Why On-Chain Randomness?
Traditional raffles often rely on off-chain methods (like website scripts or manual drawings) which can be opaque and potentially manipulated. On-chain randomness provides:- Verifiability: Anyone can audit the process on the blockchain.
- Tamper-Resistance: It’s extremely difficult for anyone (including raffle organizers or network participants) to influence the random outcome.
- Trust: Builds confidence that the winner selection is genuinely random and fair.
How Pyth Entropy Works (Simplified)
- Request: When a raffle is ready to be resolved, the PollyPrize contract sends a request (along with a fee) to the Pyth Entropy contract on the Abstract network.
- Secure Generation: Pyth Network uses a secure, multi-party commit-reveal scheme involving off-chain providers to generate a strong random number.
- Callback: Once generated, the Pyth Entropy contract calls back to the PollyPrize contract, delivering the random number in a separate, verifiable transaction.
- Winner Selection: The PollyPrize contract uses this verified random number as a seed to run its internal algorithm, which deterministically selects the winning ticket index (or indices) based on the total number of tickets sold.
- Processing: The contract then maps the winning ticket index back to the participant’s wallet address and proceeds with finalizing the raffle (recording winners, distributing prizes).
Provably Fair
Using Pyth Entropy ensures that the winner selection process is cryptographically secure and unbiased. You don’t have to trust the PollyPrize team to pick a winner fairly – you can trust the math and the decentralized oracle network.