Game Changer: Live Betting Goes Onchain with Azuro

Live betting is coming to onchain sports markets, and Azuro is about to become the first in the industry to introduce it to Web3. With blockchain inherent constraints to processing live data, this is indeed a technological leap forward.

The Challenges of Organizing Live

Live betting has always been about immediacy and adaptability. While players have to make quick decisions, the organizers have to adjust the odds on the go as the game progresses. To do this, a Web2 app would need an event-driven architecture that can quickly process new game data and update odds. It would also need complex algorithms that parse live game feeds continuously from in-memory databases and a solid message-queuing system to maintain data integrity and quick response to game changes.

Not to mention that maintaining liquidity, especially in less popular markets or events, can be challenging. There would need to be algorithmic solutions for predictive analytics and real-time resource balancing in place. This would help maintaining enough depth to handle demand shifts.

Plus, handling a large volume of bets simultaneously, especially during major sporting events, requires a strong technical infrastructure, including server capacity and network bandwidth. It would mean implementing distributed computing solutions, often cloud-based, to manage high volumes of concurrent transactions.

Inherent Onchain Constraints

Integrating real-time decision-making with the immutable nature of blockchain brings new constraints. Take, for example the inevitable network latency or scalability issues. Handling a large volume of transactions simultaneously, which is common during popular live events, can strain blockchain networks, leading to increased transaction fees and slower processing times.

Plus, incorporating live, real-time data from external sources (like sports events) into the blockchain in a trustworthy and tamper-proof manner requires reliable oracle systems. Ensuring these oracles provide accurate and timely data is a significant challenge.

In live betting, where timing is everything, these challenges are not just technical — they’re fundamental. Yet, there are ways to tackle them.

Azuro’s Smart Contract Solutions

Azuro’s live smart contracts — HostCore, LiveCore, and Relayer — handle the complexities of live event updates and state changes.

• HostCore: This is the core module. It registers new games and manages their lifecycles. HostCore also handles the odds and provides essential game info to off-chain interfaces. All live game and market data are stored in the HostCore contract on the HostChain, currently on the Gnosis chain.
• LiveCore: Engineered to be the dynamic layer, this contract monitors event states and accepts bets based on parameters like outcome, odds, and amount. It employs a snapshot-saving method for late bets, where bets placed post-event resolution are timestamped and kept open for cancellation and refunds.
• Relayer: This contract is responsible for the execution logistics. It prepares bets for execution and receives rewards for the processing (set by the end users before creating a transaction order). By the way, setting a limit for the relayer gas fees is the only thing the end users have to do to start placing live bets.

Two Approaches to Data Handling:

• Azuro uses a LiveDataFeed subgraph for accessing new live games and markets, similar yet structurally different from the subgraph for PrematchCore contracts to optimize for live data peculiarities.
• For the imperative of real-time market updates, including state changes, odds adjustments, and outcomes, we integrate a Websocket API. This ensures a near-instantaneous data relay, crucial for maintaining true live interaction with sports markets.

This system creates a multistep process for making live bets that can be illustrated by the following diagram:

What’s essential for Azuro’s approach to live betting is not only managing the effieciency of live data transfer, but also the immediacy of smart contract calculations to ensure the data not only gets from the data provider to the user and back on time, but the odds get instant and precise updates, as well.

In the end, Azuro’s game-changing move isn’t just about adding blockchain to the live betting mix; it’s about rewriting the playbook. Azuro is showing us how the blend of high-stakes, fast-paced betting action can coexist with blockchain’s transparent, immutable nature, proving that in the tech world, sometimes the boldest bets are the smartest ones.

Azuro is the onchain predictions layer. It consists of modular tooling, oracle and liquidity solutions for EVM chains to host powerful prediction and gaming apps.

With its unique infrastructure layer approach, Azuro makes onchain predictions and gaming portable and composable. It allows anyone to engage and monetize users by building apps, integrations, and products quickly, permissionlessly and with zero upfront or running costs.

• Website: https://azuro.org/
• Docs: https://gem.azuro.org
• Github: https://github.com/Azuro-protocol
• Onchain activity: https://dune.com/azuro/stats

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