First introduced by @ash a couple of months ago, the simple idea of a fair blockchain-based lottery stood out to me like a sore thumb. Just like STEEM's simplicity, @trueflip could work well together with this platform. To reinforce that, I've also noticed that the team behind @trueflip has chosen Steemit instead of Medium as their blogging and community engagement platform. And they're even running a contest just for Steemit users - check it out here. Seems like there's a good case to be made. Let me explain why, after this video of their ongoing ICO:-
It's a working product.
Just like STEEM, True Flip is something that is already functioning in the blockchain space. Scalable or not, a good enough community and a simple, universal idea will make it easier for any modifications and upgrades in the future.
Full transparency and fairness.
All lottery ticket sales, results, reward distribution, and organisation's financial health are on the blockchain. I'm not an expert here, but seeing that I'm taking the team's word for it, I hope more people do check their stuff out. Seems fine to me with my limited experience. Again, it's such a simple idea that it's easy to trust as much as it is relatively easier to audit.
Anyone can play.
It doesn't matter who you are, or where you come from. Well, this will only be doubly true if the network is decentralised and matured enough over time to render any state influence useless. Anyone should be able to participate in lotteries if they want to, as long as they can pay for the ticket.
Automated simplicity.
As far as I know, lottery purchases and participation can be automated on True Flip. This is perfect. In any case, if you enjoy the game-like part of the lottery, you can even guess your numbers without having that part of the decision-making process automated. Number guessing is pure luck so I'd just choose to have full automation. But if you think you're great at number guessing, by all means, make your guesses and have fun!
Symbiotic relationship.
I think Steem is a great place to house and fuel any other blockchain communities for added external value streams. Well, it could be a total waste of Steem resources if chances somehow favour non-Steemit users most of the time. Maybe a better kind of blockchain community to fuel an online retail business, but that's added complexity for community participation that requires more deliberation. For a no-brainer, I think every blockchain community should dedicate small portions of their budget in fair blockchain lotteries like @trueflip. A lottery is simply a background process in society that funnels wealth from voluntary contributions into large amounts enough to change somebody's life (hopefully for the better). A wildcard, black swan. @trueflip seems built for massive adoption, and Steem seems very suitable for reasons more than one. Add to the fact that the Steem platform is one of the most widely used blockchains on the planet at the moment, and still growing.
Also, I've always thought that blockchain projects should use Steem as their platform of choice. As someone who owns multiple tokens, the aligned incentives for contributing and sharing relevant stuff when it comes to tokenised projects could in turn improve his stakes. However, this may be better tested when Steemit rolls out its sub-communities feature as it could better encourage active engagement / contribution / participation.
Steem for lottery access (or in general, access-to-services).
The beauty of Steem is that as a community, we get to determine the network's value allocation on the fly through upvotes and downvotes, around the clock. There are a couple of angles to this:-
- Steemit users can easily transfer Steem / Steem Dollar to @trueflip (don't do this yet!) to purchase their lottery tickets. Maybe Steem memo could even work as a way to "circle out" the numbers for @trueflip's powerball-type lottery. There may be other types, and I'm not too sure what the plans are in detail.
or better..
- @trueflip can put up a post each day for community contribution through upvotes, and in turn, the payout will be used for lottery ticket purchase through the @trueflip account with some unique identifiers. Total rewards for every lottery cycle can be distributed according to our voting shares. @trueflip doesn't have the be the only gateway for its lottery, but it's a good start. Not much of a lottery player, but I think it's a decent use of Steem Power, at least as a gaming option.
or maybe way better..
- Any Steem accounts can automate and dedicate a portion % of their earnings into lottery purchase on True Flip, whenever there's enough to buy the ticket. Not sure how this can be done technically, but you get the picture. A simple 1% for an everyman's jackpot is something worth considering, in my opinion. Thinking about it, it would seem that this feature can also be applied to any other miner rewards in other cryptocurrencies, so I guess this is not a special case for Steem. It remains that Steem's specialty is in its posting and voting mechanism as a convenient approach for access to valuable services. I'm sure there are some other creative ways that are more beneficial for the ecosystem. Fill in the blanks..
Steem community co-ownership with True Flip tokens
Not sure if we're any near yet, but ICO / token purchase using Steem transfer, especially community voting - presents a convenient way to have a stake in any other blockchain projects. It would be ideal then if Steem wallets could somehow be part of a decentralised exchange as well. Pretty sure there are many different ways to go about this. The main point is to utilise Steem's capabilities to improve relations with any other blockchain projects in very tangible ways.
But that's just a suggestion, anyone can participate in the ongoing ICO at the moment if they wish to do so. There's just no easy way to do it directly from Steem at the moment, which may be especially important if you're an active user around here. It just makes life easier if Steem supports easy purchase and storage of other tokens.
Conclusion
Steem enables easy participation and its symbiosis with True Flip will enable anyone to get into lotteries conveniently. Steem could have its own lottery game as well without the various management fees, but True Flip represents a way larger rewards pool with its own community of developers / marketers that it may represent a value-added stream that goes both ways. Applied more universally, one can begin to understand how Steem can bridge itself with any other valuable services / tokens / communities with similar activity and reward mechanisms that extend out of the game of pure luck that we find in lotteries. Value exchange across many tokenised communities with external value streams is one of the keys for Steem's growth. I just happen to think that True Flip is worth considering due to its simplicity and potential upside.
Or you know, any Steemit users can just head over to their website to purchase the lottery tickets there, but some kind of bridge like what I've mentioned in this post is just way more awesome for the community around here. I may be off about a lot of things here, but I just felt like throwing this idea out there.
Resources
True Flip: https://trueflip.io/
ICO and token functionality: https://ico.trueflip.io/
ICOrating report: http://icorating.com/project/102/True-Flip
True Flip's Steemit Challenge: https://steemit.com/blockchain/@trueflip/the-challenge