The fair draw

How the draw is kept fair

We choose when the draw happens. We never choose who wins. Here is how that is enforced and how you can check it.

1. 01

   Every ticket is one chance

   Each round has a fixed number of tickets. When your payment lands you get numbers nobody else holds. Ten tickets are ten chances. Nothing else changes your odds.

2. 02

   The ticket list gets locked

   When the round closes we take the full list of sold tickets and compute its fingerprint. That is a SHA-256 hash. It goes up on this page before the draw. Change one ticket afterwards and the fingerprint no longer matches.

3. 03

   The random number comes from outside

   We set the draw time ahead and post a countdown. The random number is published at that moment by drand. It is a public randomness beacon run by a group of universities and companies around the world. Nobody can know the number early. That includes us.

4. 04

   One sum picks the ticket

   We join the random number, the fingerprint and the round number, hash them and divide by the number of tickets in the draw. The remainder points at one ticket in the locked list. Anyone can redo the sum with the values below and land on the same ticket.

result = SHA-256( random number : fingerprint : round number )
winner = ticket list[ result mod tickets in the draw ]

When the beacon is down

If drand cannot be reached at the draw time, we can run the draw with our own server's random generator instead. The record below always says which source was used.

Check your own ticket

Your tickets page shows an entry code. It is made from your order reference and your private link, so only you can reproduce it. The same code sits next to your ticket numbers in the locked list.

The record