Every choice involves a tradeoff. 

Should I put the milk first or the cereal? Should I study engineering or business? Should we break up or get married?

Making the right choice means identifying your options, evaluating them, and placing a bet on which choice will help you achieve your goal. To do this effectively, you need to understand what your goal is, what the alternatives are, and the pros/cons of each option.

If your goal is to easily find a stable job after you graduate, then studying engineering is a good choice.

If you goal is to start your own company, then studying business is a good choice.

Neither of these choices are perfect, but some options are better than others. It just depends on what your goals are.

If your goal is to be a heart surgeon, then pursuing a degree in Applied Mathematics is probably a poor choice. It just doesn’t make sense, if your goal is to learn how to safely perform a triple bypass.

At SportX, our primary goal is to build applications that help crypto achieve mainstream adoption. We believe that a rising tide lifts all boats.

How can we build a crypto sports betting site for a mainstream audience?

We spend most of our time thinking about this question. We first launched SportX four months ago and we’ve processed 670,000 DAI of bets from over 350 users since then. This initial success is the reason that SportX is the best sports betting dapp in crypto.

But it’s still early for crypto. The number of crypto users is tiny relative to the 4 billion global internet users and the industry faces major technical limitations, like how to scale transaction volume while maintaining decentralization. 

To help crypto achieve mainstream adoption, we need to build things for mainstream users.

That means starting from the mindset of a mainstream sports bettor and designing a crypto product around their pain points. We’re huge fans of John Backus and his idea of minimum viable decentralization. We’ve learned that fully decentralized projects like Augur and Veil have failed to achieve widespread adoption (although we are hopeful about Augur v2).

Our goal is to continue to improve SportX until it’s ready for a mainstream audience. We refuse to stop until SportX is the best sports betting exchange in the world.

With that in mind, here are the 5 criticisms that we frequently hear from potential crypto users.

Why haven’t you released your smart contracts?

The Criticism

We hear this one a lot. Users that haven’t tried SportX are scared that they’ll lose their DAI due to a bug in our Solidity code or a malicious back door.

We don’t blame you for thinking that way. To date, the vast majority (over 80%) of crypto projects have turned out to be scams. In theory, being able to verify SportX’s open-source smart contracts would allow the crypto community to make sure that the SportX team hasn’t build any secret backdoors into the code. There’s no need to trust the team if you can trust the code!

Our Response

Does this matter to a mainstream audience? No. 

We’ve talked to a lot of mainstream sports bettors. None of them know how to read Solidity code, much less verify that the system functions as promised. If our goal is to achieve mainstream adoption, releasing our smart contracts does nothing to help us achieve that goal.

However, we recognize that crypto users are still skeptical of projects that don’t have publicly available smart contracts. If you’re one of those people, we have three data points to reduce your fear of losing DAI.

1) You will never lose money because of a SportX bug.

We understand that nobody wants to lose money to a smart contract bug. That’s why we paid for two independent audits of the SportX smart contracts from Solidified and Coin Mercenary. In the future, if you lose money due to a bug in our smart contracts, we promise to repay every cent.

2) SportX is non-custodial, so users store their crypto themselves.

SportX is a peer-to-peer betting exchange where users can only place bets from their crypto wallet. Since users self-custody their funds, you will never have to deposit on SportX. Additionally, you must authorize every bet by signing it from your own personal crypto wallet.

3) SportX will never pull an exit scam.

We understand that crypto users are skeptical of projects that have failed to deliver on their promises or stolen user funds. Around the world, there are a lot of sketchy sports betting sites. How do mainstream sports bettors make sure their funds aren’t stolen by malicious companies?

It’s simple: they check online forums, read user reviews,and ask other sports bettors if they have had any issues. If they have any trouble with their bets, they talk to customer service. If customer service doesn’t help, they spread information about their negative experience to every corner of the internet.

