NEO London Fireside Chat with Tsering Redmond and Mirren King-Smith, Co-Founders of BlockSports
NEO LONDON was excited to speak with Tsering Redmond and Mirren King-Smith of BlockSports — a decentralised sports betting exchange on the NEO platform. Let’s dive in!
Let’s start with a bit of an introduction to both of you, where you guys are from and how you got involved in blockchain.
Tsering: We’re both from the always sunny, Brisbane, Australia.
Like most, my first introduction to blockchain technology was Bitcoin. Many years ago in 2011, a friend told me about this magical way of making money online, “just run this program and you make money while you sleep”. Quite exciting I thought, so I gave it a shot that night, woke up the next morning to find I made half a bitcoin… only $2. Needless to say I quickly became unexcited. It wasn’t until 2016 that I was reintroduced to cryptocurrency by Sergej Stojanovski, the third co-founder of Block Sports. Sergej had been mining various cryptocurrencies for years, so he was a great resource to help get me up to speed on all things blockchain.
Mirren: Outside of murmurs from my friends, my first real introduction to the blockchain was through Tsering last year. Until this point I had thought that Bitcoin was the blockchain and that it was only serving the purpose of an investment for some. So when Tsering opened my eyes to the tech while also telling me there was an ecosystem emerging around the development of decentralised applications, I was quickly sold and so started my blockchain journey.
What’s the blockchain scene like in Australia?
Tsering: Incredible. I don’t really know anyone in the 15–30 years demographic who doesn’t have a basic understanding of blockchain technology.
Since Neo’s rebrand last year I have been active in the Neo Slack/Discord and have noticed a lot of Australians getting involved. In fact, during the Neo dApp competition earlier in the year, Neo displayed stats on the location of submissions and Australian submissions were much higher per capita than anywhere else. Wasn’t a huge sample size, so could have just been an anomaly, but interesting nonetheless.
So tell us how Block Sports got started and what it’s all about…
Tsering: I first caught the crypto bug early in 2017. At the time I was part of a research group, one of the members was Sergej Stojanovski. We noticed a huge acceleration in adoption, with new platforms popping up every day. This was the beginning of the ICO craze. Although many of these projects were doing amazing things, we noticed a few troubling trends:
Firstly, most were attempting to solve problems that can could have been solved with centralized a solution or the problem they were solving wasn’t really that big of an issue. Essentially they were just using the blockchain because it was possible to do so.
Secondly, many of these projects were abstract concepts that if successful wouldn’t have any real world impact for several years.
Sergej and I decided that we wanted to create something with blockchain technology that solved a real problem which was impossible without decentralisation. Something that people could start using right away and was tangible to a consumer audience. So we came up with Block Sports, a decentralised betting exchange. In a nutshell, a DEX for sports betting.
What benefits does blockchain technology bring to something like a betting exchange?
Tsering: A good example is the use case of decentralised cryptocurrency exchanges. The problem being, centralised cryptocurrency exchanges create counter-party risk by requiring users to forgo the trustless nature of their currency by trusting their funds with platform operators. As we know, there are no shortage of examples where large sums of cryptocurrency have been stolen from centralised exchanges, so this is definitely a big problem. To solve this, decentralised cryptocurrency exchanges like Switcheo provide an exchange platform where all critical processing is handled on-chain.
This is the same story with sports betting. Cryptocurrency sports betting is a huge market but entirely handled in centralised environments. Block Sports is simply a decentralised sports betting platform, where all critical processing such as matching, escrow and payouts is handled on-chain in a decentralised environment. This removes the counter-party risk involved in trusting platform operators to hold your funds in escrow.
What were the reasons why you chose to launch Block Sports on NEO?
Tsering: Initially we were designing Block Sports for the Ethereum platform. But as we all know, Ethereum doesn’t play very well with high transaction volume platform, so we were quite anxious about performance and how that would affect the user experience. When we investigated Neo it was a no brainer for us. Apart from the enormous performance improvement offered by Neo, the development language capabilities were very attractive. Something we found after making the decision to switch to Neo was how incredible the community was. This was the icing on the cake.
