Decentralized Betting Protocol, Azuro Raises $3.5 Million Led By Top Crypto VCs

According to Statista data, the global sports betting industry skyrocketed to a market size of $203 billion in 2020 and is projected to grow at a CAGR of 9% every year to 2025. Following the lifting of the U.S federal ban on sports betting the sports betting revenue in the U.S generated over $1.5 billion, and is predicted to grow to as much as $8 billion by 2025. As the traditional betting industry experienced explosive growth, the decentralized betting industry also witnessed a similar linear growth rate with an aim to topple their traditional counterparts.

With the global betting and gambling industry expected to reach over $300 billion by 2025, the blockchain-based gaming industry growth rate may experience a mammoth growth rate during the period. Nonetheless, the decentralized betting industry still faces massive barriers to reaching the level of its traditional betting firms such as liquidity provision, poor UX, and limited prediction markets. A quick solution to these problems could see the decentralized finance market take off finally, after a half-decade struggle in gaining global adoption. 

One of the leading decentralized predictions markets, Azuro, is preparing for the inevitable rise in decentralized gambling with a $3.5 million seed round funding round, announced on Tuesday. The seed round funding was led by top crypto and blockchain-based VCs including Gnosis, Flow Ventures, and Polymorphic Capital. Other top investors in the round included Ethereal Ventures, Arrington XRP Capital, AllianceDAO (a.k.a. DeFi Alliance), Clever Advertising, Delphi Digital, Meta Cartel Ventures, Merit Circle among other VCs and angel investors. 

According to a statement from the Azuro team, the latest funding aims to solve the current persistent problems in the decentralized predictions market and build a new horizon for the global betting industry. The project will launch a trustless, transparent and cheap platform enticing crypto and non-crypto followers to join the space. First, Azuro aims to enhance the liquidity provision on betting markets by launching “pooled liquidity”, a first-of-its-kind in the betting space. On most of the betting DApps today, liquidity providers (LPs) have to start markets manually, set the odds and seed liquidity to each market they create. This sees the LPs bear all the betting risk on the platform while having little reward to show for it. 

On Azuro’s pooled liquidity markets, users will pool their funds to provide liquidity and receive Azuro token rewards as an incentive to provide liquidity. This maintains the liquidity on the platform and eases the burden on single liquidity providers, as is the case on most decentralized prediction markets. 

Additionally, most decentralized prediction markets are inefficient for bets with 3 or more outcomes. Most are bound to stick with YES/NO markets, which is dramatically insufficient especially for sports and related bets with more than two outcomes. Azuro plans to launch multiple prediction markets and introduce the “traditional sports betting” structure on the blockchain. Gamblers on the platform will have a wide range of options to bet from rather than the conventional “Yes/No” limitation on many decentralized prediction markets. The easy UX on the platform also allows players to see their potential winnings before they place a bet.

Notably, the platform will also introduce a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) allowing players to take part in the governance of the protocol.