Dean
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Wagerr is a new sportsbook service which aims to offer a range of advantages over conventional gambling sites by using blockchain technology to enable direct peer-to-peer (P2P) betting.

A crowdsale to raise capital for the project will begin on 1st June 2017, allowing enthusiasts and cryptocurrency investors to get in on the ground floor of the project.

Early versions of the service are due to be launched later this year, in the final quarter of 2017.

Promo Video

The Technology

A combination of ‘application specific smart contracts’ and ‘phased transactions’ provides the technological basis for this decentralized P2P sportsbook. Together, they eliminate the need for central authorities – and therefore also eliminate a great deal of regulation which usually ties up companies who run this kind of service. When a punter puts on a bet, their stake is automatically held in escrow by smart contracts, which then verify the results and pay out the winner without anybody else needing to get involved. This also means that you do not need to trust your money to a company which could go out of business taking your funds, or try to wriggle out of paying winners in other ways.

There are, of course, some fees to be paid for using the service. But because there is no need for a central corporate entity, these fees are expected to be lower than conventional services which punters use today. What’s more, users who want to contribute to the network can effectively ‘become the house’ by running their own ‘oracle masternode’. The exact requirements for doing this have not been released yet as far as I could tell from the information that has been published so far, but a whitepaper is due out on the same day that the ICO crowdsale starts which will probably go into the details. It has already been revealed that oracles will earn around half of the fees paid by users, and that there will be a hard maximum of 2000 of these oracle masternodes.

Betting Options and Roadmap

The first option for punters interesting in taking a flutter using the Wagerr platform is using the ‘Head to Head’ mode. This is direct peer-to-peer betting in which two punters are matched together and bet against each other with the blockchain acting as escrow to make sure that the winner gets paid. This option is expected to be included in the initial public release penciled in for the final quarter of 2017. This initial release will also include chat rooms for major events in order to facilitate friendly banter as well as setting up new wagerrs.

A second option of ‘multi-user betting’ is expected to be released in the first quarter of 2018, alongside a new challenge / rematch feature to allow people who’ve bet against each other before to more easily pit their wits against each other a second time. Multi-user betting will see single bettors pony up to offer wagerrs which more than one person can accept.

The third and final gambling mode is expected soon afterwards in the second quarter of 2018. This is called ‘direct onchain betting’ and essentially means that the blockchain itself can take the role of the house and bet against individual players using dynamic odds balancing. This will make it quicker and easier for anybody to have a flutter without having to wait to find a match with another player.

The Coin

The platform is powered by its own digital currency token known as ‘WGR’. The initial distribution of this token will take place through the crowdsale which begins on 1st June 2017.

During this ICO, 8.5 million coins are being sold with a base price of $0.05 USD. This will be divided into 10 rounds of 6-17 million coins. The purpose of these rounds is to give an extra reward to early backers: for every round which is completed after the one your contribution falls into you get an extra 1% bonus. What this means is that round 1 backers who take part at the start of the sale will get a 9% bonus if all rounds get sold out. In addition, randomly selected participants in later rounds may win a ‘golden ticket’ with an extra bonus.

Anybody who holds these WGR tokens after the launch of the platform will benefit from a kind of dividend-like system based on deflationary economics. Nearly half of all fees paid by punters are burnt automatically by the protocol. This has the effect of reducing the total supply, and thereby increasing the value of each of the remaining tokens through the laws of supply and demand.

This is balanced against 1% inflation in new coins which are minted each year to pay the block reward and support the maintenance of the network.

Additional Info

Wagerr homepage: https://wagerr.com/

ICO page: https://wagerr.com/ico

Token Market information page: https://tokenmarket.net/blockchain/ethereum/assets/wagerr/