test it. Smiley
sr. member
Activity: 387
Merit: 250
sorry:
page looks bad and doesnt function...
cant see anything but: Play Raffle฿it!, How to play and F.A.Q.
rest is blacknothing
member
Activity: 64
Merit: 10
That's my sneaky way of screaming, "BE A PART OF MY BETA PLEASE!"

 Roll Eyes

http://www.rafflebit.com/

Instead of the standard 5-25BTC raffle, I'm testing at .5-2.5BTC raffles primarily to stress-test the autopayment system and see if it works correctly. Help me, please, and you will be....awesome! And possibly 2.5BTC richer!


How to play
--> Just send 0.1BTC to the playing address displayed on the main page, and you will be the proud owner of 1 Raffle฿it Ticket.

--> When all the tickets have been purchased, a winner will be randomly selected, and the Raffle฿it balance sent.

--> Remember, we can't send to any address besides the one used to purchase the winning ticket, so make sure you're playing from an address where your winnings can be received.

--> There is no limit to the amount of tickets you can purchase in each round of Raffle฿it, but we do ask that you send each ticket purchase as a single 0.1BTC payment to the playing address.


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