To date, the only money our users have lost are on bets that haven’t gone their way. But don’t just take our word for it… you can find the SportX Discord chat here. We invite you to chat with any of our users about their experiences using SportX.

Why do you ban certain countries (like the US)?

The Criticism

I’m unable to access Sportx.bet. Why can’t I see or use your dapp?

Our Response

You earn ownership every time you place a bet on SportX.

Since the legal implications of tokenized ownership, particularly with online betting, is a regulatory gray area, we geoblock countries where this regulatory risk is extremely high. The US is one of these countries.

We apologize for any users that are unable to access SportX. As global crypto regulation evolves, we will stay up to date.

How can SportX be decentralized?

The Criticism

How can SportX be a decentralized application? You haven’t released your smart contracts and geoblock certain countries. (We usually get this criticism when your definition of decentralized doesn’t match up with our definition of decentralized).

Our Response

Decentralized can mean very different things, depending on who you ask. To some users, decentralized means publicly releasing your smart contracts. To some, it means being nearly impossible to shut down (like Augur). However, if it’s impossible to shut down, it’s also impossible to prevent assassination markets and 13 year olds from gambling.

To the majority of investors, users, and developers that we’ve talked to, decentralized means that a project is built on top of a decentralized blockchain, like Ethereum. 

SportX is decentralized because it is built on top of Ethereum, which has over 8,000 nodes around the world. Bets on SportX are 100% verifiable, 100% transparent, and 100% pseudo-anonymous.

It doesn’t matter if you think crypto is the future or think it’s a fad, everyone agrees that 13-year-olds shouldn’t be allowed to bet on sports. Something we do plan on decentralizing over time is market resolution. 

How do I know that SportX isn’t a scam?

The Criticism

Users will lose money due to a bug in the code or an exit scam. Users will also waste time reading and learning about a project that can’t deliver on its promises. Before investing time and money into SportX, you want to make sure that we’re one of the good projects.

Our Response

Our track record speaks for itself. To date, over 16,000 bets have been placed on SportX, with over 670,000 Dai changing hands. With no bugs, no money being lost, and no serious complaints from users. The criticism we have received are from people who have NOT tried SportX, complaining about issues that our actual users have NOT experienced. To date, no bugs have been found and none of our users have had their money stolen.

Second, since SportX users store their crypto in personal crypto wallets, you never have to deposit money onto SportX. The only possible time that your funds are stored inside SportX smart contracts are the 24 hours before a bet is paid out. 

Third, we’ve done an excellent job of delivering on our promises to investors, users, and employees over the last two years and there is no reason we expect this situation to change. From launching SportX Beta in March, to SportX v1 in May, we’ve continually refined out UI and added new features to appeal to a mainstream audience.

Why isn’t your team publicly visible?

The Criticism

Crypto users are taught to check that there is actually a smart, dedicated team working on a project. It reduces the risk of the project being an exit scam.

Our Response

No mainstream sports betting site publishes photos of their employees online for both security and privacy reasons.

We provide many reasons for why SportX isn’t a scam above. They include:

  • Our track record of product updates, bets, and passionate users
  • Lack of any proof that SportX has ever been dishonest or malicious
  • The 2.5 years our team of employees and investors have spent building SportX

For big updates, you can follow our CEO, Andrew on Twitter or Medium.

Any other questions, comments, or criticisms?

We would love to hear! Maybe you thought of something we missed. Send us an email or join our Discord chat.

All choices have tradeoffs.

Our goal is to help crypto achieve mainstream adoption by building a product mainstream users will love. Sometimes that means we make decisions that not everyone agrees with, which is a good thing! 

It’s impossible to make everyone happy and at SportX, we believe in a free, efficient, and transparent market above all else.

Explore the SportX Dapp

About SportX

SportX is the world’s best crypto sports betting exchange, where users bet peer-to-peer against other bettors. Built on Ethereum and powered by Dai, SportX is a decentralized sports betting exchange that always places its users first by giving them ownership. To learn more, visit SportX and click Get Started.