0341 here and I can't get back to sleep after getting up to pee.
an idea just popped into my head. I could write a lottery in Ethereum that pays out every hour or so. that doesn't cost anything for the ticket; the transaction fee would be the customer's only loss. that wouldn't fund any state racket. that wouldn't leave literally billions of pieces of paper waste per day on the streets of the world.
the payout algorithm would take into account the amount of the bid. let's say ETH0.0123 would count as 1230000 tickets. stack the blocks of tickets end to end, and generate a random number to index into the stack. there's your winner!
if it's coded right, there won't and can't be any cheating. and if it's not coded right, it will be easy for someone to copy and correct, and make a new one.
it's probably already been done. I haven't googled it, and honestly I've paid little attention to Ethereum, as I couldn't wrap my head around it. but this idea gives me something small and simple enough to start with. I might just try it. it could be my greatest gift to humanity.
last updated 2016-08-04 06:54:11. served from tektonic.jcomeau.com