[ANN] Whoopy - The World’s First Decentralized Lottery Protocol

[whoopydev]

Introduction

Hey guys,

After months of development and testing, we are proud to announce Whoopy to the world. 

Whoopy is the world’s first decentralized lottery protocol built on the Polygon blockchain, which allows anyone to participate in community-created lotteries. With Whoopy, creators can anonymously create a lottery and customize it according to their liking. Once created, they can promote their lottery on social media for anyone in the world to join.

Winners will be declared using Chainlink VRF, so that anyone can verify that winners were selected in a truly random fashion. When the lottery duration is over, winners will automatically be selected and receive their winnings in the wallet they used to enter the lottery, and the lottery creator will receive 20% of the total pot as commission.

Whoopy also hosts its own weekly lottery called POWER2ALL.

Whoopy is the first blockchain protocol to democratize and automate the entire lottery process, giving anyone with a crypto wallet the power to create lotteries and earn money from them.

Whoopy is one of the few blockchain programs which provides an application which can only be carried out using web3 infrastructure, and is something we believe will bring about mass web3 adoption.

Below, you will find an in-depth explanation about our project, processes, goals, values, vision and more. We also have an extensive FAQ section, however, if you have any questions we haven’t answered, or if you would like to know more about our team or project, let us know and we will get back to you as soon as possible!


What is Whoopy?

Whoopy is a decentralized lottery protocol built on Polygon which allows anyone to participate in community-created lotteries. Participants enter using a crypto wallet of their choice, and automatically receive their winnings in the wallet used to enter the lottery. 

Winners are selected using Chainlink VRF, so participants can verify for themselves that winners were selected in a truly random fashion.

Whoopy creators can customize all aspects of the lottery, such as name, duration, number of winners, entry fee and more. Once parameters are set, they cannot be changed. Creators also have the option of preloading a lottery with any amount of their choice.

In community-created lotteries, winners are only selected if the total number of participants is greater than 50. If this number is not met by the time the duration is up, all players will automatically be refunded their full entry fee to the wallet they used to enter the lottery. If a preload amount was set, then the creator will be refunded this amount as well.


Whoopy Website

Homepage
The Whoopy homepage displays the 5 most recently created lotteries and the weekly POWER2ALL lottery.  It also provides the option for anyone to create their own Whoopy lottery.

Dashboard
The dashboard shows all the lotteries a player has participated in and created, and also displays the user’s Whoopy profile link, which the user can share on social media to promote their created lotteries for their followers/audience to participate in.

Search
Users can enter any wallet address to view all created and participated lotteries for that address.


Engineering and Processes

Whoopy allows every single creator to create their own lottery smart contract. Every created lottery will have its own unique address which will be present on the Polygon blockchain and can be viewed on PolygonScan.

When we set out to accomplish our goal of allowing anyone to be able to create lotteries and make money from them, we found that this was an extremely gas intensive and memory intensive process. We quickly learned that one single contract alone would not be enough to manage and keep track of thousands of different lotteries, with hundreds of thousands, or even millions of different players.

So instead of managing all lotteries within a single contract, we created the Whoopy Implementation Contract. Using a new blockchain technology called 'cloning', we allow our users to create 'clones' of our implementation contract. Clone contracts work by using the logic of the implementation contract with the storage of a newly created 'clone' contract. This allows for easy and cheap deployment of lightweight contracts, and allows for technologies such as the Whoopy Protocol to exist.

In other words, every time someone creates a Whoopy, they will be creating and deploying their own smart contract, with its own address and storage. This newly created contract will be responsible for managing their lottery, and only their lottery, and uses all logic and security features of the Whoopy Implementation Contract. This way, creators can be assured that their lottery is being governed by the most sophisticated technology out there today!


Commission and Payout Structure

Whoopy awards 20% of the total pot to the lottery creator and the protocol receives 20% of the total pot, at the time of payout. These commissions only have an 8-13% net effect on the proceeds for each winner, depending on the number of winners selected for the particular lottery.

