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Azuro, a decentralized protocol, announces a successful $3.5 million seed round funding led by top VCs, traditional betting companies, and blockchain-based betting firms. Announced Tuesday, Azuro, a blockchain-based predictions market, publicized the latest $3.5 million seed funding round to help develop their platform and revolutionize the world of betting. The seed funding round attracted some of the top VCs in crypto including Gnosis, Flow Ventures, and Polymorphic Capital, who led the funding round. 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 the release , Azuro plans to use the funds to revolutionize the Web2 (or traditional) betting market and revive the stale decentralized betting market. Despite first making an appearance in the blockchain world in 2017, the decentralized betting market has stagnated due to the lack of deep liquidity, skepticism, and mistrust on these betting platforms despite the projects having brilliant developers and a ready user base. Additionally, the decentralized betting market still faces stigma as a high barrier of entry industry, given the need for huge capital, regulation barriers, and geographical restrictions. Azuro, a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) focused on the democratization and innovation in betting, aims to provide a lasting solution that will recover what was once a thriving decentralized betting market. The platform aims to solve the persisting problem of liquidity, user experience, and product depth to build a new and totally different decentralized betting market. The global betting market is expected to grow to a $95 billion market by 2023, and blockchain is expected to lead the growth, especially with the play-to-earn (P2E) industry growing at an explosive rate. Nonetheless, new blockchain-based betting projects still lack the features and solutions to solve the current problems facing the industry. While these new projects launch daily, many of them are just slight improvements on already existing platforms and some just rebranded as decentralized betting exchanges. As alluded to, one of the biggest problems facing current decentralized betting platforms is the lack of liquidity and inefficient liquidity allocation across the betting markets. With the latest funding, Azuro plans to solve this issue by introducing “pooled liquidity” in an effort to scale prediction markets. Users will pool their funds to provide liquidity and receive Azuro token rewards, meaning there will be constant liquidity provided, contrary to single liquidity providers on previously launched platforms. Unlike their competition,  liquidity providers (LPs) are not required to manually create markets and are not exposed to betting-market-specific risk. Instead, the risk is spread across all betting markets on the protocol, and therefore dramatically reduced for the LPs. The liquidity providers are then paid via the rewards from betting, meaning the LPs will “always” play house on the platform. Additionally, betting markets are created by linking real-world data to the platform through oracles removing the need for LPs to manually create the markets. Notably, 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. More importantly, bets on Azuro are non-fungible which also means there is no longer any need to buy and sell tokens to bet, the statement further reads. Lastly, the platform will also launch a DAO to allow players to have a say on the development and upgrades on the betting platform. Much fuss has been made on the significance of DAOs in today’s crypto industry but with its DAO, Azuro aims to reduce the regulation limitations and geographical barriers facing many potential players across the globe.

Azuro protocol raises $3.5 million to ‘revolutionize’ decentralized prediction markets

