What is this?

A novel way to draw a random winner for your giveaway. Unlike traditional raffles, this one cannot be rigged!

The raffle algorithm pulls the latest news published by The Guardian newspaper, so even the raffle holder can't know the outcome in advance, yet everyone can verify it for themselves!

To use, just decide what you want to hold a raffle for, then make your post telling everyone two things:
1. A keyword of your choice, such as "banana"
2. The exact time the raffle will be drawn.

That's it! Close to raffle close time, assign every participant a number based on the order in which they've commented - like a lottery ticket.

When the time is due, anyone can check the results using the two pieces of information! No data is stored at any point.

Additionally, the code is Open Source and can be inspected for even further transparency.

(1) Enter raffle ID (seed) to check for:
(2) Enter number of participants:
(3) Enter custom participant names (optional):
(4) Impartial external seed:
will be derived automatically from The Guardian


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Result fetched at
News published at
  • Using any predetermined seed and the number of total participants at time of raffle close, fairly pick a raffle winner in a way that's reverse-engineerable, yet the outcome is unknown until the end.
  • The very purpose is that the code is Open Source and transparently available for inspection. Anyone can verify the result at the time it happened, with some effort even retroactively.
  • Bear in mind news are sometimes published in rapid succession, so the result for the same seed and participants is only the same for any given time while the latest news last.
  • Designed and created by Mario Staykov