Gaming and Lotteries on the blockchain and how they’ll evolve: AMA with CroDraw
We hosted CroDraw for an AMA on Twitter Spaces to talk about problems in the lottery industry that need to be fixed and how blockchains are better suited for mass adoption.
Introduction
CroDraw has been a close partner of the Witnet Foundation and user of the Witnet protocol for nearly 9 months. The foundation has granted them $1,000 when they initially launched their protocol in the beginning of 2023 and we’re so happy to announce today that the Witnet Foundation has extend another round of funding to CroDraw, worth $2,500. This grant helps CroDraw to reach the goals in the second phase of their roadmap.
CroDraw is an on-chain lottery that is built around having multiple winners. Not only this, but 15% of all ticket entry sales go directly to charity via the Hearts of Gold that was set up by the CroDraw team to help crypto-natives struggling with mental health.
In the last week of November 2023 we hosted CroDraw on our Twitter Spaces to discuss gaming and lotteries on the blockchain and how we can see them evolving into the future. We also discussed how CroDraw intends to scale themselves to aid in onboarding new users. Catch the AMA recording here. This transcript is paraphrased from the two guests we had, Ryan and Crosmodev.
AMA
Where did CroDraw come from, why did you feel empowered to build it?
We had a core mission in our heads and no matter what was happening in the market we were driven. We both had been on a bit of a journey through ETH and some other tech, and we both had our experiences getting burned. We wanted to build a project geared around supporting peoples’ journeys, raising awareness, and making blockchain a more exciting and secure place. When we launched CroDraw we were very keen for it to not just be an NFT project. CroDraw spawned out of another community on Cronos called Trooprz. So we wanted it to have 5 pillars as our core message and ethos; connet, be active, be aware, learn, give. The goal was to build utility within the ecosystem and what better way to do that than a lottery system that allowed multiple people to win that also had a charitable aspect.
Tell us more about the charity CroDraw is raising money for, why is it an important place to donate? What should we know about them?
We set up the charity in the UK and we are in the process of being a registered entity. It’s called the ‘Hearts of Gold Foundation’ and the goal is to raise awareness around mental health issues with a specific focus on the cryptocurrency ecosystem. We were passionate about this because everyone in the world struggles or has run-ins with mental health issues at some point, and when you pair that with finance and financial burden there is a very real potential for negative effects on one’s life. We wanted to elevate the “crypto bro” mentality but have a real tangible aspect. The cool thing about CroDraw is that 15% of ticket sales go to the charity we set up. Right now we have about $5,000 waiting to be donated.
What does gaming on the blockchain look like right now? How do you think it should look in 5 years?
What is something that needs to immediately evolve in the blockchain gaming market in order to make these things widely accepted and produced?
The user experience right now is lacking. A lot of these communities are fragmented and pretty closed off. Scalability and security are pretty large hurdles we need to figure out how to solve. Another big piece is that mainstream game companies need to come in and prove its worth without shoving it in users’ face. Users don’t need to know the game they’re playing uses blockchain technology but the blockchain needs to prove it is a better way of running games. Real games also need to come on-chain and the overall quality of games need to improve, right now we have a lot of similar games that don’t give the user enough diversity
Why does lotteries and blockchains coexist well?
Transparency from blockchains make lotteries more secure for the actual players. Lotteries are riff with fraud, manipulation, and abuse because there’s so many avenues to take advantage of. Putting these things on-chain allow everyone to independently verify the winnings to see that it actually is a trustworthy system. Furthermore, when things are on the blockchain the fundamentals of anonymity and privacy for winners are very powerful. Lastly, lotteries on the blockchain can be very beneficial because of the global reach of blockchains. This means new revenue.
What is it about lotteries that is dysfunctional in the world that is solved by blockchains?
We need to start building compliance. We can’t build an industry trying to solve innefficiencies of the lottery on something that isn’t yet compliant. This of course might require all the usual bodies of government coming together to help regulate this in a healthy way. Whatsmore we need to tackle the obvious problems like solving accessibility issues, scalability problmes, and interoperability.
What is next for CroDraw?
The goal of CroDraw is to ultimately stick to our roadmap and keep deploying onto chains, whilst changing the branding to better align with that chain’s values. We want to always be loyal to our 5 pillars. Rather than making a big launch immediately, we want to grow a natural and healthy community by always delivering small incremental pieces of value regularly.
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