Blockchain-based NFTs are becoming widely adopted across an extensive range of industry segments. Non-fungible tokens are unique and useful because they allow us to prove, with the power of distributed ledger technology (DLT), that each NFT is truly unique or one-of-a-kind and there aren’t any other digital collectibles that are just like a particular NFT an investor is planning to own or already owns. Many new and innovative projects have been launched in order to provide various use-cases or applications that leverage NFT technology. Minting, buying, selling, trading, and even investing in NFTs has become a global phenomenon. It’s not just a fad or some crazy bubble without any fundamentals. NFTs will become ubiquitous because they are truly useful. They can be described or thought of as a type licensing technology that can reliably prove that a particular digital item is truly one-of-a-kind and who its owner(s) are. In much the same way that rare cards or unique works of art in the real world are considered classics and become extremely valuable, NFTs seamlessly introduce the very same concept in the digital world. Large tech firms such as Visa, Mastercard, and even Microsoft (among others) are now focused on supporting NFTs in some manner and also the fast-evolving Metaverse. In addition to giant companies, there are a number of high-potential initiatives that are also developing new use-cases for the booming NFT market. Converting Bets into NFTs
Azuro is an innovative project that aims to provide a decentralized betting protocol that is governed by a distributed autonomous organization (DAO). The platform addresses a number of issues or problems that are found in the existing online betting sector. For example, the current online betting has unclear or incorrect odds and bet settlement for bettors. There are also late or declined payouts, which negatively impacts the user experience. In addition to these issues, there are account limitations for successful bettors, as well as certain liquidity limitations for bookmakers and relatively high payment (10%) costs. The Azuro team aims to address all these issues, and also plans to resolve other problems like low conversions because of internal KYC. Currently, there are also high entry barriers for investors and entrepreneurs so this is another area that Azuro has identified and will try to address it as well. Additional issues Azuro plans to solve are enhancing the UX for bettors and bookmakers, further expanding markets, and “stabilizing all sides with decentralization.”
The company is being led by a team with considerable experience in the betting sector. Azuro brings a crypto solution to online betting that provides a much better experience for bettors, and a solid investment for entrepreneurs. Azuro’s working MVP has already been deployed on the Rinkeby Network. The project’s developers have also created the mechanism to convert each bet to an NFT. They have also implemented the architecture of the future Oracle’s solution with a Chainlink node in operation. By turning each bet into an NFT, there should be an opportunity for additional trading cases for users and the NFT could be sold via the Bet Marketplace, the developers explained. As noted by its development team, NFTs of each bet may enter the Azuro marketplace for secondary sales and even P2P trading. Gamification should incentivize participation via leaderboards, badges/achievements, and various challenges. Diamond NFTs Earned by SynFutures Traders
In addition to this platform, there are many more promising NFT use-cases that have emerged this year. For example, SynFutures claims to be the first futures trading platform that leverages the Single Token Model: Users are able to trade and easily list crypto majors, altcoins, NFTs, indices, and real-world assets with a single token through their sAMM model. The SynFutures team recently revealed that they have a new and improved website. The aim of their project is to create a platform that’s more open, decentralized, and leveraged. As of November 10, 2021, the SynFutures Beta version recorded a 24-hour trading volume of $29.7 million. Their total users also grew throughout October, reaching over 44,000 on November 10. The team also notes that their trading competition started on October 15 and has since rewarded 7 traders with Diamond NFTs for their $1M+ total trading volume since the beginning of the competition. SynFutures’ products include NFTures and their Decentralized Oracles. With NFTures, traders can easily short or long a popular NFT directly, the developers explained. A New NFT Marketplace Aims to Be an OpenSea Competitor
Another high-potential project called Infinity is offering a brand new NFT marketplace that will try to compete with OpenSea. Infinity claims that it has already given away 600M tokens. Consumers who have performed transactions on one of the largest marketplaces for digital collectibles or NFTs should receive free tokens, however, only if they use the services of this competitor. Infinity says it’s like the “FTX for NFTs.” The company also noted that Infinity is a community-led, decentralized NFT marketplace created specifically for the future of discovering, developing, and owning digital collectibles. As a legitimate alternative to OpenSea, the platform intends to better represent, as well as cater to the special requirements of the NFT community. Dune Analytics data shows that traders have been using Infinity, however, the volumes have not been too high. As noted by its creators, Infinity has been established by Garrett Allen and Adi Kancherla. Allen is a ConsenSys alum, the Ethereum-focused company that recently acquired $200 million in capital to expand its line of products. Kancherla has experience working at Google and Amazon and also runs an NFT minting firm known as Mavrik. According to Kancherla and the team, the crypto and DeFi industry really need a Web 3.0 version of OpenSea. They claim that not having such a solution is like not having access to decentralized or non-custodial exchanges and only being able to trade crypto-assets via Coinbase. It’s worth noting that a company worker used certain information to trade NFTs, which had a negative impact on OpenSea’s reputation. These types of incidents also indicate that the market needs more platforms so they can offer better services. Notably, Infinity’s initial version has been created by forking OpenSea’s source-code, however, it has significantly lower transaction costs at around 1.5%, compared to 2.5% for OpenSea. All the transaction fees reportedly go to the community-managed DAO. These projects are among many other high-potential initiatives that have been launched to support the dynamic NFT industry. In the years to come, we should see a much more robust and mature market for NFTs, which will be supported by many different blockchains and a wide range of crypto-assets. As we head into 2022, we can expect many more creative use-cases for NFTs to emerge that should focus on gaming, gambling, sports, entertainment, and just about any other industry that would benefit from proving the authenticity of digital items and products. Share this article

