Why Build a Market Making Bot on SX

Transform Your Betting with Programmatic Market Making Strategies

Andrew Young
SX Network
5 min readMay 30, 2023

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Check out the SX API docs for instructions on how to build your own bot

tl;dr

Building a market-making bot on SX Bet unlocks an efficient way to generate profits by enabling you to offer bets at positive EV on multiple markets at once. In this article, we discuss the workings of SX Bet, the advantages of market making betting bots, and give you some links so you can build your own. Embrace this powerful tool to boost your earnings, respond swiftly to market changes, and gain an edge in the sports betting market.

💰 The House Always Wins

In the world of betting, having an edge is everything.

Traditional bookmakers have an edge — they offer odds on events and profit from the vig they implicitly charge. This vig is typically anywhere between 5–9% — it represents their positive EV.

For example, on a 50–50 bet, bookmakers will often offer odds of -110 (i.e. 1.90) on both sides of the market. This means that if one user bets $1,000 on one side of a 50–50 bet (at -110/1.90) and another user simultaneously bets $1,000 on the other side at the same odds; the bookmaker will guaranteed a profit of $100.

Bookmaking can be a great business.

🏦 Be The House on SX

While traditional sportsbooks only allow bettors to take bets, betting exchanges like SX Bet offer an incredible opportunity for users to become the bookmaker themselves. Betting exchanges are platforms where users bet against each other, instead of betting against a single bookmaker.

Furthermore, while most betting exchanges charge huge fees to access to their APIs, SX Bet gives everyone access to their API. This means anyone can automate this process by building their own programmatic market-making bot on SX, for free.

SX enables anyone to build a bot that can dynamically offer odds, manage multiple markets, and swiftly respond to market changes, much like a traditional bookmaker.

As such, the sophisticated sports bettor isn’t merely a participant in the betting market; with SX Bet, they become a significant contributor and beneficiary of the betting ecosystem.

Market making bots serve a dual purpose — they’re fast and they’re efficient. Essentially, they take the principles of traditional bookmaking and supercharge them. By utilizing a market making bot, you can offer odds across a vast number of markets quickly, and more importantly, respond to market changes promptly, thereby ensuring your books remain balanced. It’s a modern approach to the sports betting strategy, leveraging technology to optimize your profitability.

🦾 Why Build a Betting Bot on SX Bet?

Before diving into the bot creation process, let’s understand the dynamics of betting on SX Bet and why a betting bot can be a game-changer. SX Bet operates as a non-custodial betting platform, which means you retain complete control over your funds at all times. Orders are signed cryptographically via your wallet account, and the platform’s smart contracts handle execution. This guarantees bet settlement, while enabling you to have control over your funds at all times.

A betting bot holds several advantages over manual betting. It can perform tasks more rapidly and efficiently, making it an ideal tool for those intending to provide liquidity on SX and earn profits as a bookmaker. A betting bot can post bet offers across a multitude of markets in a brief period and promptly respond to market changes.

Additionally, you can post more in bet offers than you have available in capital. This means you can offer 100 $100 bets across 100 different markets with only $100 in capital. SX has a sophisticated process to cancel bet offers once you no longer have the funds to keep offering, which enables market makers to be extremely capital efficient.

🤖 What Can a SX Betting Bot Do?

SX betting bots can do everything a normal human user can do, but just way faster. Here’s a list of the things your betting bot can do with the SX API:

  1. Get all the sports supported by SX
  2. Get all the leagues supported by SX
  3. Get all the active markets
  4. Submit a new order to a market
  5. Cancel an existing order
  6. Get all orders on market(s)
  7. Get suggestions of orders to fill
  8. Fill order(s)
  9. Get all active orders for an account
  10. Get pending bets for a user
  11. Subscribe to an address and get updates when that addresses’ bookmaker orders change
  12. Get past trades
  13. Approve SX contracts for trading

Essentially, a betting bot on SX Bet can perform everything a human user can do, but at a much faster rate, enhancing the responsiveness and efficiency of your betting strategies.

🤝 Building Your Own Betting Bot on SX Bet

If you’re interested in creating a betting bot on SX Bet, head over to the official SX API documentation. It provides detailed instructions to help you construct your own betting bot and unlock a new level of efficiency in your betting endeavors.

Should you encounter any questions or need further assistance, feel free to connect with the SX community on Discord. They’re always ready to help you navigate any challenges and ensure your bot-building journey is as seamless as possible. There is specific channel called #API-Help to help newcomers build their own bots as well.

In conclusion, building a betting bot on SX Bet can unlock new possibilities for profit and efficiency. If you’ve been searching for a way to enhance your sports betting strategy and take advantage of the dynamic odds landscape, a betting bot on SX Bet could be the tool you need. In following articles, I’ll walk users through the process of creating their own simple market making bots on SX. Stay tuned!

About SX Network

SX Network combines smart contracts with an on-chain treasury and prediction market protocol. SX Network is perfect for developers with EVM-compatibility, low-cost transactions, and PoS-based consensus. SX.Bet is the #1 prediction market dapp by betting volume across all chains. All bets are peer-to-peer and settled on-chain. SX Bet has processed +$335,000,000 in betting volume.

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