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Hey all,
I just wanted to stop by and introduce a project I hacked up last week. It's basically American football squares for Bitcoiners.
For those unfamiliar: football squares is a 10x10 grid where you buy squares before numbers are assigned. After all squares are sold, numbers 0-9 are randomly assigned to rows and columns. Your square wins if the last digit of each team's final score matches your numbers. Pure luck, no skill required. Your grandma has the same odds as the guy who memorizes QB ratings.
Buy squares using on-chain bitcoin or lightning. I'm keeping it super light: only 2,100 sats per square. We have a Telegram chat at: https://t.me/+X4fLtPvBANs2MzYx.
The number randomization is provably fair. Numbers are randomized using the Bitcoin block after all squares are purchased. That block's hash is used as a seed for the RNG to create a deterministic set of shuffled digits, 0-9. Those are the numbers for the squares.
I understand the exit scam risk. I've tried thinking through ways of mitigating it but I can't. Best I can do is keep the games light/cheap to keep risk as low as possible. I'm all ears for ideas.
Winner takes all for now. Planning to add quarterly payouts if people actually use this thing.
11 sats \ 3 replies \ @grayruby 15h
I tagged all our NFL Survivor Pool players for more visibility for you.
Did you build this or did you use AI?
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Thanks a lot for tagging the pool players. I'd love to get a tight-knit group of degens to take part.
I built this using AI.
FWIW, I'm a software engineer by trade. These days, not leveraging AI is a misstep. The time gained by using it is incredible.
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @grayruby 15h
I am working on a vibe coded app to host all of our contests in the territory. Yours is very clean and the lightning payment functionality works well. I haven't got lightning login and payments up and running yet but we have the shell for it.
I am using replit. What did you use?
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I use Claude Code and Cursor as a text editor (I don't really use its AI any more as they nerfed their $20 tier).
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Tried to buy a square on mobile and my payment invoice never loaded
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Thanks not be mean but i am tired of Bitcoiners using telegram for support. Why not try stacker news or keet! Or a platform that doesn’t have a million scammers waiting to scam us honest folk
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Totally fair, yeah. Telegram is pretty scammy. It just happens to be where a huge majority of Bitcoiners chat in real-time.
I'm super open to help here (as seen) or on Keet.
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Yeah telegram and KYC is where OGs have really let us new bitcoiners down.
Just saying if you truly care about your future customers don’t use telegram.
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Definitely. Keet is a good alternative. I've gone ahead and opened a room there for support if you ever need it: pear://keet/yfou4emhprdbygg5w7zbawxrs4nsrqmkndno98winm3fg851jwwwa6ybzqmzi1p67udbcpzqtfdcgopr6363xjmmxh5f51i6zxk14e6pxhwtygs9refxosjm9yskhg3r4uqci91jt4cq3id5xf8pc9pzhc84kye
Thanks for the suggestion.
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Since keet is new-ish it might be a bit unstable and but less likely to be full of bots and scammers like telegram
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@SatSquares what happens if not all squares get sold?
I also have an idea for a "Weekly" square, which is similar to how I've done a March Madness square before. Where you buy squares and the get paid out a certain amount for any game that ends in your amount. Instead of the access representing individual teams, they represent the Winning team and the Losing team. This would likely, at the start make it easier to fill out a full pool in the early goings.
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I'm (unfortunately) the buyer of last resort. I'll make sure everything gets sold so we have a game. I hope you don't mind that. I can refund everything but, with such a cheap game, may be nice to get it going.
Let me see if I understand you weekly squares idea:
  • Say, week 3 of NFL, there's one "Weekly Squares game." 100 squares sold, same number randomization, top-side winning, left-side losing team.
  • Any game that hits wins a certain amount for that person.
That sound right?
How are payments split? If, say, it's a 100 sat grid, is it just 100 divided by number of games?
I dig the idea. I can probably code it up this week if there's enough interest.
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Pretty much right. I can type in more detail later when not on phone/back from workout. But for easy math say it's 160 sats per square, for 100 squares. 16,000 sats total. There are 16 games. 1,000 sats to win each game (if you want to have quarter/half break downs you can) but only 1,000 sats total for each game. Let's say I have Winning Team 7, Losing team 3. If I had this in week 1 I'd have hit two games (Packers 27-13 over lions, and 49ers 17-13 over Seahawks) and I'd have won 2,000 sats of the win was for end score only (obviously different if you do quarterly/half rewards). The March Madness one I do at work is great as it tiers up per game winnings based on round, but that's for another day haha)
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Hell yeah, love it.
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Ok you twisted my arm.
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