As NFT Craze Continues to Boom, New Use-Cases Emerge

New data shows a significant jump in the number of bettors moving to the blockchain over the last quarter. The BGA report shows that in Q3 alone, the number of  Unique Active Wallets (UAW) connected to game dapps hit 754,000. This represents almost half of the overall gaming activity in the entire gaming sector. This player explosion has partly been boosted by the Play to Earn model and NFT gaming, but on top of that betting on the blockchain puts bettors on a fairer and more equal playing field with the bookmakers. Blockchain-based gaming brings timely payouts, fair bet settlements and keeps fixed-odds fair and transparent. It also means that players that are winning a lot will not have their accounts limited, as has so often been the case with conventional betting. Betting in this way also gives users anonymity and data protection and means that casinos don’t need to deal with cumbersome KYC processes, which often lower their conversion rates. For bookmakers, this also means that they are active in much larger pools, bringing liquidity to their events and games and fairer fixed odds to their punters. Azuro is a leading brand in the blockchain betting space. They run a protocol allowing bookmakers to integrate with their front end and take advantage of all the benefits of the blockchain, plus DAO automation and oracle imported fixed odds. We spoke to their CMO Rossen Yordanov to understand how blockchain betting differs from conventional betting. Q: For the uninitiated user, what experience does Azuro offer from conventional betting sites? A: First let me clarify that Azuro is not a platform but a decentralized betting protocol. Betting itself will happen on front-ends which are built on top of Azuro. While Azuro provides the backend decentralized infrastructure which makes betting possible. Many of these front-ends will look similar to the bookmakers of today. So betting there will be very, very similar. Azuro will deliver a classic user experience with plentiful leagues, events and many, many betting markets, plus of course accumulator bets, and so on. That’s a core goal from the outset. Odds will also be represented just as a conventional bettor expects them (fractional, decimal etc.). Some aspects will be nuanced, though – for example, bet cash-out (a player who exits their bet before the event is played) will be possible, but won’t be offered by the “house”. Bettors will be able to trade their bets in a decentralized marketplace. But still, even more importantly – betting on blockchain may take completely different new forms which don’t exist today. Azuro may end up being integrated into blockchain games and we may see native, in-game betting as part of the gameplay. This is very easy in Web3 because everything is so composable. Or as another example – each bet on Azuro can be minted as an NFT, which means some bets may retain collectible value and be traded as collectibles. That’s new and exciting. Q: What are the key challenges faced by conventional gaming? A: The key challenge for players is that they play against the bookmakers. And they are not in equal positions. Almost all power is in the hands of the operators. And they may decline or delay payouts to players, push smart bettors out (as most actually do), close & lock accounts and so forth. Players can do very little to stop that usually. Q: What is provably fair gaming? A: First comes transparency – and blockchain brings that. Then – no custody of bettors’ funds. That means that no central authority takes the player’s money and decides what to do with them. With Azuro – that’s a smart contract (which automatically solves 99% of all bets), with an added dispute mechanism (for edge cases) where decisions can be taken in a decentralized way by voting. Fair in my view is not an absolute measure. Nothing can ever be 100% fair. But we can get very close. And with Azuro’s decentralized betting protocol – we’ll do just that. Q: Does this mean that conventional sites are not fair? Do they manipulate outcomes? A: Yes in many cases it means just that, not fair. Or let’s say much less fair. Like for example – almost all bookmakers have algorithms to detect “smart” players (such who have a high probability to win their bets). Once a player is flagged – his account is limited so they can bet minimal amounts. Or not at all. Is this fair? I don’t think so. Many bookmakers will trigger crazy rigorous checks on the player when there is a big win, more so than if the player isn’t winning…Yet, I don’t think we have to just sit and blame bookmakers. They are for-profit businesses and they are maximizing profit. It’s not a coincidence that all act similarly. Regarding manipulating outcomes – no, that’s very rare, at least amongst the better-known operators. Q: What jurisdictional and regulatory limitations will being on the blockchain solve? A: Being on the blockchain isn’t about evading (or “solving”) regulations. The blockchain, smart contracts and web3 provide an environment that allows for transparent, fairer and more engaging betting. That’s the main point. Q: How has betting on the blockchain been able to revolutionize betting? A: We haven’t seen it yet. True decentralized betting has so far been in the form of prediction markets and they never took off. There are big liquidity problems there, so there are not enough betting markets and also the UX is not particularly suitable for betting. So it doesn’t work. But the revolution is coming, watch out. Q: Are gamers jumping on the blockchain bandwagon or is it proving difficult for them to change the way they game? A: Firstly – bettors are totally using more and more cryptocurrency to bet with (i.e. for their deposits). That trend is super strong and not taking a break. As for betting on the blockchain – not yet, as said previously, because there weren’t good options. This is changing now. Q: How does the future of blockchain gaming look? A: It looks like azure skies – fully transparent. But also – community-run, with clear commitments to responsibility and with totally new aspects like bets as collectibles, decentralized secondary marketplaces for bets cash-out, and native betting within games on the blockchain. It will be fun! The final word
So according to Yordanov blue skies ahead for blockchain gaming. In anyone’s view, taking a product, making it much more fair and transparent for the bettor can never be a bad thing. According to the jump in blockchain player numbers, apparently, the bettors agree. Certainly. exciting days ahead for blockchain-based gaming platforms and protocols.

