Two weeks ago, we were presenting Slips to a packed audience at the BlockShow event in Amsterdam and one of the audience members asked us how we compared to one of the many blockchain based betting projects out there.
Then, the other day, a potential investor rang us up and asked if we could ping over some details about the competition and how much market share we could capture.
We thought since this is a question that crops up so often, it might be helpful to collate our answer here on the blog and write it in a way so that it’s useful to anyone exploring or researching the eSports betting area.
“Ha! Why would I trust you to present an unbiased overview?”
We expect people to be sceptical about our intentions for this article. Even if we tried our hardest to provide a fair and comprehensive review of the entire space … you would never expect us portray our own project in a bad light would you?
Correct, it’s not in our best interest to tell you how much we suck!
But we also believe that Slips is quite unique. There are plenty of projects in this area and they all tackle what they perceive to be problems worth solving.
It is in our interest however to position our project successfully. We want people when they are asked “What is Slips” to say “It’s like X but with Y”. The simpler we make this proposition, the more success we will have in raising awareness about our project.
If we have to do that by comprehensively showing you what is available in the space and how we are different, than by jove that is exactly what we will do!
So without any further ado, let us introduce each project. For obvious reasons we are not ranking or rating the projects — we will leave that as a fun exercise for the reader! ;)
Herosphere
Explain the project without hurting my brain:
Herosphere thinks current betting platforms are unfair. They cite problems such as increasing fees, banning of players who win “too much” and the fact that the public also do not get access to the same data that the “experts” (i.e. the house) do which weighs the odds in the house’s favour.
They propose a token to solve this problem. Their token (the “HeroCoin”) pays a quarterly dividend to all token holders. People who create games are also rewarded as well as the pot winners. Blockchain technology should mean all data is transparent.
They already have an eSports betting platform (which allows you to bet on 4 popular games) with 200,000 users. The token will be integrated into this eSports betting platform before being offered to other platforms via some sort of an API.
Did you know…
Herosphere did a “by the book” ICO campaign. The project is registered under Austrian law and this meant that they ran into some problems with their bounty campaign. Usually an ICO project will just send bounty tokens to contributors at the end of the campaign but Herosphere required people to claim the bounties and to provide receipts for them.
This irked some people to the point where the COO Bernhard Blaha had to write a medium blog explaining the situation. Mr Blaha also participated in a very informative interview with Florian Kandler recently discussing the legalities of running an ICO and how blockchain will disrupt gaming at an online blockchain conference called Cryptario last month. The interview is still available for anyone wanting to check it out.
Status: Post-ICO, working towards first milestone in roadmap.
Working Product: Yes, Herosphere has a working eSports betting platform to which the token is going to be added. They advertise that they have roughly 200,000 users on this platform.
Employees: 7 core team members listed on the site and white paper with 2–3 developers.
Funding: $2,000,000 USD was raised in their ICO in Q4 2017. The hard cap of $14m was not met.
How are they similar to Slips:
As well as being focused on the betting industry, both projects are targeting eSports fans. Herosphere have a live product targeted to people who want to bet on eSports matches. Similar to Slips, users can create their own games (and are rewarded for doing so) on the Herosphere.gg platform so betting is not restricted simply to top tier eSport competitors.
How are they different to Slips:
Herosphere uses the API results of four popular games in their platform. Slips uses a human moderation system to allow users to make any conceivable challenge on any game. Herosphere like a lot of non-blockchain competitors are restricted in the number of games and the types of bets they offer (currently you can only predict the score of matches — win/loss) on their platform.
The Herosphere roadmap mentions rolling out the token on their platform and then opening their token to other platforms. They will then concentrate on promotion and running eSport events with the remainder of their funds. The Slips roadmap is split into developing applications and a browser plugin which enables betting on popular platforms such as Twitch and YouTube.
Website: https://www.herocoin.io
Whitepaper: https://s3-cdn.herocoin.io/HERO_Whitepaper.pdf
Bitcointalk.org ANN: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2116864.0
Social Media Statistics
Facebook: 9,300
Twitter: 4,501
Telegram: 1,905
Reddit: 409
Gron Digital
Explain the project without hurting my brain:
Gron Digital is a business set up in 2014 by a group of individuals with long history in online gambling. Having built a suite of applications, they now wish to use blockchain technology to create better solutions to problems such as deposits, withdrawals, identity and verification.
Gron Digital is not just a dApp on the Ethereum network but an entire platform which provides turnkey services and modules to other operators.
This platform is going to be backed by their token which is called “Gro” which performs a similar function to a casino chip. The tokenomics of “Gro” are explained wonderfully by Gron Digital’s COO, Dmitry Oberzhitsky in this interview.
