Giveaway rules, section by section

The rules are the document that protects you when something goes wrong: a winner who disputes, an entrant who feels wrongly excluded, a platform asking questions. They are also the document almost everyone rushes, copied from another campaign and never re-read.

1. The organiser

Who is running it: legal name, form, address. An entrant should know who they are dealing with without investigating.

2. Object and free entry

What the giveaway offers and, above all: is entry free with no purchase necessary? That line decides which legal regime applies.

3. The prizes

Nature, approximate value, quantity. A vaguely described prize is a dispute in the making. With several prizes, say how they are allocated — one winner per prize, later ranks drawn from the remaining pool.

4. The entry period

Start, end, time zone. A date without a time and zone gets disputed, especially with an international audience.

5. How to enter

The exact conditions and, for each: is it verified or merely declared? “Follow the account” is declarative — nobody checks it. Saying so protects you better than implying a check that never happens.

6. The draw method

How the winner is designated — usually reduced to “draw carried out by the organiser”, which commits to nothing. Rules generated by DrawSeal describe a cryptographically verifiable draw: the fingerprint of a secret seed and a drand round published beforehand, the seed revealed afterwards, and a deterministic computation anyone can replay.

7. Anti-fraud

Which entries are excluded and under which rules. They must be public and deterministic, applied before the draw: mandatory double opt-in, disposable domains excluded, duplicates removed, rate limiting per IP.

8. The winner’s obligations

What they must provide, and by when. Without a written deadline, an unreachable winner blocks the campaign indefinitely — 72 hours by default with DrawSeal, adjustable per giveaway.

9. Personal data

Which data, for what purpose, for how long, and how to request erasure. You collect email addresses: data protection law applies whatever the size of the giveaway.

10. Verifiability

Where the entrant can go and check. Rules announcing a verifiable draw without saying where to verify it are no better than rules promising nothing.

Generate them rather than copy them

DrawSeal produces these rules automatically from your giveaway’s actual configuration: the ten sections above, filled with your prizes, dates, conditions and the draw method actually used. Change a prize or the weighting, and the text follows.

This page describes common practice; it is not legal advice.

Frequently asked questions

Is a template found online enough?

It gives you the structure, not the accuracy. The risk is not a missing section, it is describing a different giveaway from yours.

Must the rules be published before the giveaway starts?

Yes. They must be accessible to the entrant before they enter.

Can the rules be changed mid-campaign?

Best avoided, and impossible for anything touching the draw: the cryptographic commitment is published beforehand, and any later change would show.

What if the winner never claims?

The rules must cover it: at deadline the winner forfeits and a verifiable re-draw designates a new one, with the reason published.