Why We Built SecureDraw™

Most government-approved raffle systems in Australia were designed decades ago — built for bingo halls, school fundraisers and footy club meat trays. They weren’t designed to handle high-volume, high-value, fully digital draws like those at the Goat Club.

These legacy systems rely on manual processes, opaque “random generators,” and static ticket lists — none of which scale or inspire real trust in a modern online world. They don’t show you how a winner is chosen. They don’t let you verify that your entry was processed fairly. And they certainly don’t give you cryptographic proof that the result couldn’t have been tampered with.

We knew we could do better...

Which is why we built SecureDraw™ — a system engineered from the ground up to ensure total fairness, transparency and accountability at internet scale. Every draw is randomized with secure cryptographic inputs and verifiable by you, the entrant — not just by us.

Here’s how it works.

Your Entry Is Your Unique Code

Our system generates a unique identifier for every entry called an Entry Seed. This seed acts as your personal code(s) for the draw and helps ensure that every entry is processed independently and fairly.

The Entry Seed forms the first part of the input used to generate a secure hashed result for your entry.

A Secret Draw Seed To Ensure Randomness & Security

Before the draw begins, a secure Draw Seed is generated. The Draw Seed is locked away and remains secret until after the draw ensuring no one can predict or manipulate the outcome. This hidden code (revealed post draw) also ensures that the process is completely random and you’ll learn why further into this explainer.

How Entries Are Processed

During the draw, the system securely combines three elements to create a hashed result for each entry:

Entry Seed: Your unique code, specific to each of your entries.
Draw Seed: The secret random code generated before the draw.
Draw ID: A randomly generated number unique to the draw that adds further randomness.

These inputs are processed using a cryptographic hashing algorithm called SHA-256, which produces a unique fixed-length hash for each entry.

These hashed results are then indexed and stored on a secure server.
The use of the Draw Seed ensures that every hashed result is random and unpredictable, even if the Entry Seed and Draw ID are known.

Selecting the Winning Entry

Once all entries have been processed and their hashed results are generated and indexed, the system uses a mathematical process called the modulo operation to randomly determine the winning index, ensuring that every entry has an equal and fair chance of being declared the winner.

Here’s how it works:

Step 1: Hashing the Draw Seed and Draw ID

• The system combines the Draw Seed with the Draw ID.
• These two values are processed through a secure cryptographic algorithm (SHA-256) to generate a hashed value. The hashed result is a long string of characters in hexadecimal format (e.g.,3f2a1c5d9e8b…).

Step 2: The Hashed Result is converted into a Numerical Value

• To use this hashed result in the modulo operation, it must be converted from its hexadecimal representation into a numerical value using Base Conversion.
• Hexadecimal is a base-16 system (using 0–9 and a–f), so each character is translated into a corresponding decimal number.

For example, the hash ‘3f2a’ becomes the decimal value ‘16202’.

• This ensures the hashed result can be used as a large number in subsequent calculations.

Step 3: Applying the Modulo Operation

• The system then divides this large numerical value by the total number of entries in the draw.

Example

Imagine there are 1,000 entries in a draw. The Draw Seed and Draw ID are joined (Combined Seed) and hashed, producing the hexadecimal result 5e4f3a. This result is converted into the decimal value 6124794 using Base Conversion.

• Dividing this by the total entries (1,000) gives you 6,124.794
• — Quotient: 6,124
• — Remainder: 794
• The remainder (794) maps to the entry at number 794 in the index, declaring it the winner.

Why This Is A Fair Way of Drawing

Randomness from the Hashed Result:

• The system uses a cryptographic hashing algorithm (e.g., SHA-256) to generate a random hashed result by combining the Draw Seed (hidden during the draw) and the Draw ID (unique to the draw).
• The hashing process ensures that the output is unpredictable and evenly distributed across its possible range, providing a strong foundation for fairness.

Conversion to Numerical Format:

• The hashed result, initially in hexadecimal format, is converted into a large numerical value using Base Conversion. This ensures it can be used in the modulo operation yet maintains the randomness of the hashed result.

Modulo Operation Guarantees Equal Chances:

• The large numerical value of the hashed result is divided by the total number of entries in the draw. The remainder of this division determines the winning index.
• The modulo operation ensures that the remainder is always a number within the range 0 to Total Entries – 1.
• Because the hashed result is random and evenly distributed, every possible remainder in this range is equally likely. This means every entry in the indexed list has the same probability of being selected as the winner.

Tamper-Proof and Transparent

• The Draw Seed, hidden during the draw, ensures that no one can predict or manipulate the outcome. After the draw, the Draw Seed is revealed so participants can verify that the process was conducted fairly and as described.

Verifying The Results

After the draw concludes and the winner is determined, the system reveals the Draw Seed. This allows participants to independently verify the results. Using the verification tool, you can:

• Recreate your hashed result using your Entry Seed, the revealed Draw Seed, and the Draw ID.
• Confirm that your hashed result was included in the index.

Still not 100% convinced? That’s fine and it’s good that you take things you see on the internet with a grain of salt, as we all should!

To put your mind at ease, you can additionally use a third party SHA256 Generator to recreate your hashed result. There are plenty out there so we’ll leave it up to you to choose after a quick google search.

To do so, find any SHA256 Generator and input your values without any spaces in this exact order:
[DrawSeed][EntrySeed][DrawID]

Then click ‘Generate’ and the hashed output should match the Hashed Result that is shown in your dashboard and our verification tool.