Tell us about the exchange itself. How are bets placed and distributed once resolved?
Mirren: All a user needs to get started on the exchange is a wallet with some GAS in it! After depositing funds, bets can be placed on our exchange or directly via our smart contract through manual invocation. Like most of our exchange functionality, betting is handled on-chain, meaning you can trust that your funds are safe and that you are entitled to a payout. After an event has ended, there is a process which verifies your bet against the outcome, distributes winning funds to your account and allocates appropriate fees. From a user perspective however, this will be a seamless experience — similar to what they would be accustomed to on a traditional betting platform.
Data sources are a key component of betting exchanges and your white paper describes the dangers of incorrect reporting for a betting exchange. Can you share these dangers and how you intend to solve them?
Mirren: As you mention, a betting exchange is reliant on real-world data source to operate. However if we only allow a single data source to report all event data, we create a centralised point of failure in an otherwise decentralised platform. If this source reports incorrect information (either accidentally or maliciously), it may cause the irreversible loss of user funds. To combat this risk there are two unique solutions: Firstly, we are introducing community run oracles to perform majority consensus on the integrity of incoming data. Secondly, oracles are required to reach consensus on multiple data sources to reduce risk of publishing incorrect data. By utilizing a diverse range of oracles and sources we can ensure that incorrect reporting will not impact the end user.
How do you prevent these oracles from having too much authority over the published data?
Mirren: The answer here is to increase the number of oracles operating on our platform. No oracles (including any operated by Block Sports) have the permission to publish verified data without the majority consensus of other active oracles. Therefore by scaling up the number of operators we inversely reduce the authority each individual has. This scaling process will be ongoing and extends much past our initial release as our community develops and our volume increases.
What are the main ways in which you are achieving decentralisation on the platform?
Mirren: Early in the design process we defined exactly what decentralisation meant for our platform and we landed on four core requirements:
● Event and outcome data reporting must reach consensus amongst multiple parties
● Block Sports must not have administrative control over the storage and processing of user funds
● Matching verification must be performed on-chain and not require Block Sports to execute
● Core exchange functionality can be directly invoked by any user in the event Block Sports is unable to
We’ve already spoken about our oracle solution to target the first criteria, but for the other three you can see a trend of ensuring the platform remains functionally independent of Block Sports. This is where we utilize the Neo blockchain to allow us to create on-chain processes that can guarantee user funds, bet placements, payouts, matching, cancellations and any other critical features will always be executable by users.
What do you think the biggest challenge is in launching a decentralised sports betting exchange on a blockchain?
Tsering: On the technical side, definitely the decentralised oracle network. If I had to estimate how much of the design process we spent on this aspect of our solution, I would have to say at least 50%. I won’t bore your readers with the details as I could go on for hours, but creating a decentralised oracle network is definitely not for the faint of heart.
On the business side, like any exchange or peer to peer marketplace, the main barrier to success is liquidity. It’s the chicken and egg problem, someone needs to make a bet for someone to take that bet.
If exchange liquidity is important for the success of Block Sports, what will you be doing build initial volume?
Tsering: We have put a lot of time and effort into designing solutions to help build liquidity. Believe it or not, most of the volume on betting exchanges is thanks to trading bots. To capitalise on this we have designed a powerful trading API which existing bots operating on centralized betting exchanges can essentially use to ‘plug and play’. We expect cross platform arbitrage to account for a significant portion of our volume. As well as this, there will be private engagements with sports betting syndicates and companies to provide them incentives for market making and providing liquidity on our exchange.
The user interface (UI) is obviously a key aspect for any application. What things do you think are important to include in the UI design space for Block Sports?
Tsering: Our goal is create an experience that users of traditional sports betting exchanges will find familiar. Although we employ some unique solutions for interaction with user wallets and smart contracts, ultimately the interface should feel at home to users coming from traditional platforms.
