# Running private lotteries attack

**URL:** <https://forum.algorand.co/t/running-private-lotteries-attack/519>\
**Category:** General\
**Created:** [May 15, 2019, 4:19pm UTC](https://forum.algorand.co/t/running-private-lotteries-attack/519 "2019-05-15T16:19:11Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 3

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**Author:** ![jason](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/dc4da7/32.png) [@jason](https://forum.algorand.co/u/jason)\
**Post date:** [May 16, 2019, 3:06pm UTC](https://forum.algorand.co/t/running-private-lotteries-attack/519/3 "2019-05-16T15:06:42Z")

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> Dividing stake across multiple accounts does not increase your chance of winning lotteries or increase the weight of your stake.

This is a claim without any supporting argument, reference, or evidence. Please try, at least a little, to support your claim.

The discussion on page 28 of the white paper [[https://arxiv.org/pdf/1607.01341.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1607.01341.pdf)] seems to say very clearly that the number of users (not the size of their stake) matters a great deal:  
“A careful, Markov-chain-like analysis shows that, no matter what options the Adversary chooses  
to make at round r −1, _as long as he cannot inject new users in the system_, he cannot decrease the  
probability of an honest user to be the leader of round r + 40 much below h. This is the reason for  
which we demand that the potential leaders of round r are users already existing in round r − k.”

My attack proposal was simply that moles may lay hidden for much longer than k rounds, acting benignly until cued (or having their account compromised) only much later.

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