| Title | Author |
|---|---|
DOXA, the Prized-Linked Lottery System |
Brennan Fife |
Naturally, people (especially Americans) love to play the lottery. In 2017, it was estimated the US spent roughly $75 billion on them alone. Yet, those of us who do not play understand the extremely low chances of winning, as a ticket holder is more likely to be struck by lightning and attacked by a shark (ON THE SAME DAY) then win a MegaMillion jackpot.
According to data drawn by Vox, the people who are sustaining this industry are those who are considered lower class, minority Americans and are often addicts of the game. Stated in the article, "the poorest third of households buy half of all lotto tickets, according to a Duke University study in the 1980s, in part because lotteries are advertised most aggressively in poorer neighborhoods. A North Carolina report from NC Policy Watch found that the people living in the poorest counties buy the most tickets. 'Out of the 20 counties with poverty rates higher than 20 percent, 18 had lottery sales topping the statewide average of $200 per adult,' the North Carolina Justice Center reported."
With most lottery ticket purchases coming from the most destitute neighborhoods, especially in places with more minorities and/or facing financial trouble, DOXA sought to offer a potential solution, introducing a Prize-Linked Savings Account.
DOXA is a prized-linked savings account system. Instead of losing thousands on lottery tickets, DOXA looks to help build a user's savings. Entrants will be incentivized to hold their money by playing small lottery games, which will ultimately raffle off the collective interest of the pool of accounts each month. The original principal will always remain with the users, while each month, a randomly selected address will receive the winning funds. Several technologies can be incorporated into later versions, including (but not limited to) Dai, Rhombus (uniform random number generator), and Compound (for generating interest).
This app hosts the landing page for DOXA. There is an additional file in this folder called 'doxa-the-gui.zip'. This contains the same contracts and migrations, plus the actual GUI to interact with the contract and a truffle-config.js. While the GUI may not be fully functional at the moment, one should still be able to compile, migrate, and test the contract without problem. Make sure you have truffle installed, running on port 7545. Check out the video link to see the contracts compiled, migrated, run in remix, and the beginnings of the GUI.