Blue Skies Ahead for the Blockchain-Based Betting Industry, Interview With Azuro’s Rossen Yordanov

5 min read
Blue Skies Ahead for the Blockchain-Based Betting Industry, Interview With Azuro’s Rossen Yordanov
New data shows a significant jump in the number of bettors moving to the blockchain over the last quarter. The BGA report shows that in Q3 alone, the number of  Unique Active Wallets (UAW) connected to game dapps hit 754,000. This represents almost half of the overall gaming activity in the entire gaming sector. This player explosion has partly been boosted by the Play to Earn model and NFT gaming, but on top of that betting on the blockchain puts bettors on a fairer and more equal playing field with the bookmakers. Blockchain-based gaming brings timely payouts, fair bet settlements and keeps fixed-odds fair and transparent. It also means that players that are winning a lot will not have their accounts limited, as has so often been the case with conventional betting. Betting in this way also gives users anonymity and data protection and means that casinos don’t need to deal with cumbersome KYC processes, which often lower their conversion rates. For bookmakers, this also means that they are active in much larger pools, bringing liquidity to their events and games and fairer fixed odds to their punters. Azuro is a leading brand in the blockchain betting space. They run a protocol allowing bookmakers to integrate with their front end and take advantage of all the benefits of the blockchain, plus DAO automation and oracle imported fixed odds. We spoke to their CMO Rossen Yordanov to understand how blockchain betting differs from conventional betting. Q: For the uninitiated user, what experience does Azuro offer from conventional betting sites? A: First let me clarify that Azuro is not a platform but a decentralized betting protocol. Betting itself will happen on front-ends which are built on top of Azuro. While Azuro provides the backend decentralized infrastructure which makes betting possible. Many of these front-ends will look similar to the bookmakers of today. So betting there will be very, very similar. Azuro will deliver a classic user experience with plentiful leagues, events and many, many betting markets, plus of course accumulator bets, and so on. That’s a core goal from the outset. Odds will also be represented just as a conventional bettor expects them (fractional, decimal etc.). Some aspects will be nuanced, though – for example, bet cash-out (a player who exits their bet before the event is played) will be possible, but won’t be offered by the “house”. Bettors will be able to trade their bets in a decentralized marketplace. But still, even more importantly – betting on blockchain may take completely different new forms which don’t exist today. Azuro may end up being integrated into blockchain games and we may see native, in-game betting as part of the gameplay. This is very easy in Web3 because everything is so composable. Or as another example – each bet on Azuro can be minted as an NFT, which means some bets may retain collectible value and be traded as collectibles. That’s new and exciting. Q: What are the key challenges faced by conventional gaming? A: The key challenge for players is that they play against the bookmakers. And they are not in equal positions. Almost all power is in the hands of the operators. And they may decline or delay payouts to players, push smart bettors out (as most actually do), close & lock accounts and so forth. Players can do very little to stop that usually. Q: What is provably fair gaming? A: First comes transparency – and blockchain brings that. Then – no custody of bettors’ funds. That means that no central authority takes the player’s money and decides what to do with them. With Azuro – that’s a smart contract (which automatically solves 99% of all bets), with an added dispute mechanism (for edge cases) where decisions can be taken in a decentralized way by voting. Fair in my view is not an absolute measure. Nothing can ever be 100% fair. But we can get very close. And with Azuro’s decentralized betting protocol – we’ll do just