Why Winchain? Decentralized Lottery Platform Explained
Although the Bitcoin has again begun moving lower, following the broader financial markets downturns as global concerns on the cost of the spreading coronavirus, there is no argue that blockchain, the decentralized ledger technology empowers the Bitcoin has fundamentally changed the way people achieving consensus in modern computer networks. Bitcoin’s relevantly simple but revolutionary ledger system replaced the centrally controlled database with a decentralised public ledger in which each participating node (miners) verifies every transaction it receives in prior to write them into the ledger. A blockchain is essentially an append-only, immutable record of all valid transactions on the computer networks.
Another concept that has been gaining attention since the debut of Ethereum is the idea of smart contract. It is basically a piece of code that executes a predefined set of commands comprising a contract between two or more parties on the top of a decentralized ledger system, or a blockchain.
The blockchain allows the smart contract to be securely locked, thereby preventing it from ever being changed. As long as the smart contract deployed on the blockchain exhibits the desired functionality, malicious hackers cannot fraudulently it to alter the contracts or obtain funds without compromising the majority of the nodes on the network, which should be more difficult than attacking just one centralized server or data centre, assuming the network has a large amount of decentralized nodes.
Many of the lottery player might think that the blockchain combined with smart contracts technology seems like an ideal platform to operate a truly transparent lottery that can be easily played from online or mobile. Some projects like Firelotto and Quanta simply developed their Ethereum based smart contracts and launched the blockchain based lotteries accordingly.
Could these Ethereum based lotteries distribute their prize money to the players fairly? The answer is probably yes, as long as they have a fair and transparent winning number generation mechanism that is securely locked onto the Ethereum prior to the sale of the lottery tickets.
However, since Ethereum is a public ledger system, which means theoretically everyone including anonymous people can play the lottery or participate the lottery operation. Sounds nice right? But in reality, such permissionless setup is certainly against any lottery regulation unless another layer of system is setup in between, which could easily jeopardise the whole idea of achieving truly transparency through decentralization, if the design of the system has not been carefully thought through with that in mind.
Designed to support large-scale blockchain based lottery operations, the Winchain platform took its unique approach on how the lottery is played and how the prize money is distributed in a truly transparent and decentralized way.
How does it work?
Part 1: The hybrid network
Winchain is implemented as a hybrid blockchain that combines a public ledger and a consortium ledger together, the consortium part of the hybrid solution is used for transactions among game developers, lottery resellers, auditors and other involving parties, it has a classic permissioned setup, where parties can view, transact, get reward and make changes based on permissions they are given. This part of the network is fast, scalable and secure, the cost of transaction is also low. However, adding more parties and establishing their trust takes longer than on a public ledger.
The public part of the network allows any lottery players to buy lottery tickets and put bets on a public ledger, with an easier process of trust establishment. Because public ledger is completely open and decentralized, more people can participate in the lottery for prizes or rewards and they can be rest assured that the lottery they are playing with cannot be rigged, tampered, or cheated without consensus of the majority.
Similar to a large group of organizations can not only provide read-only access to their customers but also write access internally and to suppliers to improve transparency of their processes, implementing a hybrid blockchain enables Winchain to grasp the benefits of both public and consortium ledgers and further optimize the lottery operating process accordingly.
Part 2: The absolute random number generator
In terms of how to fairly distribute the prize money to players, Winchain’s answer is to develop a unique mechanism, so for each lottery draw, an absolute random number can be generated thanks to the robustness of the Bitcoin network.
The absolute random number is generated with transparent algorithms according to the hash value of Bitcoin’s blocks minable in a specific time predetermined in the smart contract, it can be generated through a number of ways, like the Oracle scheme which simply monitors 7 transaction hashes generated by the Bitcoin network during the time of the lottery drawing, and then take the figures obtained through hash mode 49 as the random numbers. The random number algorithm is programmed into the smart contract and the random numbers generated each time will be transmitted to the smart contract through the Oracle. Once the lottery draw completes, the smart contract will automatically transfer the prizes to the winning addresses.
Summary
Blockchain keeps records of valuable transactions and makes it possible whether it’s ticket sale, jackpot wins, investments, commissions and others to be transparent and fair to all parties involved. The cost of hacking or dodging the system become significantly higher if not prohibitively higher, because the hacker, or even the lottery operator himself has to compromise most of the nodes in order to alter the lottery results.
Adopting a hybrid network combining public ledger and consortium ledger together, plus absolute random number generator executed on the smart contract, Winchain is well positioned to support large scale blockchain based lottery operations.
For more information about the Winchain OS, visit http://www.winchainos.com/ or download and install the Winchain wallet by scanning the QE code.
