7 ms·

Your FAQ says you use a third party that draws the random numbers. Is this number drawing verifiable somewhere? Can you say anything about their techniques?

adammoelis 6y ago
The insurance company we work with that is responsible for paying out the jackpot prize draws the winning numbers. They have no access to the numbers users have selected, so it's completely blind.
- fsewe20 6y ago
  fair enough, i guess it makes sense to have that separate, just the rng methods nerd in me always interested in how to find randomness.
- davidclark22 6y ago
  I'm curious what kind of controls you have in place to ensure that the company choosing the numbers doesn't have an employee go rogue like what happened with the McDonald's Monopoly game. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonald%27s_Monopoly#Fraud https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonald%27s_Monopoly#Fraud
  - adammoelis 6y ago
    Only two people at the insurance co. know the numbers, so the knowledge is limited. This helps because less chance of a bad actor being involved if the info is limited to a very small circle. We would be able to spot anomalies over time in number of winners of high prizes vs. what the probabilities say, and we would investigate it if anything looked off or suspicious. We also carefully vetted the insurance co. and the people there that we work with. These don't eliminate this risk entirely of course, but they help mitigate it.
- magicnubs 6y ago
  How can the customer confirm that the numbers are truly random and drawn live so you can't coordinate with them? It's to both your benefit and the insurance company's to not have high dollar prizes pay out. The insurance company would be on the hook for the prize, and it would cause your premium to go up. Companies wrongfully fight unemployment claims all the time to keep their insurance rates down. It would be awful tempting for the insurance agency to send you the drawn numbers even ever so slightly early and let you alert them so they can redraw if the jackpot was ever awarded.
  - adammoelis 6y ago
    We want to show the customer that the number draws are truly random. We may do live drawings at some point, which could help. Would love any ideas on how we can hammer home that the number drawings are random and totally kosher. It actually would be beneficial for us for someone to win the jackpot, and not beneficial for the insurer. The marketing benefit of a $10 million payout that an insurance company pays for would be huge for us. That's why the number drawing process is double blind. They choose the winning numbers and they can't see the picks. We can't see the winning numbers but we can see the picks. Also since this type of insurance is purely mathematical, the risk doesn't change for an insurer if someone wins, so the price wouldn't change either. Unlike, say pet insurance, where if Bulldogs get sick more often than you thought, the insurer simply mispriced the risk. This type of insurance is impossible to misprice. It's almost like a casino for the insurers. There is risk but no uncertainty of what the risk is and the odds are in your favor when you write more premium.
    - schoen 6y ago
      The cryptography world has a ton of ideas about this, but it's possible that most of your customers wouldn't find it easy to understand why some of those ideas are correct and fair. A simple one (not necessarily anywhere close to the best that cryptography people have come up with) is to combine several sources of randomness in a prearranged time order and format, and use the result as input into a prearranged cryptographic hash function. At least some of those sources should be publicly verifiable, and at least one of those should be https://beacon.nist.gov/home https://beacon.nist.gov/home. I can think of critiques and limitations in this approach, but it's a good start! Edit: someone elsewhere in this thread has given a link to a more sophisticated method.
nsl73 6y ago
I’m highly skeptical of jackpot generation, as there has been multiple high profile examples of corruption in this process. Yotta would have to insure me this is fair before I consider saving with them, but to be fair I’m probably not their target market as high earner that already has established savings practices.
- adammoelis 6y ago
  Thanks for this feedback. What could we do that would give you comfort in the number drawing process? We definitely want to address this concern, so your feedback here would be great.
  - nsl73 6y ago
    Anything that either A. Improves the transparency of the process B. Improves the entertainment proposition of the gamble aspect of hitting the jackpot. Maybe with a live event you can do both at once.
  - conanbatt 6y ago
    You can do provably fair gambling by using cryptography to show the generation was not tampered with. It was common in bitcoin gambling sites that had no other way to prove they were (somewhat) legit.
    - parkaboy 6y ago
      This 100%, and from the articles I've read on it, it doesn't look too difficult to implement. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provably_fair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provably_fair https://github.com/search?q=provably+fair https://github.com/search?q=provably+fair
    - TheAdamAndChe 6y ago
      While this may be cryptographically sound(I haven't looked into it), it's not a viable solution since it won't be trusted or understood by the majority of their target demographic.