Examples of services for end users include a cold-storage backed wallet which works with any operator on the network (to provide players with a safe and quick float), blockchain based KYC (via existing services such as Civic). Operators benefit from services such as analytics, liability insurance and much more.
Did you know…
Gron Digital has a team compromising of veterans with over 75 years experience in the gaming industry. Their company has Gambling Manufacturer and Sports Betting licenses awarded to them. They also operate the sports betting platform “YesPlay”.
Status: Active ICO ending on 11th April 2018
Working Product:
Employees: 15 core team members are listed of which 9 are working in a development role.
Funding: $1,200,000 raised so far in pre-sale. Hard cap of $8m.
How are they similar to Slips:
Apart from a focus on online gambling and the use of blockchain technology to solve existing problems, there are few similarities between Gron Digital and Slips. Gron Digital’s business model is based on developing services and an underlying protocol for online gambling businesses to operate on. They cite problems with the Ethereum network’s transactions per second capacity and propose an off-chain solution which might be interesting for us later down the road if it is proven to be successful.
How are they different to Slips:
Slips has a strong focus on eSports — we want to provide a unique betting experience for online gamers who participate in video streaming sites such as Twitch. So the target audience is extremely niche in comparison with Gron Digital who want to target online gamblers in general. As mentioned earlier, Gron is coming up with a slew of products and solutions to empower other operators.
Website: https://grondigital.com/
Whitepaper: https://grondigital.com/whitepaper
Bitcointalk.org ANN: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2758561
Social Media Statistics
Twitter: 2,101
Telegram: 4,174 (plus~300 odd members on their news group)
Slack: 26
AstorGame
Explain the project without hurting my brain:
AstorGame is a platform for people who love eSports and betting. You can either participate in matches / tournaments or place bets on them on the platform they intend to develop. They also focus on sports betting (which will the first platform feature released) and traditional casino games.
As a side dish, they also want to launch a store where people can use their “Astor Token” to purchase themed products and perhaps digital goods such as skins and guns. They also want to allow developers to sell games on their platform ala Google Play. Users using the “Astor token” will also be rewarded with bonuses and dividends for doing so.
They focus a lot of effort in their marketing to being provably fair — a technique that other blockchain gambling projects (such as the famous Satoshi Dice) have made popular by publishing the keys used to make the random hash to allow users to later verify that the result was fair and random.
Did you know…
CEO and co-founder of AstorGame Mark Snizhinsky was an early investor in Ethereum and claims to have studied it in-depth? Ok, that might be scraping the barrel of interesting facts. How about… if the project is successfully funded, it will launch during the upcoming World Cup this year and might be the reason why the roadmap has been ordered so Sports Betting is released before eSports betting?
Status: Pre-sale completed, Active ICO ending 29th April 2018.
Working Product: No, AstorGame say that they are working on the sports betting functionality (allowing you to bet on sporting matches) but will be releasing it in June 2018. The following quarter (Q3) is when development on the eSports betting functionality will begin.
Employees: 6 Core team members with 4 of them being developers.
Funding: Not mentioned, hard-cap of $100m.
How are they similar to Slips:
They want to launch a platform to allow people to gamble on eSport matches. People can join the platform and play in matches and tournaments. They also claim to support streaming and have an incentive scheme for streamers; if you have more viewers you get more rewards. The whitepaper only devotes a paragraph to it, which indicates that having said that it might not be a key component of their plans!
How are they different to Slips:
Since platform development has not yet started, there are no concrete details on how they will obtain the results of the eSport games. A limited number of games are mentioned therefore it’s safe to assume they will use API connections which is similar to other platforms we are reviewing on this list.
The web site mentions the Astor Token as an investment vehicle and exchanging it for another currency on numerous occasions. Coupling this fact with their divergent strategy (wanting to launch a Google Play clone and an online store for digital goods) and delaying of eSports betting functionality in favour of sports betting is a little puzzling to us. You would think since all the marketing mentions eSports — it would be the cornerstone of what they are trying to develop!
Website: http://astorgame.com/
Whitepaper: http://astorgame.com/docs/WP_AstorGame_en.pdf
Bitcointalk.org ANN: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2598552
Social Media Statistics
Facebook: 2,673
Twitter: 1,501
Telegram: 1,593
Reddit: 210
Wagerr
Explain the project without hurting my brain:
When we reviewed Gron Digital earlier, we said they were not just another dApp on the Ethereum Network. Well Wagerr goes one step further, it’s not just another platform on an existing network like Bitcoin or Ethereum but a completely new proof-of-stake based blockchain system.
