Please could you introduce Paradox to our readers?
Paradox is an innovative peer-to-peer betting protocol built on Ethereum, designed to bring liquid betting markets to the blockchain. The protocol uses parimutuel odds and distributes a 1% commission fee from each bet to those who have bet previously. The Paradox Protocol extracts no rent, all the money in the pool goes to the bettors. The earlier you bet, the more commission you earn.
You recently announced a partnership with Root to launch a parimutuel betting pool for the World Cup. How did this come about and what has the early response to the product been?
Paradox provided the first real-world application for the launch of Root and will be using Root as the currency for long-term markets. When a user makes an outright bet on who will win the NBA championship, the sportsbook holds your money for half a year and you receive no compensation. No matter how good of a bet you make, it is hard to have enough edge to tie up your money for that long.
Root is designed to allow users to earn yield while waiting for a bet to settle. The early response has been positive, nearly 60,000 Roots were bet in the World Cup pool.
Tell us about your experience at the SBC First Pitch competition in Barcelona?
Barcelona was an amazing experience. It was really cool to meet all the different companies in the competition. As a direct result of participating in SBC First Pitch, Pinnacle invited us to work out of their office in Curacao.
Why are betting exchanges and web3 such a perfect match?
We think peer-to-peer betting and web3 are a perfect match, but betting exchanges and web3 are not a perfect match. Web3 betting exchanges have not been able to attract liquidity. This is because, with no banning, limiting, or player profiling, the users that will make the most money will be betting against liquidity providers. On Web3 exchanges, there is no way to ban or limit a user who is always betting against the Lakers before Lebron is publicly out.
Paradox is designed to resolve the major issues that face traditional web3 betting exchanges. With Paradox’s parimutuel betting style, news changes are insignificant as market odds are not determined until the betting window is closed. If someone is providing $100,000 at a fair market price and breaking news hits, there is no risk in bettors coming in and taking advantage of a mispriced line. Additionally, with Paradox the liquidity providers act as the first bettors and in turn receive the highest share of commissions for those pools. Bettors can take the side they want, knowing they are going to get a fair price and earn commissions while they bet.
What's next on the roadmap for Paradox?
We launched a week ago, we are getting tons of feedback. A lot of people have asked for the ability to claim commission and winnings from multiple events. We are working on adding this to the contract. Right now, it costs about $2-3 to claim commission and $2-3 to claim winnings. There are still some areas of centralization in the protocol, right now admins grade all the scores and choose which events to create. We want to continue to evolve and eventually become completely censorship-resistant and community-owned. We also want to expand our offerings and offer unique markets that cannot be easily priced, like will Sam Bankman-Fried go to jail and daily NBA top scorer pools.
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