Cryptoball

Controlled by nobody, available everywhere.

Introduction

One of the reasons for the emergence of cryptocurrencies is the mandatory presence of intermediaries inherent to fiat money. Governments and powerful financial institutions control all electronic transfers besides also controlling cash issuance.

As cryptocurrencies and blockchain become an alternative for cash,
lotteries based on this technology are becoming more popular. Among the advantages are: transparency, reliability, and fairness. 

Cryptoball Lottery is fully  decentralized. It is unstoppable.
It runs globally, there is no particular jurisdiction. No entity controls it,  the lottery runs in the form of a Smart Contract with publicly available source code. These features ensure full transparency, reliability, and fairness.

Lottery rules

As a symbol of freedom and popularity, the Crypotball lottery runs nearly by the same rules as the popular American Powerball lottery.

Select five numbers from 1 to 69 for the balls; then select one number from 1 to 26 for the Cryptoball.

Cryptoball jackpot grows until it is won. Players win a prize by matching one of the 9 Ways to Win.

Activate Powerplay and you can boost your win up to 10 times. 
With Mulitplay you can play the same numbers up to 10 times in the same round.

Distribution of Funds

Most government controlled lotteries pay less than 50% of the amount collected in bets, not to mention possible taxes.

The Cryptoball lottery is designed to distribute all bets back to players or TRT token holders.


A fraction of the remaining amount in the Jackpot (only 1%), after paying all winning bets, is distributed weekly to TRT token holders.

Gameplay Mechanics

Fill the play slip

In the Play Section you need to fill a complete set of winning numbers.

Select 5 balls from the first section between 1 to 69.

Select 1 Cryptoball between 1 to 26.

You can  decide if you like to activate Powerplay.  
(by default not set)

If you like to play  your numbers  up to ten times in the upcoming draw you can choose Multiplay too.

Check and Play

The total cost in Signa is shown at the end of the 
Play Section.

You can change the Powerplay or Multiplay options, and the additional cost in Signa will automatically be reflected in your total costs for the Cryptoball ticket.

If all is set,
click the "Play Now" button at the end of the Play Section to open your Phoenix wallet.

Draw occurs about 40 minutes after timer ends.

Deeplink to Phoenix

After you hit the "Play Now" button in the Play Section a call (Deeplink) will be made from the webpage to your local Phoenix installation.

It is recommend to keep the Phoenix Wallet open in the background on your PC while you play Cryptoball.

The call (Deeplink) opens the  Send Signa page with already filled attributes like amount, fees and a Message part.

You need to accept the payment in Phoenix to send your ticket to the Smart Contract on the Signum Blockchain.

Message to the Smart Contract

The payment you see has two parts which should not be changed at all.
 
The Signa Amount is exactly your play slip costs. You should not change it, as a wrong amount makes your play invalid. Wrong amounts are not paid back !

The message part is a HEX value which represents your play slip for the Smart Contract.  It adds the 5 balls, Cryptoball and Powerplay as one number.

If you would like to see the pattern you can enter the HEX value here and convert it as HEX to DEC as little endian flagged.

Joining the Cryptoball Lottery

By submitting your valid ticket to the Smart Contract on the Signum blockchain,
your winning numbers will be processed by the next draw within 24 hours.
Any combination of ball hits as of the table below will be automatically paid to your Signum Account by the Smart Contract.

MATCH PRIZE POWERPLAY
2x		 POWERPLAY
3x		 POWERPLAY
4x		 POWERPLAY
5x		 POWERPLAY
10x
5 Balls + Cryptoball GRAND PRIZE GRAND PRIZE GRAND PRIZE GRAND PRIZE GRAND PRIZE GRAND PRIZE
5 Balls 100  Million Signa 200Million Signa 200 Million Signa 200 Million Signa 200 Million Signa 200 Million Signa
4 Balls + Cryptoball 5 Million  Signa
 10 Million Signa
 15 Million Signa 20 Million Signa
 25 Million Signa
 50 Million Signa
4 Balls  10'000 Signa 20'000 Signa 30'000 Signa 40'000 Signa 50'000 Signa 100'000 Signa
3 Balls + Cryptoball  10'000 Signa 20'000 Signa 30'000 Signa 40'000 Signa 50'000 Signa 100'000 Signa
3 Balls  700 Signa 1'400 Signa 2'100 Signa 2'800 Signa 3'500 Signa 7'000 Signa
2 Balls + Cryptoball  700 Signa 1'400 Signa 2'100 Signa 2'800 Signa 3'500 Signa 7'000 Signa
1 Ball + Cryptoball  400 Signa 800 Signa 1'200 Signa 1'600 Signa 2'000 Signa 4'000 Signa
Cryptoball 400 Signa 800 Signa 1'200 Signa 1'600 Signa 2'000 Signa 4'000 Signa

The table is for a 200 Signa play but you can multiply the same numbers up to 10 times per one play using the Multiplay feature.

