[Dev Log] Auctions on the Ethereum LiveNet Blockchain

Making auctions available on the Ethereum LiveNet blockchain through a Smart Contract may look easy. One could search on Google and figure out that Solidity example itself is about creating auctions on the blockchain (Solidity by Example — Solidity 0.4.19 documentation).

However, if the auction decision process is quite simple, difficulties are elsewhere.

You must pay to send a transaction

To push a transaction on the Ethereum LiveNet blockchain, you have to pay. This payment is called gas payment. It means that if you want to bid on an auction, you have to pay. If you have to bid a hundred times to win the auction you have to pay a hundred times.

And this gas payment is not a part of the amount you will have to actually pay to complete the auction process. Furthermore, if you lose the auction, your gas payment will be lost too.

Here is the first dilemma for DomRaider. Can we ask our average user to pay to simply get to bid on the auction? And even for a savvy blockchain user, is it acceptable to have to spend money for every single bid?

Transactions take time

When you send a transaction to the Ethereum LiveNet blockchain, you have to wait for it to be validated by the Ethereum miners. This takes approximately 15 to 30 seconds.
Imagine a hot auction with dozens of users bidding at the same time a few seconds before the auction ends. They will have to wait 30 seconds to see the outcome of their bid. Not acceptable.

Other scenario, let’s consider an auction with an anti-snipping mechanism meaning the end of the auction is pushed back 10 seconds for every bid placed in the last 10 seconds of the auction. This wouldn’t even be possible considering the mining delay.

Bidders are not (all) blockchain-aware

When someone is about to sell an asset using blockchain auctions, he does not want the bidders pool to be limited to blockchain people. He wants everybody to be able to bid on his auction, including people who:

• do not want to manage an Ethereum wallet
• do not want to send smart contract transaction signed with their private key
• do not want to watch a block explorer to see their bid result
• do not want to call smart contract methods to see auction status

Now what?

DomRaider is striving to provide an easy-to-access auction system on the blockchain. We have already found some solutions which we will tell you more about shortly, and we of course keep on working on new ways to solve our other current issues to provide a solid basis for our auction platform.