On top of this blockchain platform is a layer that Wagerr calls Oracle Masternodes which are agents which retrieve the outcomes of sporting events, validate results that trigger payments and manage the governance of the network.
The Wagerr tokenomic model is based on burning the fees taken from each bet (i.e. 48% of the fee is burned).
Did you know…
Wagerr is focused on sports betting, they already have a wallet for download at the time of writing. The blockchain is forked from the PivX project. But it seems all is not happy in the Wagerr camp. Despite an update as recent as two days ago to their wallet software, a cursory look at their reddit shows that a lot of investors are annoyed at the time it’s taking for any work to be started on the actual betting functionality considering the project raised $10m last June.
Status: ICO Completed, working towards milestone objectives.
Working Product: Sort of, Wagerr are building their own blockchain system and then launching their gambling products on it. The network mainnet has been released and there is a wallet to be downloaded. Regular sports betting modules are to be followed by eSports betting in late 2018.
Employees: 5 team members with 2 full time developers.
Funding: $10,000,000 raised in their ICO in June 2017.
How are they similar to Slips:
The Wagerr roadmap mentions that in late Q2 2018; users will be able to make head-to-head bets on eSports leagues. One similarity to Slips would have been eSport betting functionality however this is the only mention as the whitepaper has no references at all. Considering a lot of investors who bought the Wagerr ICO are disillusioned at the rate of progress on the project with the deadline for head-to-head bets already missed, we can probably safely assume that eSport betting won’t be live by the end of this quarter either.
How are they different to Slips:
Well for starters, Wagerr is taking an existing blockchain platform (the privacy coin known as PivX) and modifying it for use within their system. It is quite obviously very different to the betting functionality that we want to implement on video streams. They are building an oracle layer on top of their “custom” blockchain platform to obtain results from real world sporting events which again is worlds apart from the staked moderation system that Slips intend to build.
Website: https://wagerr.com
Whitepaper: https://wagerr.com/wagerr_whitepaper_v1.pdf
Bitcointalk.org ANN: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1911583.0
Social Media Statistics
Facebook: 7,969
Twitter: 17,304
Telegram: 2,606
Reddit: 1,370
Decent.bet
Explain the project without hurting my brain:
Decent.bet is an Ethereum based sports betting and gambling platform. As with many blockchain based projects, they are trying to harness the transparency of blockchain to fix issues in online gambling.
However Decent.net solve the problems for the two products they offer in a completely different way to other Ethereum based blockchain platforms. For their gambling platform, they use off-chain state channels for random number generation and other transactions. This means they can avoid issues other projects that transaction on-chain have due to the slow block times and also avoid passing on gas costs for these transactions.
For their sports betting product, they needed to find a solution for obtaining results for real world events. As you might imagine, bad actors have an incentive to buy up tokens and post incorrect results so this is a difficult problem for any project to solve. One of the projects we reviewed earlier (Wagerr) came up with a Oracle Masternode solution; Decent.bet would like to use services such as Augur or Gnosis, but those are still under development and so for now they provide their own centralized oracle.
Did you know…
Decent.bet will offer white labelled houses on their platform which allows other providers and casino operators a chance to start their own house and utilise their own profit-sharing mechanisms. This is one of the key reasons that Decent.bet required their own ERC-20 token instead of using Ethereum on their platform.
Status: ICO Completed, working towards mainnet release.
Working Product: Not yet, the team have a working testnet although the mainnet was recently pushed back due to some technical issues.
Employees: 9 members are listed on the site, only 1 of them is a developer. An update on Reddit suggests that they currently have 6 developers.
Funding: $15,765,137 raised in their ICO that ended in October 2017
How are they similar to Slips:
It’s another project in the blockchain powered online gambling space but that’s where the similarities end. Slips has an on-demand moderation service, moderators need to stake tokens to get jobs. The moderators act in a similar way to Decent.bet’s oracles, providing results to settle a (disputed) bet, however as mentioned, Decent.bet provides their own centralized oracle per house.
How are they different to Slips:
Decent.bet have no plans to target eSports fans. The long term plans is to create a decentralized sports betting platform. Since existing platforms are slow due to the underlying technology so Decent.bet makes a few concessions (such as off-chain state channels and centralized oracles) in order to get an experience that matches what betters are currently used to on non-blockchain based platforms. Decent.bet hope to remove these concessions as the technology matures.
Website: https://decent.bet/
Whitepaper: https://decent.bet/whitepaper/
Bitcointalk.org ANN: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2174479.0
Social Media Statistics
Facebook: 10,340
Twitter: 4,015
Slack: *not known
Reddit: 602
*We were unable to join the Slack group where the majority of the community hangs out because the herokuapp hosting the invite and then the invite app itself broke down whilst trying to join!
