Building Games with Ethereum Smart Contracts: Intermediate Projects for Solidity Developers

© Kedar Iyer and Chris Dannen 2018

Kedar Iyer and Chris DannenBuilding Games with Ethereum Smart Contractshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-3492-1_8

8. Lotteries

Kedar Iyer¹  and Chris Dannen¹

(1)

Brooklyn, New York, USA

 

Lotteries are an excellent use case for Ethereum. Like pyramids, lotteries were among the first contracts on the Ethereum blockchain. Results are provably fair, enabling the lottery to be run without a central authority taking a cut of the winnings, and without anchoring its operation in any single legal jurisdiction. It is highly likely that the lotteries of the future will be conducted on a blockchain. This chapter covers the primary roadblock to running a good lottery—random-number generation—and develops a series of increasingly ...