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Just curious, how are you handling the legality if at all :) Are "popularity contests" considered sweepstakes or lotteries?

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something akin to 'reward points', but yeah...it's a bit of a grey area! Cadoo.io is doing a similar thing with exercise and they treat it legally as 'loyalty points' but in reality it's prizes. It's one of the big unknowns about the model to be honest - we kind of hope that it will seen more like a community finance initiative or a business cooperative.

Reason I ask is I'm facing a similar issue with an app I'm launching.

My research has led me to this and from what you've said, you might be in the "lottery" zone despite trying to be a "sweepstakes".

https://sterlingmiller2014.wordpress.com/2018/06/18/ten-thin...

Thanks, this was a really helpful link. In the case of HackerStash I'm confident it falls within the definition of a contest, and not sweepstakes or lottery. There are a few areas where this could be tightened up and the article will help with that, but likewise we've met all the criteria set out in the article other than terms relating to 'what happens to prizes if someone dies'. We'll have something added there!

Curious about what you're working on now, feel free to come join HackerStash and share your progress ;) haha

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