Buterin: Building fair lotteries on Bitcoin requires O(N³) collateral versus O(N) on Ethereum
Vitalik Buterin · a16z Podcast | Ethereum, App Coins, and Beyond · Jan 2, 2019 · at 13:55
Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, contrasts the collateral efficiency of constructing complex smart contracts on Bitcoin versus Ethereum, referencing research published by Cornell researchers.
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“Like, one of them was they published this at the Financial Cryptography, in the workshop, that they were trying to create a provably fair lottery on top of Bitcoin, and it turns out that if you have N players in the lottery, Then you basically have to have O of N cubed collateral in order for the thing to actually be safe. So you basically have to have every person submit enough collateral in order to cover everyone winning simultaneously. And then you actually have to have every person submit enough collateral to cover everyone simultaneously covering everyone. So the way the structure works just ended up being kind of incredibly complex and basically like worthy of a research paper. Whereas in Ethereum, the same thing could be done as they discovered with just O of N.”
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