Tickets, the Pool, and the Ticket Weight Factor

Once the lottery begins, be it manually triggered or at a set date and time through Keepers, Participants enter by staking a value equal to or greater than the item’s price into the MSC, thereby earning a chance to win an item. This chance is represented by a ticket. The ticket can include accepted Sponsor Tokens as well.

Stake Price Premium

The minimum stake required is the Price given by the Sponsor. Additional value staked, called the Stake Price Premium, increases a ticket’s odds relative to a minimum stake.

Determining Ticket Weight

Ticket weight is a key aspect to the DropShop system. Tickets are weighted, that is each ticket has a distinct probability of winning compared to other tickets staked for that lottery (other than those all weighted ‘1’ – which means no price premium or tokens include). Collectively, these individual probabilities are collected into a pool. Rather than one ticket, one chance, each ticket has a unique claim to a portion of the overall pool of entries. Ticket weight is determined by the Participants stake (in relation to the item price), the number of accepted Sponsor Tokens applied, and the Sponsor’s selection of how they want to weight the tickets themselves.

The last aspect – selection of how much price premium and tokens increase ticket weight - is determined by the Ticket Weight Factor (TWF), whose driving function’s parameters are selected by the Sponsor. It in turn drives an off-chain Selection function run on oracles nodes. As previously stated, the Participant has full visibility on the effects of the ticket weight function’s chosen parameters on a ticket’s weight. An integrated tool can allow them to vary their intended stake and token amount to clearly see the effect on ticket weight before staking for a ticket.

As most lotteries will have a quantity greater than one, when a ticket is selected as a winner, it is removed from the pool.

A Participant can stake for more than one ticket to win a lottery, with each ticket representing a separate chance to win a single item. However, they will have to fully stake each, and tokens used for one ticket cannot be used in another.

Sponsors can choose to accept any other Sponsor’s tokens for the lottery, or choose not accept any Sponsor tokens at all (although this can also be achieved by eliminating their contribution to weight in the TWF). This is especially useful in collaborations. For example, a Yeezy X Supreme drop could choose to accept both Yeezy and Supreme tokens.