Introducing SportX v1 – SportX –

Roadmap

✅ Beta: Launch a working sports betting exchange dapp (March 2019)
✅ v1: Achieve UX parity with a traditional web app (May 2019)
️2️⃣ v2: Enable live in-game sports betting markets (Summer 2019)
3️⃣ v3: Launch non-sports related prediction markets (Fall 2019)
4️⃣ v4: Launch token & decentralize governance (Winter 2019)

Summary

It’s only been two months since we deployed SportX Beta and we’re excited to officially launch SportX v1.

SportX Beta achieved our objective of launching a working sports betting exchange dapp with enough functionality and UX to retain a core user base. This was proven out with zero bugs and steady volume, even in the absence of any post-launch marketing:

SportX Beta Issues

Since our Beta launch, we’ve spent the majority of our time in feedback mode talking to users and figuring out what needs to be improved. This process revealed five main issues:

😡 Frustrating Onboarding Process

Accessing SportX Beta required users to both download an external wallet app and securely store a 12-word seed phrase to access it. This was a major stumbling block for first-time dapp users.

🤹‍♀️ Juggling Two Currencies

While all bets are placed in DAI tokens, ETH was required to pay for gas fees in SportX Beta. This means that users that were able to download a wallet and access the site had to then purchase two separate cryptocurrencies before they could bet.

🤔 Complex UI

Many users had trouble understanding the functionality of the SportX exchange trading UI. Although our frustration with centralized sportsbooks is well documented, they have a much simpler UI that we need to match.

💸 Costly to be a Market Maker

Users looking to supply liquidity to SportX as a bookmaker had to pay gas fees every time they wanted to cancel orders, reducing the ability of professional market makers to participate profitably.

🥉 Only Three Markets

SportX Beta was very limited in what markets were available. This became an even bigger issue when March Madness ended, since SportX was reduced to two sports (NBA & NHL).

SportX v1

To achieve our mission of creating a global sports betting free market, we knew we’d need to rapidly fix these issues. Two months later, we’re proud to announce our success with the launch of SportX v1.

It brings SportX closer to the UX of a traditional web app, without sacrificing the benefits of being a distributed application (see here for a list of these benefits).

Here are the five best features of SportX v1:

👌 Seamless Onboarding

Integrating the Bitski wallet into SportX makes the onboarding process simpler and safer for new users. Bitski allows users to set up a web3 wallet with just a username and password. Users can now access SportX from any device.

We’ve also simplified the process of depositing and buying crypto on SportX. Our goal is for users to not even realize that they are using a blockchain-based application; SportX v1 gets very close to this goal.

💵 No ETH Required

Meta transactions enable us to pay gas fees for our users, eliminating the need for users to hold ETH. This represents a huge improvement in UX since users no longer to have to buy two different cryptocurrencies to place a bet.

It also significantly lowers the learning curve for new users given the difficulties of explaining two cryptocurrencies at once. Moving forward, all you need to access SportX is DAI.

😎 Sleek UI

We’ve optimized the SportX UI by adding a summary page that displays all markets offered for a single sport. Users can quickly scan different markets and odds with a single scroll.

This lowers the friction for users to find an attractive bet, as they no longer have to click through each individual market to see what’s offered. This is particularly important for the SportX mobile experience, which is now second to none among dapp applications.

📊 Revamped Trading Engine

We’ve built an entirely new trade execution engine that represents a huge upgrade over the previous design. Bookmakers can now submit and cancel orders instantly, without paying ETH transaction fees.

This significantly lowers the cost to being a market maker on the platform and sets the stage for SportX to offer more volatile markets such as live betting.

⚽️🏌️‍♂️ New Markets 🥊🎾

With SportX v1, four new markets will be added: Soccer (Premier League, Europa League, & Champions League), Golf, UFC, and Tennis.

This will allow us to reach a broader international market and increase the options for our existing users looking for something other than NBA or NHL.