What role will GAS and Block Sports token (BSX) have?
Tsering: Most assume that our token (BSX) is used for platform betting — this isn’t the case. We didn’t see the value in creating another needless utility token when there was already a perfect utility token available, NeoGas (GAS). The great thing about GAS is that anyone with NEO is already generating a steady stream, so users don’t have to go out of their way to get their hands on a new currency just to get started on our platform.. We are the first real use case for GAS that I know of and we’re quite proud of that. I’m certain that many others will follow suit.
So, what role does our token (BSX) have to play? BSX simply gives users a share in fees generated by the Block Sports exchange. This model is not too dissimilar to an equity holder receiving dividends from a company where users receive fees propionate to the amount of tokens held. Readers familiar with NEX’s token model will notice the similarities. This model is optimal for investors as there is a direct correlation between the value of BSX and the commercial success of the platform.
We are now going to play what we like to call ‘overrated or underrated’. Both of you just state either ‘overrated or underrated’ for each item and a short answer for why you chose it. Let’s go!
1. Australian beaches
Tsering: Rated. Australia definitely has some of the best beaches in the world and I think it’s well known for that.
Mirren: Overrated. Our famous beaches are definitely overrated (so so busy). Plenty of beautiful small ones though!
2. Star Wars
Tsering: Overrated. Don’t get me wrong I love me some lightsaber battles but I think it’s way too hyped.
Mirren: Overrated: Grew up on the hype of Episode IV but the delivery of Episode I so it has never matched up for me.
3. New Year’s Eve
Tsering: Overrated. New years celebrations are usually too busy and the new year’s day is usually spent in bed.
Mirren: Overrated. I’ve had a much nicer time with more intimate NYE settings, plus my big resolutions never seem to last..
4. Warren Buffet
Tsering: Underrated. That man is completely dedicated to the pursuit of money. He is well know for being wealthy, but the real marvel is his undying dedication.
Mirren: Underrated. Obviously the man is beyond talented at making money but by all accounts he is also humble and philanthropic — traits that seem to be uncommon at his level.
5. Window seats on planes
Tsering: Overrated. I’m a pretty tall guy so I prefer an aisle seat for the extra leg room. Looking out the window is fascinating, but once you’ve done a bit of flying it can get old.
Mirren: Underrated. How often do you get that view?
Let’s fast forward 10 years in the future from now. What would you hope to accomplish both personally and for work?
Tsering: On the personal front, I would like to be a father with an amazing family. On the work front, my goal is to have several successful businesses on the forefront of emerging technology.
Mirren: For work, hopefully I will have been a direct contributor to the success of a cutting edge tech company and that I am still actively developing! I can’t imagine giving up development for anything greatly managerial. On a personal level, I would love to be a settled down family man after I get to travel and work around the world for a few years.
What’s a typical weekend for both of you when you have time off work?
Tsering: It’s no secret that I’m a bit of a nerd. So you’ll usually catch me playing some video games or learning about some useless information that I’ve stumbled upon. With that said, I am Australian, so I can’t pass up a barbecue with friends and a few beers.
Mirren: Brisbane has an amazing local music scene (and I love music), so you’ll likely find me at a gig with my mates. Otherwise I’ll be binging TV shows with my girlfriend, playing some records at home or sneaking in a bit of video game time.
Thank you for taking the time to speak with us. But we have just one final question…who’s batman and who’s robin?
Tsering: I would definitely say that I’m robin. One of my many priorities is making sure than Mirren has what he needs to succeed on the development front.
Mirren: Can I also be Robin? I enjoy my role in the background as a developer, supporting Batman (Tsering) to lead the company and its image.
We loved talking to BlockSports team, and we hope to see Batman and Robin in England soon!
See you all again at the next fireside chat!
For more information on BlockSports, visit the following links:
Website: https://www.blocksports.com/
Whitepaper: http://files.blocksports.com/Block_Sports_White_Paper_v1.pdf
Telegram: https://t.me/blocksports
Join the NEO London community!
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