Ethereum-based lottery SmartBillions was subjected to a deliberate hacker attack

Seeking to find some weak points before the launch of the initial coin offering (ICO), the lottery based on ethereum, SmartBillions has suggested hackers to crack the clever contract.

And the outcome, as they say, is history. They got hacked.

SmartBillions says that it is “the first completely decentralized and transparent lottery operated by the Ethereum smart contract “. The company intends to start a “transparent” ICO for the tokens of SmartBillions on October 16, but before the given date, the team of developers wants to check “comprehensive safety” of the clever contract.

On the 2nd of October 2, the development team informed Medium about a challenge to hackers to try to find weak points and the prize offered was 1,500ETH (presumably 500,000 US dollars). The award will go to “the hacker who will manage to find a way to get into the smart contract and to withdraw money”, the team told.

“The team of developers is so confident in the product and the safety that it risks their own money (1500 ETH) to show the safety. Success of a hackathon will prove the stability and safety of the smart contract”, is said in the statement.

In two days after the announcement, two hackers succeeded to leave with the total amount of 400 ETH (120,000 US dollars) before SmartBillions managed to stop the hackathon. The team has congratulated the hackers, having said that it is a good issue, as this will supply them with the time for improvements of a situation prior to the launch of ICO.

“We became witnesses of the best scenario as the violation has been revealed in the course of the hackathon, but not during ICO. We firmly trust in this mechanism of community audit, and as a result we start the next hackathon today, after revision of conditions of the smart contract”, is said in a separate statement, having noted that there will be one more hackathon about the same prize of 1500 ETH.

ICO SmartBillions is planned to start on October 16 and will last for 2 weeks. Within this time the company will launch 200 000 ETH that makes 58 million US dollars at today’s rate of exchange. One token’s price will be 0,001 ETH or 0,30 US dollars. SmartBillions told that 80 percent of the tokens received will be widespread among investors, and the others will be directed to developers.