Whoopy creators receive their commission automatically into the wallet they used to create the lottery. Payouts are only processed if a lottery gets more than 50 players before the duration is up, else payouts will not be processed and winners will not be declared, and all participants will automatically receive a full refund of entry fee.
WhoopyP2A

Whoopy has its own lottery collection called POWER2ALL, which is a weekly lottery hosted by Whoopy. Whoopy receives a 40% commission on these lotteries. Whoopy POWER2ALL lotteries are always preloaded with a minimum of 1000 MATIC. All POWER2ALL lotteries have 5 winners, and our commission has a net effect of 8% on the payout for every individual winner.

Whoopy POWER2ALL lotteries require a minimum of 1000 participants for winners to be selected, and if this number is not reached, then all participants will be fully refunded when the Whoopy duration is up.


Security

The Whoopy Implementation contract has been fully-audited by our in-house team of highly-experienced developers. All whoopy contracts are equipped with Reentrancy Guards from OpenZeppelin to protect from the most common blockchain exploits. Our implementation contract has also passed all tests using industry-standard testing libraries such as MythX, Echidna and Slither.

To ensure fairness to all participants, no aspects of a lottery can be changed after creation.

Neither the Whoopy team nor the whoopy creator has access to funds in Whoopy contracts. All created lotteries display their contract address, and you can verify this for yourself on PolygonScan.

In case of an unforeseen circumstance, such as Chainlink Oracle failing, we have an ‘Emergency Mode’, which when turned on, will allow all participants to withdraw their entry fee from the respective lottery. We also have the ability to refund creators their preload amount (if set) in case of an emergency. 


Emergency Functions

The Whoopy Implementation contract has been written specifically to ensure flawless performance and uses state-of-the-art security measures. However, the blockchain is still new technology, and with so many moving parts, we understand that there might be circumstances out of our control, or unseen or unpredictable events, which effect our implementation contract.

To protect all Whoopy Creators and participants, all Whoopy contracts come with an 'Emergency Mode' function. In the event of an unexpected circumstance, such as the ChainLink Oracle failing, we will enable emergency mode on the respective contract, which will allow all participants to withdraw their funds from the contract, and we will refund the Whoopy Creator with the preload amount (if set). This will ensure that no funds remain locked in the contract in the event of an unforeseen circumstance.


Bug Bounty

Look in the footer of our website for information about our bounty rewards programme.


Pricing

Whoopy charges a 500 MATIC fee for anyone to create a lottery.


Brand Ambassadors

Brand ambassadors are exempt to the 500 MATIC fee for creating a lottery, and can create lotteries using Whoopy for free. Brand ambassadors are individuals or organisations which have the ability to drive massive traffic to created lotteries. If you are interested in becoming a Whoopy brand ambassador, send us an email.


FAQ

How is Whoopy different from Pool Together?
Pool Together is a lossless lottery application and is an amazing application, however there are two primary ways in which Whoopy differs.

Whoopy gives power to anyone with a crypto-wallet to create their own lottery which picks truly and verifiably random winners and automatically distributes winnings, and gives creators a percentage of the total pot as commission. Creators have fully autonomy over how they market their lottery and can use Whoopy to earn full-time incomes.
Since Pool Together is a lossless lottery, participants don’t get to experience the ‘fear of loss’ which is a big part of lotteries and adds to the excitement and thrill for players. Many studies have shown that lottery participants and gamblers in general get just as much a rush from losing as they do from winning, and Pool Together doesn’t provide them this rush.

How big is your team?
We’ve got a small in-house team of extremely talented developers and a constantly scaling team of contractual workers depending on our workload. We are constantly looking for new members to join out team, particularly those who can help use drive geometric growth.