Bethereum
Explain the project without hurting my brain:
Bethereum is a social betting platform. Once launched, it will allow users to make bets with each other on a range of events without a middle man such as a bookmaker. Initially the project will start with football (soccer) betting but they intend to cover other markets including eSports in the future.
In Bethereum, a user can create a bet which results in a smart contract being created. Other users can also join the bet and make their predictions. Like other betting platforms we reviewed on this list, an oracle will be used at the end of the bet to settle the result, with the winning party taking the money deposited in the smart contract less the fees that Bethereum takes itself.
The business model is quite simple, majority of the income coming from fees. A fixed 5% fee is levied on all bets of which 10% is burned decreasing the overall supply.
Did you know…
Bethereum’s founders are a mix of seasoned veteran and tech wonderkid. Whilst Peter Gal has been around the block numerous times launching products in the banking, telco and IT sectors, his 22 year old co-founder Martin Herman is a relatively new face on the scene, but one who already seems to have achieved a lot having founded Silicon Valley startups from the age of 18!
Status: Pre-sale begins on the 11th of April
Working Product: No, development is slated to begin immediately after the completion of token sale. There is a prototype available on the iOS store which uses a free virtual currency.
Employees: 21 Core team members of which at least 5 seem to be developers.
Funding: Looking to raise 25,000 ETH ($9.2m at current prices)
How are they similar to Slips:
We want to create a platform where our users can challenge each other to any bet imaginable. Bethereum has a similar ethos. Their early iOS prototype is gorgeous and simple to use. They do not re-invent the wheel by developing their own protocol, rather they have focused sensibly on user experience. They have a similar technical process of creating smart contracts for bets but do not go into great technical detail in the white paper so it was not possible to compare. At a later date, Bethereum would like to incorporate eSports betting but it does not seem to be a cornerstone of their project.
How are they different to Slips:
The immediate focus for Bethereum is sports betting, and football (soccer) in particular. Like many projects, they have a problem with obtaining correct results to settle the smart contracts. They briefly mention doing this using oracles but there is no technical explanation of how they will overcome gaming by malicious actors. Since they are focused on sports betting initially, they have no plans to create a plugin overlaying video streams or a moderation system to settle disputed bets similar to the one we intend to create.
Website: https://www.bethereum.com/
Whitepaper: https://www.bethereum.com/Bethereum-Whitepaper-EN.pdf
Bitcointalk.org ANN: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2898723.0
Social Media Statistics
Facebook: 16,326
Twitter: 19,939
Telegram: 54,684
Reddit: 1,336
MEvU
Explain the project without hurting my brain:
MEvU is another sports betting platform, which matches people who agree on odds to a bet. Ethereum is the underlying currency for the platform. But considering their branding, MEvU wants to let users bet on any event.
The way they achieve this to ask the bet participants to report the results correctly. They take a small fee from successfully settled bets. A percentage of this fee goes to the company whereas the rest is pooled into a lottery to be paid out monthly to token holders.
If a bet is disputed, a random MVU token holder decides the outcome of the bet. Each player has a username which tracks their reputation to weed out bad actors.
There is also an application token called MVU which allows users who hold it to act as oracles supply results / data to the network. In addition, holders of the token get discounted deals, access to a monthly lottery, referral rewards and so on.
Did you know…
MEvU was an official sponsor for the ETHWaterloo Hackathon last year. Held in Waterloo Canada, the hackathon is one of the largest Ethereum events of the calendar year and last year’s prize was won by GoNetwork which also had an ICO earlier this year.
Status: Public Sale begins June 11th
Working Product: “Invite Only” beta was launched apparently in February, an “Open Beta” will be launched in time for the World Cup in June.
Employees: 4 Core team members with 2 developers.
Funding: $2,000,000 raised so far in private sale. Hard cap of $24m.
How are they similar to Slips:
We weren’t familiar with MEvU until we started reaching this article but there is a great amount of similarity between the two projects. We both want to allow users to make custom bets between each other. We both have a system where “moderators” or “oracles” determine the result of disputed bets. Like Slips, amount of MVU tokens staked result in the number of jobs awarded. Even though the focus of MEvU is sports betting, they mention a CS:GO bet on their website (although eSports in general is not mentioned elsewhere on the site or in their white paper).
How are they different to Slips:
The biggest difference between the two projects is that MEvU is focused on sports betting, whilst Slips wants to create a compelling betting user experience for game streamers and watchers. The Slips roadmap includes browser plugins and dApps that specifically integrate with Twitch/YouTube streams and allows challenges to be made whilst watching a stream.