For an additional 100 Signa per tciket (or 100 Signa times the Multiplay selected), the PowerPlay feature can multiply non-jackpot prizes by 2, 3, 4, 5 or 10 times! The multiplier number is randomly selected just before each draw.  The 10x multiplier is only in play when the advertised Jackpot is 10 Million in Signa or more. 

Prizes ,Payments & Donation

Winning Cryptoball


Prizes and Grand Prize are paid by the Smart Contract balance.
2 Millon Signa are 
initially paid to the contract from the community.

If you want to donate to the lottery just send Signa to the Smart Contract 

All prizes are capped by 50% of the Smart Contract balance aka Jackpot.

Max win is 

50%

Jackpot distribution

TRT Token 


If you hold a minimum of 100'000 TRT in any of your Signa Accounts, you qualify to receive a portion of all jackpots!

Why should you own TRT tokens?

Every week (equivalent to 7 draws), TRT holders are rewarded with 1% of the Cryptoball Lottery Smart Contract reserves (after paying all winning bets)! The more TRT you own, the higher your share of the rewards. You need minimum 100'000 TRT tokens on any Signum Account to be validated for the reward.

How can you get TRT tokens? 

They can be bought and sold on the decentralized exchange BTDEX . They can also be earned by cross-chain market makers on BTDEX.

TRT holders get

1%

Randomize winning numbers on a Blockchain 

Security and Randomness

On the Cryptoball Lottery, all bets go to a smart contract with source code freely available. Prizes are automatically paid by the Smart Contract to the addresses originating the bets, so there is no man in the middle. Users cannot be cheated on.  All this is assured by the immutable code of a Smart Contract which is not executed by any particular party but rather the whole blockchain.

Nevertheless, there still is an open challenge for all blockchain based games, how to obtain true randomness. According to this article, no one has yet (as of spring 2019) implemented a good and strong random source in the blockchain and tested it live. Part of the problem is easily solved, as long as strong cryptography is used, strictly unbiased results are obtained. Using the Signum blockchain this can be easily obtained from block hashes. However, as miners can influence block hashes (for instance, by adding an additional transaction to a block) they can start influencing the results to generate their desired numbers. Miners of any blockchain seek profit and a strong design should assume that miners cannot be trusted.

Thus, many solutions to this problem have been proposed. Among the most common are the commit-reveal and the use of an oracle. The former adds complexity and requires users to interact with the system more than once for a single bet. Additionally, miners could still block transactions and then again somehow influence results. The later one, based on an oracle, proposes the use of third parties outside the blockchain. However, having to trust a centralized oracle is unacceptable. It not only contradicts the very core of the blockchain philosophy but also is subject to the fact that this central point can be corrupted at any time.

The Cryptoball Lottery solution for this problem is to keep any attempt to tamper with the results unprofitable for miners, since there are some fundamental restrictions we cannot overcome in a truly decentralized way. All players of a fair and truly random lottery should know that they cannot profit in the long term. Bets should be made for fun or occasionally expecting good luck for whatever reason. Miners trying to tamper with the system in a systematic way, will need to beat the 30% average cut reserved for network and Smart Contract fees besides keeping the jackpot amount. If the winning numbers were to come from a single specific block hash, it could be feasible for a miner owning a substantial hashing power to take advantage of it. To avoid this, winning numbers of each round will come from several different block hashes.

The seed for the winning numbers of each round (on block height N) will consist of 128 bits. Half of these bits (64 bits) will be taken as follows:

Block Height N-9 N-8 N-7 N-6 N-5 N-4 N-3 N-2 N-1
Bit Number 1 ..... 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64

This way, the first 56 bits will come from the block N-9 and then 1 bit from block N-8 up to N-1. Using these first 64 bits, plus another 64 bits from block height N-9, a SHA-256 hash is applied to get the winning numbers. Any change in any of these bits generates a completely different result. By manipulating only the last bit, only two different numbers can be obtained which is a very small subset in the universe of possible values. This alone greatly reduces any advantage a dishonest miner can have.

Furthermore, a miner with a huge capacity could indeed mine several blocks in a row, but the chances of this happening exactly on the block heights where the numbers are drawn are much reduced. Most smart contract platforms can only react to transactions and here lies an advantage of the Signum Smart Contract platform:

A Smart Contract can be programmed to run in a specific block, regardless of receiving transactions or not.
This means that the contract can be programmed to run on a specific block height and there is nothing miners can do about it.