I think it may take a lot of efforts to understand this concept too @OP, however I have somehow figured out what it is. Let me share my personal opinion here and correct me where I'm wrong.
The statements I'll be taking are from your website @OP
In a penny auction, each bid is paid for in advance, and there are no returns.
This means that the bids are final, and nothing will be given back to the bidder in case he loses the auction. Got this point.
The prize starts off as 10k satoshis.
Ok, so the starting prize money is 10k satoshis, who pays these 10k sats?
@OP will you pay this for each auction out of your pocket?
What if the total bids are made by just 2-3 members and it doesn't even reach total 10k sats? Won't you lose money?
Let's take
this game as an example, there is just one bidder and with just 300 sats, he can win 10k sats.
Why don't you set up a minimum bid column too, so that you can start the auction with a set minimum. And why are the bids transparent? Can't you hide the bids and keep it fair for everyone? If not, why don't you do this as 'lowest and unique bid wins the auction'?
That will give a boost to your game because this maximum bid kinda games were already played in the past and were not so successful.
When we will participate in this game, will the auction starter be allowed to decide the prize amount? Or it stays the same for all the future auctions?
Anybody can make a bid for the prize, at any time.
So, aren't we cutting away our own head with an axe by bidding here when someone who wants the prize, comes and manipulates all the previous bids by his biggest bet? Even if the manipulator pushes the bid with just 1 satoshi ahead, he becomes a winner, won't he?
In the case of a tie, funds are distributed equally to the winning bidders and any fractional remainder is left with the host.
How can there be a tie when the bids are already known?
If not all, you are showing the maximum bid amount, so why would someone place an exact same bid like the maximum one? What's the point here?
And what is this fractional remainder? I mean, what units are counted as fractional remainder here? A few satoshis? uBTC, mBTC, what exactly?
Tbh I'm not so satisfied with the overall concept and I believe that you should make some serious changes before taking these games live as even with an escrow, this can still be manipulated for someone's personal winning agenda and will be unfair to those bidders who made earlier buds but lose due to that last minute bidder who sends a very big bid like (possibly) 0.01, 0.1 or even 1 BTC bid if the winning amount that the auction carries is huge.