Other than that there are a number of differences in our implementation of the moderation system. Slips lets you decide how much you want to pay in moderation fees which determines how many moderators are assigned. MEvU assigns one random token holder. Slips intends to build an on-demand gig economy style moderation workforce, MEvU will have a settlement queue. MEvU also allows bettors to choose a random arbiter before the bet commences -which is actually quite a neat idea!
Website: https://www.mevu.bet/
Whitepaper: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ggaxw3bvtwv7j34/meVuwhitepaper.pdf?dl=0
Bitcointalk.org ANN: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2717747.0
Social Media Statistics
Facebook: 545
Twitter: 508
Telegram: 972
LuckBox
Explain the project without hurting my brain:
LuckBox is dedicated to the growing eSports market. They want to create a platform where users can bet on eSports matches using fiat, cryptocurrencies or in-game items like “skins”.
Since the market is still nascent, there’s a growing number of businesses that allow gambling of in-game tokens and rare items without seeking proper gambling licenses. LuckBox aim to differentiate themselves from other platforms by embracing regulations and being fully licensed.
Luckbox will also launch two tokens; there is LuckCash which will be the platform currency of choice. Users will opt to use LuckCash because they will incur smaller fees for using it. LuckCash can be used to purchase VIP items from a future store that LuckBox will launch as well being obtainable through “crates” and other gamified options. The other token, LuckProfit will entitle users to a share of LuckBox’s future profits.
Did you know…
LuckBox CEO Lars Lien is a big fan of eSports and met partner Mike Stephens whilst the pair worked at PokerStars. Joining forces again, they are also heading one of the few blockchain projects that is actively targeting their ICO campaign to users in areas such as South Africa and Nigeria where there is growing eSport demand and huge passion for online gambling but the banking facilities have yet to catch up.
Status: Active ICO ends on 11th April.
Working Product: There is no working product yet but according to their roadmap they intend to have an MVP released by the third quarter of the year.
Employees: A total of 27 team members of which 8 are product developers.
Funding: $6.6m raised so far in private sale. Hard cap of $20m.
How are they similar to Slips:
Like MEvU, there is a lot of similarities between LuckBox and Slips. Unlike many of the other projects listed here, LuckBox is exclusively focused on eSports gambling. In addition, they understand that the action often happens on video streams and their product demo shows a small clip of their UI which embeds a stream into the interface; you will notice from the Slips trailer that we have a similar concept.
How are they different to Slips:
The LuckBox whitepaper makes no mention about the technical considerations around settling bets. How will they obtain results? We found very few projects with the exception of MEvU that use an oracle system to solve this problem. LuckBox mention a few of the games that they will be supporting so we can assume they will be using the web APIs provided by certain games. Unlike Slips and MEvU, they do not seem to cater for custom bets either — it’s not exactly clear what sort of dimensions will be available for bets but the sample UI in the video shows it to be simple results based. LuckBox also offers users to bet using fiat, other cryptocurrencies and in-game items like skins, the latter will be of interest to eSport fans.
Website: https://luckbox.com
Whitepaper: https://luckbox.com/docs/2181/lb-wp.pdf
Bitcointalk.org ANN: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2909866.0
Social Media Statistics
Facebook: 17,331
Twitter: 10,906
Telegram: 20,231
Reddit: 246
Discord: 468
Asura Coin
Explain the project in a few words:
Asura Coin is striving to be the ultimate eSports ecosystem. They want to cater to all eSport gaming needs whether the user simply wants to bet on eSports games, learn some new skills, find new friends to compete with or play in tournaments.
One of the advantages to their platform is that Asura Coin does allow users to create custom bets. If their custom rule creator does not cater to the type of bet you want to create, new ideas can be suggested and the community has the opportunity to vote on what new betting rules should be implemented on the platform.
In addition to betting on the Asura Coin platform, they will also be providing guides produced by experienced professional eSports players to explain advanced gameplay. Users who contribute guides to the platform can earn Asura Coin rewards.
As mentioned earlier, Asura Coin will facilitate player match making and run their own tournaments. The whitepaper also alludes to the fact that live streams from Twitch and Chinese portals will be used during tournaments.
Did you know…
Asura Coin unlike a lot of the other projects on this list apart from the few that seek to create their own blockchain is actually based on NEO instead of Ethereum (ASA is a NEP-5 token). Whilst CEO, Peter Shen’s nationality might have a part to play in this, the white paper itself also cites the speed of transactions and scalability of NEO as a contributing factor to their choice.
