Hive Raffle: run giveaways on Hive that anyone can verify
Published on HivePostify by @rzazo24 · Wed Sep 02 2026
If you've ever run (or entered) a giveaway on Hive, you know how it usually goes: "comment to enter, I'll pick a winner tomorrow." And then... you just have to trust that person picked fairly. No proof, no way to check, just their word.
I wanted to fix that, so I built [Hive Raffle](https://hive-raffle.vercel.app/) — a free tool that uses the Hive blockchain itself to pick a winner, in a way that's mathematically impossible to fake, and that anyone can double-check afterwards.
The problem with "trust me"
Even a well-meaning organizer has a problem: if they pick the winner using something like a random number generator on their own computer, they could technically run it several times until they get a result they like — or people will simply assume they might have. There's no way to prove otherwise.
Hive Raffle solves this with something called a commit-reveal scheme. It sounds technical, but the idea is simple:
1. Before the raffle, the organizer publicly announces: "I will use Hive block #12,345,678 to decide the winner" — a block that doesn't exist yet. 2. Nobody, not even the organizer, can predict what that future block will contain. 3. Once the block exists, its unique ID is turned into a winning number using a standard hashing function (SHA-256). 4. Anyone can repeat that exact calculation afterwards and get the exact same winner.
Since the block is announced before it exists, and the result depends entirely on it, there's no way to game the outcome — not by the organizer, and not by a participant trying to time their entry.
How it works, step by step
1. Configure the raffle. Enter the author and permlink of your post. Hive Raffle suggests a block roughly one hour in the future — enough time for people to see the announcement.
2. Announce it. Copy the text Hive Raffle generates (something like "This raffle will be resolved using Hive block #109574771") and post it publicly, for example as a comment on your own post. This is the "commit" step — you're locking in your promise before anyone knows the outcome.
3. Wait for the block. Blocks arrive roughly every 3 seconds, so an hour is usually plenty of margin.
4. Draw. Once the target block exists, hit "Draw now." Hive Raffle fetches the block, hashes its ID, and picks a winner from the list of everyone who commented on your post.
5. Anyone can verify it. This is the part I care about most. Switch to the "Verify raffle" tab, enter the same author, permlink and block number, and the tool recalculates everything from scratch, completely independently. If it matches the announced winner, the raffle was legitimate — no trust required.
You can try this right now with a real example I used while testing the tool: post by @forykw ("powerup-september-2026-licking-oysters-while-ranting"), block #109574771. Paste those into the Verify tab and you should get @discovery-it as the winner.
Optional filters
Two extra rules you can turn on when configuring a raffle:
- Entry deadline: comments posted after a chosen UTC time won't count — closes the door on last-minute entries once people learn the target block. - Require an upvote: only comments from people who also upvoted the post count as valid entries (a downvote doesn't count as support).
Both are optional, and both are also checked during verification, so anyone reproducing the raffle gets the exact same participant list.
Try it
- 🔗 Live: [hive-raffle.vercel.app](https://hive-raffle.vercel.app/)
It's a small, no-backend, no-signup web page — just plain HTML/CSS/JavaScript talking directly to the public Hive API. No account needed to use it, whether you're running a raffle or just checking one.
If you run a giveaway with it, I'd love to see it — drop a comment below if you hit a bug or have an idea for a new filter.
Tags: #hive#hive-dev#javascript#webdev#programming#raffle