that. Q: Does this mean that conventional sites are not fair? Do they manipulate outcomes? A: Yes in many cases it means just that, not fair. Or let’s say much less fair. Like for example – almost all bookmakers have algorithms to detect “smart” players (such who have a high probability to win their bets). Once a player is flagged – his account is limited so they can bet minimal amounts. Or not at all. Is this fair? I don’t think so. Many bookmakers will trigger crazy rigorous checks on the player when there is a big win, more so than if the player isn’t winning…Yet, I don’t think we have to just sit and blame bookmakers. They are for-profit businesses and they are maximizing profit. It’s not a coincidence that all act similarly. Regarding manipulating outcomes – no, that’s very rare, at least amongst the better-known operators. Q: What jurisdictional and regulatory limitations will being on the blockchain solve? A: Being on the blockchain isn’t about evading (or “solving”) regulations. The blockchain, smart contracts and web3 provide an environment that allows for transparent, fairer and more engaging betting. That’s the main point. Q: How has betting on the blockchain been able to revolutionize betting? A: We haven’t seen it yet. True decentralized betting has so far been in the form of prediction markets and they never took off. There are big liquidity problems there, so there are not enough betting markets and also the UX is not particularly suitable for betting. So it doesn’t work. But the revolution is coming, watch out. Q: Are gamers jumping on the blockchain bandwagon or is it proving difficult for them to change the way they game? A: Firstly – bettors are totally using more and more cryptocurrency to bet with (i.e. for their deposits). That trend is super strong and not taking a break. As for betting on the blockchain – not yet, as said previously, because there weren’t good options. This is changing now. Q: How does the future of blockchain gaming look? A: It looks like azure skies – fully transparent. But also – community-run, with clear commitments to responsibility and with totally new aspects like bets as collectibles, decentralized secondary marketplaces for bets cash-out, and native betting within games on the blockchain. It will be fun! The final word
So according to Yordanov blue skies ahead for blockchain gaming. In anyone’s view, taking a product, making it much more fair and transparent for the bettor can never be a bad thing. According to the jump in blockchain player numbers, apparently, the bettors agree. Certainly. exciting days ahead for blockchain-based gaming platforms and protocols.

Wakatta is a non-fungible token (NFT) focused blockchain for the entertainment industry. The company's substrate-based blockchain helps entertainment enterprises meet the demands of a decentralized future. The company secures digital identities to facilitate collaborations and offers tools to unlock new possibilities for gaming, sports, fashion, art, and luxury companies. It is based in Zug, Switzerland.

Wakatta

This partnership with Azuro is an important step that aligns with Wakatta 's vision of providing a high-efficiency and low-cost blockchain to bold and visionary projects in the crypto industries , `` says Alex Blagirev , Wakatta .

Wakatta and Azuro Enter Partnership To Accelerate Online Betting Democratization.

Azuro

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Companies in this collection develop everything from microprocessors to flash memory, integrated circuits specifically for quantum computing and artificial intelligence to OLED for displays, massive production fabs to circuit design firms, and everything in between.

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Azuro is an electronic design automation (EDA) software company that aims to deliver design tools that reduce the power consumption of digital chips. Azuro's software aims to allow electronics companies around the world to offer more talk time, play time and functionality in mobile phones and wireless devices.

Name	Heiner Sussner
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