Status: ICO beginning in May
Working Product: An “alpha” version is planned to be released Q2 of 2018
Employees: 13 team members, 4 are listed in development roles.
Funding: Nothing raised so far.
How are they similar to Slips:
Some of the projects we have reviewed have a wider focus on betting or blockchain based gambling whereas the likes of MEvU, LuckBox and Asura Coin narrow in exclusively on eSports. Asura Coin like Slips understands that the level of creativity you allow the user to have in creating the bet is important. Traditional betting rules do not translate easily to gaming. They have a rule creator which transforms user input directly into a smart contract. We have a similar interface for creating challenges.
How are they different to Slips:
Betting is limited to the four games that Asura Coin will debut with. This is because in order to obtain consensus on the result of a bet, Asura uses the web API provided by the games and runs the rule engine over it. The smart contract created for the bet is fed this data and then distributes the coins. Asura Coin also has an interest in serving the wider eSports community, for example they want to provide training guides as well (as mentioned earlier) which is something that is not part of our road map.
Website: https://asuracoin.io/
Whitepaper: https://asuracoin.io/whitepaper.pdf
Bitcointalk.org ANN: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3290541
Social Media Statistics
Facebook: 435
Twitter: 561
Telegram: 2,129
Reddit: 233
Gamico
Explain the project without hurting my brain:
Gamico is a platform that allows gamers to make money whilst playing their favorite games. The platform has a token called GMC which users use to challenge each other in head-to-head matches or to compete in tournaments.
GMC tokens will be used to buy into the tournaments/h2h matches; the pot going to the winner with a small percentage going back to Gamico and the game developers.
As well as challenging each other, GMC tokens can be earned by users in two other ways. Firstly the user can earn tokens by participating in achievement or milestone bounties (an example given in their whitepaper; “scoring the most headers in FIFA 2018”).
Secondly the user can verify results for disputed matches between users. Streamed results can be uploaded for the community to verify and once enough users have added their results, the verifiers who gave the correct scores are awarded with GMC tokens.
Did you know…
Since the team is from Hong Kong and the project is relatively new, we were not able to dig up anything interesting to tell you about them! The Gamico Team please feel free to contact us with an interesting anecdote or story and we will update this section! ;)
Status: Pre-Sale begins on May 30th.
Working Product: Not yet, but the first version of their product is due to be released in September 2018
Employees: 7 team members of which 2 are developers
Funding: Nothing raised so far.
How are they similar to Slips:
Gamico allows gamers to challenge each other and their moderation system for disputes is extremely close to what we want to implement for Slips. When the results of a head to head match is disputed, the participants post their version of the result and upload footage from their stream for the community to decide upon, when a “statistically significant” result is achieved, the challenge is settled. We do something similar but as explained below, our moderation system works slightly differently.
How are they different to Slips:
In contrast to Gamico, disputed bets in Slips are settled by moderators but users actually determine how many moderators are required and this influences the moderator fee that’s paid. The amount of moderating jobs a user can earn is based on the amount of the token they stake. Slips also has a greater focus on the flexibility of bets that are created although to be fair there is scant details available on how Gamico intends to approach this so perhaps they have something in mind as well.
Website: https://gamico.io
Whitepaper: https://gamico.io/whitepaper
Bitcointalk.org ANN: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3128210.msg32349665#msg32349665
Social Media Statistics
Facebook: 100
Twitter: 23
Telegram: 970
BETR
Explain the project without hurting my brain:
BetterBetting is another sports betting project similar to Decent.bet and Bethereum which we reviewed earlier. As with the projects we reviewed earlier, they cite all the usual problems with traditional sportsbooks and claim their peer to peer betting system will solve these problems by removing middlemen.
The BETR token is used within the platform, they cite placement of large bets without processing fees as a big advantage of the token. The pooling of bets means that many parties can match a single bet. In addition, BetterBetting do not take a percentage of any of the wagers on their platform.
BetterBetting also claims to use provably fair technology and the fact that bets are pre-funded means they are also settled quickly and everyone gets paid fairly.
Did you know…
Founder Adriaan Brink founded InterLotto — the world’s first legal Internet lottery and later founded iCoins Ltd, which he claims to have similar concepts to Bitcoin and a precursor to Satoshi Nakamoto’s project. His co-founder Ian Sherrington was the creator of the internet’s first sportbook — the still active intertops.com.
Status: ICO Completed and token listed on exchanges
Working Product: To be released in May
Employees: 5 listed on their web site, 2 of them are developers.
