Azuro Closes $4m Funding Round to Build Decentralized Betting Protocol

Azuro, a decentralized betting protocol, announced on Monday that it has raised $4 million in a funding round contributed by participants, including Hypersphere, Gnosis, Merit Circle, SevenX, and Quiet Capital.

Azuro, a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) building a protocol for blockchain-based betting, aims to disrupt traditional online betting with a  more transparent decentralized alternative.

Traditional betting firms go to great lengths to make betting unfair and opaque, Rossen Yordanov, a core contributor to Azuro project, said in a statement. “The problem is incentive misalignment. Profits are zero-sum, so many betting companies go to great lengths to create unfair and opaque environments for the players,” he stated.

The key mission of the Azuro project is to replace traditional centralized online betting exchanges such as Bet365, 1xBet, 22Bet, MarathonBet, BetWinner, 888sport, Betsson, sportsbooks, and others, which are often seen as predatory and profit-motivated.

In this way, Azuro is working to disrupt the $200 billion betting industry through blockchain smart contracts and web3 technologies to bring full transparency to the sector and increase liquidity in betting markets.

In the recent past, Azuro launched its mainnet on Gnosis Chain. The fund raised will be used to expand it to more blockchains, with Polygon its main target currently, as well as create a non-fungible token (NFT) bets marketplace and add further betting markets, the company said.

Hypersphere co-founder Jack Platts explained why they backed Azuro in the funding raise: “Betting markets are one of the few applications where crypto was always supposed to shine. So far though, none have been able to crack the nut of bootstrapping liquidity for popular betting disciplines. We believe Azuro’s team can finally make that promise true.”

Azuro leverages prediction markets, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), DAO governance, and liquidity pools on its backend to minimize costs associated with the betting process for users.

The latest funding brings Azuro’s total fundraising to $7.5 million. In January, Investors, including AllianceDAO, Arrington Capital, Ethereal Ventures and Delphi Digital led fundraising of $3.5 million for the project.

Decentralized Sports Betting on Blockchain

Betting is a common practice across a broad range of a variety of fields, including the sports industry, casinos, and others. The latest development by Azuro shows the entry of decentralized sports betting platforms is beginning to revolutionize the way people place bets.

Decentralized sports betting is a new type of betting mechanism that is set to revamp how traditional centralized online betting sites operate. Run by profit-oriented individuals, conventional sportsbooks and betting apps are known for charging high fees and taking advantage of users.  

Decentralized betting platforms are built on an open-source approach that incorporates blockchain technology. Furthermore, decentralized web 3.0 sports betting services normally don’t have actual business people who run the platform as there is no central authority in charge. In the platform, all users actively participate and decide whether or not to wager against the person who launched the market.

Lastly, decentralized sports betting platforms do not levy exorbitant fees and are regarded as safe because all data is stored on the blockchain, providing another layer of transparency.

Image source: Shutterstock