The results are in for the game to determine the 2nd chance recipients for the Tortoise Protocol purchase.
The game involved calculating the average of all 8-digit numbers submitted by participants. The two winners were chosen based on who submitted numbers closest to 71% and 119% of that average.
After tallying, the average came out to 52952569.2, making 71% = 37596324.1 and 119% = 63013557.4. The two closest numbers submitted were 37414183 and 62742360, and these participants are the winners of the 2nd chance.
There were 73 total entries, of which 4 did not meet the entry requirements, leaving 69 valid entries used for the calculation. In addition, several people sent donations without submitting a number - thank you! These donations will be happily used for coffee.
One person submitted a number starting with 0. This entry was deemed invalid. Even if it had been included, the outcome would not have changed, so there's no issue this time. However, for future events of this kind, we'll either clarify the expected range (e.g., 10000000–99999999) or use a dedicated form that restricts input to valid values.
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Let us explain why we decided to determine the puzzle purchase rights through this kind of process.
For us, the least burdensome way to sell puzzles is to release all available stock at once without prior notice of the launch date or any purchase limits per person. This approach makes administrative processing easier, inventory management simpler, and reduces the risk of overselling due to errors. It can also be considered a fair method. However, such a method may lower the satisfaction of customers who have supported us over the long term. Therefore, we are exploring sales methods that maintain a certain level of fairness while improving the experience for our existing customers.
In the past, when it took months for puzzles to sell out, there was no need to hold back a portion of the stock just in case. But as puzzles began selling out almost immediately after release, we found it necessary to reserve some inventory. When we released Tortoise Protocol, a significant number of shipments ended up being sent in completely wrong directions. Fortunately, despite delays, most packages reached customers safely. However, in similar past situations, we've experienced multiple cases of lost or damaged items.
After Tortoise Protocol sold out, we received many requests for a second chance to purchase. Several people even offered to pay several times the list price. We could have chosen to quietly sell to such individuals, and that would have been much easier and more profitable than collecting $5.00 participation fees and conducting a manual tally. But we don't believe such a method would be supported by most of our customers.
A simple lottery presents the risk of cheating and may cause doubts about whether it was conducted fairly. To address these concerns, we incorporated game elements into the process. We have no plans to conduct simple lotteries in our shop in the future.
We excluded those who already purchased the regular version of Tortoise Protocol from participating in the game, as we believed that would be more acceptable to the majority of participants.
Those without a previous purchase history were also excluded in order to prioritize existing customers. When the regular version was released, a large number of new accounts were registered in our shop, and a fair portion of the puzzles ended up in the hands of those new customers. While everyone starts out as a new customer, for us, the satisfaction of our long-term supporters is more important. We also constantly receive requests to prevent puzzles from falling into the hands of resellers, and this measure serves as part of that response.
We made the $5.00 donation a requirement to participate in the game to clearly identify participants and avoid issues such as missed entries or undelivered emails. When a customer makes a purchase in our shop, the details are recorded on our admin page. Also, participants can confirm the number they submitted by checking the My Account page. Since we also have access to their purchase history, we can verify eligibility. If we had accepted entries by email alone, we would have faced numerous issues such as undelivered emails, inconsistent formatting, and submissions from ineligible individuals.
Juno's original idea was to select the two entries closest to the average as winners. However, this would cause most entries to cluster around the average, which would be boring. To create more diversity in the submitted numbers and reduce the likelihood of multiple people winning, we selected the multipliers 71% and 119%, which result in values with longer decimal points when applied.
Entries with duplicate numbers were disqualified to prevent cheating. For example, if many people submitted 99999999, they could artificially raise the average. We wanted to avoid a situation where multiple people win by submitting the same number. Intuitively, we also felt it was risky to allow duplicate submissions, as they could exploit potential loopholes we hadn't foreseen.
That was quite a long explanation, but in the end, we believe the result turned out to be quite interesting. Both the final average and the winning entries were close to what you might expect from a large set of randomly chosen 8-digit numbers. Whether we try this kind of experiment again remains uncertain, but the whole process has been a valuable learning experience for us.
Happy Puzzling!
