Opportunity Fairness

A receipt is generated for every bid that is received by SAM. If a bidder gets the receipt, it is guaranteed that its bid will be evaluated in the evaluation phase, should the auction run to completion. Should the auction fail (e.g., because the SAM hardware experienced a power failure or other catastrophe, perhaps caused by a malicious auctioneer), SAM will handle the failed auction in accordance with the policy indicated in its original spec. This policy can range from complete canceling to complete re-execution, and can include provisions to prevent the SAM from doing anything else until it has handled this failure.