An E-lottery System with a Fair Purchasing Environment and an Arbitration Mechanism

Abstract

Lottery is an attractive game as the winning player can potentially receive a huge amount of prize money. Advances in Internet and communications technologies and the popularity of online shopping resulted in proxy-purchasing-services, and more recently there have been attempts to digitize lotteries into ‘real’ electronic lottery (E-lotteries; i.e. moving away from websites that merely provide proxy purchasing services). However, there are challenges E-underlying existing E-lotteries. For example, the lottery originator (LO) may forge a winning player and share the prize with the actual winners, by purchasing one or more lottery tickets of the winning number before publishing the number. Other concerns include exploitation by malicious employees of lottery providers. In this paper, we use the verifiable random function, digital signature algorithm (DSA) and bulletin board mechanism to establish an E-lottery system, which has a fair and secure purchasing environment and an arbitration mechanism. The former ensures the rights for both the players and LOs, whereas the latter allows the resolution of a dispute and protects the rights and interests of players as well as lottery providers.