
Smart-contracts, game theory and a lottery that may never end - opal9
This is not another take on how blockchain will change the world. Or Business. Or Finance. Or any of that nonsense.<p>Blockchains let you write applications that no one owns or controls. Applications that are essential unstoppable.<p>One of the more dangerous yet intriguing smart contracts released recently I think could bear a wider introduction.<p>It&#x27;s hard to sum up all at once but basically: part psychological experiment, part economic blackhole.<p>There is a large cryptocurrency prize pool.
There is 12:00 hour time that is constantly decreasing.
Once this timer runs out, the last 100 participants win a share of the prize pool
Current this is around ~$17,000 USD per person in the top 100.
To get in the top 100 list, you have to purchase &quot;gift boxes&quot;.
These are essentially tickets that increase in redeemable value as more money flows into the game.
Every gift box purchase adds more money to the final pot, and also increases the timer by 2 minute + 30 seconds &#x2F; box.
For example, if someone purchased 10 boxes, then the timer would increase by an added 7 minutes (2 minutes plus 5 minutes).
Ticker price is currently only ~$0.30 USD, making it fairly trivial for one player to add a large increment to the current time.<p>Obviously this is a variant of a pyramid scheme, as early investors are disproportionately rewarded.<p>How will this end?? How many people will pay $0.30 for a chance to win ~$17,000 USD? Also the more people that enter,
the larger the pot is and the more attention there is preventing the clock from reaching zero...<p>Is all the money entering this game essentially stuck forever? Is this a lottery that gets bigger and bigger but no one every wins?<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;just.game&#x2F;
https:&#x2F;&#x2F;justgame.hostedwiki.co&#x2F;pages&#x2F;FAQ
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quickthrower2
Don’t worry. It won’t get stuck forever. The anonymous founder of the game
will probably run away with the money when there is a lot in the pot. I
predict 10 million in the pot before that happens.

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jklein11
If you were going to take the money and run you would be better off doing it
sooner rather than later. A law enforcement agency probably isn’t going to do
too much investigation for $20k but $10 million might get someone turning over
some stones

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trcollinson
Really? I mean, do smart contracts actually hold any legal standing at all? If
it does, under what jurisdiction? Who are the victims?

If it gets big enough I can imagine some anti terrorist groups like the NSA or
FBI making sure the money isn't used for that. I can definitely see the IRS
potentially looking into it. But deep down, if the person who takes the money
shows there was no real contract and he was just collecting it, what more
could be done?

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jklein11
That is exactly what I mean. For $10,000 I don't think anyone is going to be
looking for the answers to those questions. For $10,000,000 people might start
asking these questions.

I definitely do think that what was described would be illegal in most
districts in the US. Forget about the implementation. The organizer says "Hey
bid on the jackpot, the last bidder gets to take the whole thing." and then
they walk away with the jackpot. The question is who's laws did the organizer
break?