Funding: Betr raised $5.5m in Jan 2018, they had a hard cap of $30m
How are they similar to Slips:
Thankfully there is very few similarities between Slips and BetterBetting as we target different segments of the market. BetterBetting have an experienced team looking to create a platform on Ethereum but have concerns about the scalability of the platform. We share those concerns. We think that just about covers the similarities! :)
How are they different to Slips:
To save us some time you can read what we’ve written for other sports betting projects. We took a look at the BBN technology proposed in their whitepaper to see if we could spot any similarities with how we intend to use moderators as oracles to feed into our smart contracts. BetterBetting do not really go into much detail, instead preferring to discuss how BBN will incorporate both it’s own protocol as well as Ethereum to facilitate faster bet placement and settlement.
Website: https://betterbetting.org/
Whitepaper: https://betterbetting.org/BETTER_BETTING_Foundation_White_Paper.pdf
Bitcointalk.org ANN: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2582662
Social Media Statistics
Facebook: 1,985
Twitter: 2,686
Telegram: 3,109
EtherSportz
Explain the project without hurting my brain:
EtherSportz is similar to Gamico in that it allows gamers to enter eSports tournaments and use cash/cryptocurrencies to compete against other players to win the prize pool. Players have a choice of competing alone or with teams other gamers.
EtherSportz has a similar business model to Gamico — they will retain a small amount (10%) of the prize pool to fund their platform. The remaining 90% goes to the winner. There is an ERC-20 token called ESZCoin. Users who own this token will be eligible to collect a reward of 50% of the fees generated from the site. The reward is based on what percentage of ESZCoins are owned
Did you know…
EtherSportz had a wildly successful ICO — they raised $3.5 million dollars’ worth of Ether in just under 48 hours.
Status: ICO Completed, working towards milestones.
Working Product: Beta to be released Q3 2018
Employees: 14 team members, 6 of which are developing the product
Funding: $3.5M raised during ICO that ended in Q1 2018.
How are they similar to Slips:
Whilst EtherSportz is targeting their product towards eSports fans like us, there is a limit to the similarity. EtherSportz in a nutshell hosts daily tournaments which users compete in to win the prize pool. We do intend to host tournaments and match make users in the latter part of our roadmap which is similar to their core premise.
How are they different to Slips:
Unlike Slips there is no moderation element as users are not challenging each other to bets on EtherSportz, they’re simply competing in tournaments in order to win the token prize. Because of this fundamental difference, there’s a vast number of smaller issues (e.g. no focus on live streaming) that we could mention here.
Website: https://ethersportz.com
Whitepaper: https://ethersportz.com/whitepaper.pdf
Bitcointalk.org ANN: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2888796
Social Media Statistics
Facebook: 767
Twitter: 1,791
Telegram: 1,739
Instagram: 1,004
Reddit: 25
Gimli
Explain the project without hurting my brain:
Of all the projects we have reviewed so far, Gamico comes close to matching our disputed bets system and Gimli comes even closer to the social betting experience we want to offer over video streams. Gimli understand that most people watch matches online on popular streaming sites such as Twitch.
Gimli are seeking to create partnerships with popular streamers and list them on the platform. Viewers will be able to watch these streams and make a variety of bets within the stream, or use the GIM token to make donations, create pools and so on. The streamers are tasked with reporting the results of their game back to Gimli and they can monetise their audience by deciding how many GIM tokens will be collected from the bets placed on their stream.
Did you know…
One of the biggest strengths of the Gimli project is the team they have put together. On the technology side of things Ouziel Slama, who co-developed Counterparty (the platform to add custom tokens to Bitcoin) and Joseph Fiscella, a blockchain veteran who co-founded the Alexandria project and FlorinCoin. They also have a host of pro-gamers (including Luffy and Stephano) and streamers on board.
Status: ICO completed.
Working Product: No, although the road map promised that a public beta would be available 6 months after the end of the ICO.
Employees: 20+ members mentioned on their ANN thread, of which 3 are developers (including the CEO)
Funding: $1.7M raised during ICO which ended in October 2017
How are they similar to Slips:
Gimli is one of the first projects we have reviewed that like us wants to focus on streamers and their interactions with their viewers. Whether it’s making custom bets or receiving donations, Gimli understands that most of the action happens on streams and creating a monetisation source for streamers is an important way to drive adoption.
How are they different to Slips:
There are a number of significant differences between Gimli and Slips. For example, there is no moderation on Gimli. Streamers are considered trusted sources. They report the results of their matches and therefore stake their reputation (nobody will bet on their stream if they are reporting incorrect results). As mentioned before, we use a moderation system to handle this… which also allows us let anyone create their own channel (rather than join an existing one based on a popular streamer, a problem with existing non-blockchain based platforms). Gimli also shares revenue with the streamers by allowing them to set the amount of tokens (fees) collected from bets placed on their channel. We do not have such a system in place.