adammoelis 6y ago

The insurance company we work with that is responsible for paying out the jackpot prize draws the winning numbers. They have no access to the numbers users have selected, so it's completely blind.

fsewe20 6y ago
fair enough, i guess it makes sense to have that separate, just the rng methods nerd in me always interested in how to find randomness.
davidclark22 6y ago
I'm curious what kind of controls you have in place to ensure that the company choosing the numbers doesn't have an employee go rogue like what happened with the McDonald's Monopoly game. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonald%27s_Monopoly#Fraud https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonald%27s_Monopoly#Fraud
- adammoelis 6y ago
  Only two people at the insurance co. know the numbers, so the knowledge is limited. This helps because less chance of a bad actor being involved if the info is limited to a very small circle. We would be able to spot anomalies over time in number of winners of high prizes vs. what the probabilities say, and we would investigate it if anything looked off or suspicious. We also carefully vetted the insurance co. and the people there that we work with. These don't eliminate this risk entirely of course, but they help mitigate it.
magicnubs 6y ago
How can the customer confirm that the numbers are truly random and drawn live so you can't coordinate with them? It's to both your benefit and the insurance company's to not have high dollar prizes pay out. The insurance company would be on the hook for the prize, and it would cause your premium to go up. Companies wrongfully fight unemployment claims all the time to keep their insurance rates down. It would be awful tempting for the insurance agency to send you the drawn numbers even ever so slightly early and let you alert them so they can redraw if the jackpot was ever awarded.
- adammoelis 6y ago
  We want to show the customer that the number draws are truly random. We may do live drawings at some point, which could help. Would love any ideas on how we can hammer home that the number drawings are random and totally kosher. It actually would be beneficial for us for someone to win the jackpot, and not beneficial for the insurer. The marketing benefit of a $10 million payout that an insurance company pays for would be huge for us. That's why the number drawing process is double blind. They choose the winning numbers and they can't see the picks. We can't see the winning numbers but we can see the picks. Also since this type of insurance is purely mathematical, the risk doesn't change for an insurer if someone wins, so the price wouldn't change either. Unlike, say pet insurance, where if Bulldogs get sick more often than you thought, the insurer simply mispriced the risk. This type of insurance is impossible to misprice. It's almost like a casino for the insurers. There is risk but no uncertainty of what the risk is and the odds are in your favor when you write more premium.
  - schoen 6y ago
    The cryptography world has a ton of ideas about this, but it's possible that most of your customers wouldn't find it easy to understand why some of those ideas are correct and fair. A simple one (not necessarily anywhere close to the best that cryptography people have come up with) is to combine several sources of randomness in a prearranged time order and format, and use the result as input into a prearranged cryptographic hash function. At least some of those sources should be publicly verifiable, and at least one of those should be https://beacon.nist.gov/home https://beacon.nist.gov/home. I can think of critiques and limitations in this approach, but it's a good start! Edit: someone elsewhere in this thread has given a link to a more sophisticated method.

nsl73 6y ago

I’m highly skeptical of jackpot generation, as there has been multiple high profile examples of corruption in this process. Yotta would have to insure me this is fair before I consider saving with them, but to be fair I’m probably not their target market as high earner that already has established savings practices.

adammoelis 6y ago
Thanks for this feedback. What could we do that would give you comfort in the number drawing process? We definitely want to address this concern, so your feedback here would be great.
- nsl73 6y ago
  Anything that either A. Improves the transparency of the process B. Improves the entertainment proposition of the gamble aspect of hitting the jackpot. Maybe with a live event you can do both at once.
- conanbatt 6y ago
  You can do provably fair gambling by using cryptography to show the generation was not tampered with. It was common in bitcoin gambling sites that had no other way to prove they were (somewhat) legit.
  - parkaboy 6y ago
    This 100%, and from the articles I've read on it, it doesn't look too difficult to implement. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provably_fair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provably_fair https://github.com/search?q=provably+fair https://github.com/search?q=provably+fair
  - TheAdamAndChe 6y ago
    While this may be cryptographically sound(I haven't looked into it), it's not a viable solution since it won't be trusted or understood by the majority of their target demographic.