What was your teams motivation behind starting Whoopy?
Web3 currently lacks an application which offers a genuine use case to all audiences (crypto and non-crypto). The only way to solve this issue was to create an application which would appeal to all audiences, and that would only be possible using web3 infrastructure. 

Whoopy is something which gives its users a tremendous amount of power, and is something which has never been done before, and so we decided to do it. Also, it’s pretty cool!


Plans for availability on other blockchains?
We initially planned on making Whoopy available on the Ethereum, Polygon and BNB chains. However, with the massive success of the Reddit NFT launch on Polygon, as well as Polygon adoption by other giants such as Meta and Starbucks, we decided to postpone our launch on other chains, and to launch only on Polygon.

Based on community feedback, we will decide when (if at all) to add support for additional chains.

What is the primary goal your team is currently working towards?
We currently have two primary objectives- 1) to onboard Whoopy Ambassadors with large audiences, who will be able to create lotteries with a high number of participants and 2) to hyper accelerate online presence and awareness , including but not limited to social media, online forums, news and media outlets, etc.

We will also soon increase the range of Whoopy POWER2ALL lotteries, so we can cater to all kinds of audiences. We will be having larger preload amounts in our POWER2ALL lotteries, to garner attention and to give Whoopy players the opportunity to win larger prizes.

We will also be creating 24-hour POWER2ALL lotteries, with a low number of maximum players and a low entry fee, to enable fast-action and greater odds of winning the lottery.


What will you do with your commission?

The entire Whoopy protocol will be run on our 20% commission. This includes all costs including preloading Whoopy POWER2ALL lotteries, funding our Chainlink Upkeeps and VRF subscription, team compensation, building our marketing budget, and other activities to grow Whoopy and help drive traffic to the Whoopy website and increase our online presence.



Why is it so expensive to create a Whoopy?

Community-created lotteries will only declare winners if more than 50 participants enter the lottery. Getting 50 participants to join a lottery is not something which can be done unless one has a large audience or following.

We do not want our website to be cluttered with empty lotteries, as this will draw attention away from the lotteries with high players. This will also crowd our database and result in the creation of unnecessary Chainlink Upkeeps and Consumers.

Therefore, to stop non-serious creators crowding our database with non-performing lotteries, we have set a high creation fee. 

It’s important to note that Whoopy Ambassadors who can drive huge amounts of traffic will be able to create lotteries for free, and this fee does not apply to them.

I would like to work for whoopy. Are you accepting job-offers?
We are currently looking to work with brand-ambassadors, or any individuals who can help facilitate geometric growth for Whoopy. We are primarily looking for individuals with large followings or those with access to large followings (such as community mods, owners of newsletters, etc) or any one else who can bring large number of participants to Whoopy lotteries.

We are also looking to work with growth hackers who can drive growth for our Reddit and Discord communities, and increase our online presence and SEO ranking. 

If you would like to join the Whoopy team, send us an email  and someone from our team will be in touch with you as soon as possible.

Do you plan on launching a token?
We find one of the biggest hindrances to web3 projects which have potential is that developers are looking to make quick money by launching a token, when in fact a token is not really needed.

Developers focus on ICO’s instead of working on the underlying technology, and in the process lose interest in the technology which could have brought about a radical change to web3.

There is no need for us to launch a token at this stage, since there already is amazing technology to help facilitate our mission and we are not focused on an ICO. 

This said, we have discussed the idea of a rewards token or a system which will allow us to reward top Whoopy creators and regular Whoopy participants, however this is something we will only consider at a much later stage.


Ending Note
Whoopy is the first application built on a blockchain which has a genuine and appealing use case to audiences of all kind. Whoopy is an application which allows users to make money in a way which was never possible before web3.

This is the first application which can lead to a mass migration of users from web2 to web3, and this is what we are aiming for. We aim to the catalyst which brings web3 to the forefront and onboards millions of non-crypto users to the world of crypto.

So what are you waiting for? Visit whoopy[dot]io and start winning today!