Website: https://gimli.io/
Whitepaper: https://gimli.io/pdf/gimli-white-paper.pdf
Bitcointalk.org ANN: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2014659.0
Social Media Statistics
Facebook: 13,459
Twitter: 2,002
Telegram: 810
Discord: 33
HUNT.BET
Explain the project without hurting my brain:
In short Hunt.Bet is supposed to be an eSports betting platform. From the explanation given, the creators of this project realised that ICOs were becoming a viable funding model and decided to hurriedly launch one. The whitepaper alludes to all sorts of features which to be frankly honest hurts our brain trying to summarise. They make frequent references to something called a Neuronal Network for example!
We found this to be one of the most unprofessional projects on the list we reviewed. We are not quite sure what has happened to this project, their first crowd sale ended with them being well short of their funding goal which to be honest is unsurprising.
Did you know…
“We see that blockchain is coming to our life and, considering the eSports players and bettors extremely close to computer science and advanced technologies, we assume that these people are the ones who should be on the edge of it..”
You should really read this project’s white paper for more finely worded gems like this.
Status: Unknown
Working Product: No, although some form of working product should have been launched by the first quarter of this year.
Employees: 6 core team members, 3 of them are developers
Funding: According to ICO Bench and this ANN thread, they have raised about $9,000.
We decided not the usual comparisons we have done for other projects in order to save ourselves from the tedium of comparing Slips to this project.
Website: https://huntbet.io/
Whitepaper: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxsqkYOp917IT2x5MmF4a0NPTUE/view
Bitcointalk.org ANN: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2077629.0
Social Media Statistics
Twitter: 2,553
Telegram: 398
Unikrn
Explain the project without hurting my brain:
Unikrn is a giant in eSports betting. They are already the largest fully regulated and licensed eSports bookmarker. Two years ago they created a token called Unikoin which allows anyone in the world to bet on the platform.
Mark Cuban, one of their most prominent investors implored them to explore the possibility of using blockchain and the decision was made to create UnikoinGold, a cryptocurrency version of their existing Unikoin token.
As part of the move to blockchain, Unikrn wanted to launch an updated version of their platform, offering “peer-to-peer”, “winner-takes-all” and “tournament” wagering.
Did you know…
As befitting their status as a heavyweight in the space, Unikrn is backed by SharkTank’s Mark Cuban and actor Ashton Kutcher. In addition, they have received funding from 500 Startups, Advancit Capital, Freelands Group, Indicator Venture and leading Australian gaming company “Tabcorp”. The company raised $10m in a Series A round in 2015 before launching their token sale that ended last October to raise a further ~$30m.
Status: ICO has ended
Working Product: Yes
Employees: 34 team members
Funding: $29.4M
How are they similar to Slips:
We probably do not need to repeat the fairly obvious similarities. Like Slips, Unikrn allows eSports fan to make wagers on matches. They have a 3 year track record in the industry. As well as the new cryptocurrency token (UnikoinGold) they are launching, they intend to rename their existing token to UnikoinSilver — a token that cannot be removed from the platform, which serves a similar role in their platform as our Slips Lite token will in ours.
How are they different to Slips:
Whilst the current UniKrn platform allows you to login and watch streams from Twitch, there is no social interface on top of the platform. Gimli and Slips are one of the two projects that try to focus on stream interactions. UniKrn like most other platforms we have reviewed utilise the web APIs provided by the games, which restricts the number of games they offer and the type of bets that can be created. We expect that the way Slips will be used most frequently is a browser plugin that overlays directly over an existing stream on a site like Twitch as opposed to a web site / application like UniKrn.
Website: https://unikrn.com/
Whitepaper: https://static.unikrn.com/4242/unikrn_bm/doc/whitepaper_en.pdf
Bitcointalk.org ANN: https://bitcointalk.to/index.php?topic=2206150.0
Social Media Statistics:
Facebook: 4,689
Twitter: 20,430
Telegram: 454
Discord / Slack: 449
This is our 360 degree view of the major blockchain based betting projects that we could find. We hope you found it useful to navigate the space and compare the different projects.
Still confused about what Slips is? Then you may want to watch our famous 50 second introduction video:
… and remember if you are interested in this exciting new project then please make sure you follow us on the following social channels:
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/slipstoken
- Discord: https://discord.gg/3r23R7g
- Telegram: https://t.me/slipstoken
You can also visit https://slips.io where you can register for the whitelist, earn some free Slips tokens and get a copy of the Litepaper!
