Startup Spotlight: Dexsport.io

Startup Spotlight: Dexsport.io

Decentralized Bookie for the Decidedly Degenerate

Welcome to The Modern Day Renaissance Man newsletter. I, Trey Layton, write about the things that interest me, often covering topics such as startups, sports, and entertainment. If you'd like to receive these newsletters directly in your email a few times a week, go ahead and subscribe to never miss an email!

Happy Thursday, folks.

The broader market continues to trend up led by strong, sound stocks such as $BBBY. It's a nice way to end the summer as actual productivity plummets from the number of people getting their last few beach weekends in before #SpookySZN begins. The same holds for crypto which has managed to claw its way back from the grave. Dare I say general sentiment seems bullish? However, are any of you really willing to bet that the potentially recessionary, certainly uncertain 2022 market environment is in the rearview mirror? Unless you're hoarding some banana peels, I'm going to imagine not.

Perhaps I should refrain from gambling references. After all, gambling is such a debased activity that I am certain nobody that I associate with would ever partake...

Or, maybe we should stare in awe at the total sports betting market, which amounted to $77 billion last year, and it is expected to grow nearly 11% annually through 2029 to $168. That's a lot of money on red🃏.

Much of this growth has been driven by the rise of online betting platforms that make it easy to bet on everything from horse racing to whether we will discover proof of intelligent life in space. Latest odds are 5/1.

With the success of companies such as FanDuel and DraftKings, there is evidence that execs are taking advantage of this growing popularity. However, there has also been growing interest in bookies in the web3 space. Frankly, this should come as little surprise as the people willing to bet on 23-leg parlays are exactly the kind of people willing to pay thousands of dollars for goblintown jpegs.

On a more serious note, there is vast potential for decentralized betting markets, and web3 actually provides many tools which could revamp the broader betting ecosystem. Imagine if you were able to quickly create a smart contract to wager on any event in the world (wife-carrying anyone??? 👀) with payouts and odds of your choosing, and anyone in the world could take up the other end of that bet. Perhaps, you posted numbers which were too gaudy for even the most idiotic bravest of wagerers, at which point others could then respond with counter odds, and eventually, the market would manage to calibrate so that there was some sort of equilibrium with few drastic variations. The use of smart contracts would even make it easier than ever to automatically transfer the funds between accounts upon the outcome of the event in focus. The marketplace itself could still take a percentage of each transaction as existing bookies already do for the provision of the platform. This seems to be an industry which would be particularly receptive to the current offerings of web3 infrastructure.

With this background in mind, I set out to explore the platforms already catering to the decentralization ethos, and the one which seems to be the furthest along is Dexsport.io

Dexsport is a decentralized sports betting platform supporting its own native token and offering a variety of betting products in sports (no cheese-racing...), prediction markets, P2P betting, and even an NFT exchange targeted towards digital sports memorabilia. Its token allows for staking which provides another profit opportunity for users and liquidity for the platform. $DESU has a finite supply of 1 billion with allocations of 22.% for liquidity allocation and 13.9% for staking rewards.

The platform already has a wider variety of offerings than a Golden Corral on Christmas Day, and its roadmap promises even more in the future. In sports alone, there are options ranging from Cricket to Counter Strike (eSport for our non-gamers out there). While not as comprehensive as more established competitors (no CFB yet... guess I'm holding off on Vandy +50,000 to win the SEC), the sports it does currently offer cater to the users it is already serving.

The company boasts a strong network of advisors ranging from crypto founders to investors in gaming and betting. Though the actual team is pretty anon (how web3 of them), the support already granted to them by leaders in the space and the progress they have already made in adding crypto betting, multi chain support, and experiments with P2E games all point to a group of capable and dedicated builders, the kind that will continue to build and deliver innovative products.

Arguably the biggest concern for the product is the Wipeout course of a regulatory gauntlet it will have to run through to gain access to a number of the most important markets. As of now, it seems that the platform is used primarily in Asia with some inroads being made into Europe. While major markets, namely China and India, are included in this, both of these governments have displayed a rather antagonistic stance with regards to crypto, thus the platform seems to be at the mercy of the state. The US offers another attractive markets for Dexsport, but gaining market share will likely prove even more challenging with the fragmented legal status of gambling between states and the well-known companies already providing betting products where it is allowed.

Betting offers one of the most viable use cases of web3 technology because of the benefits provided by smart contracts, decentralization, and vast customer reach spanning globally. Dexsport is hoping to attack this opportunity, but in many ways, the fate of the platform lies not in its own team but rather in the governing bodies and their allowance of two hot issues, crypto and gambling. Regardless, though, at least I can sleep well at night knowing I took the over on Arizona at 2.5 at Caesars. Don't let me down now, Coach Fisch.

Cheers to another day,

Trey