- Augur, the six-year-old blockchain prediction platform, is now venturing into sports betting with the launch of Augur Turbo on Polygon.
- The platform pointed out that it had chosen Polygon as it will allow it to cut down on fees previously recorded on Ethereum, which sometimes exceeded the winnings.
Augur was one of the first platforms to venture into blockchain-based prediction markets, a market that six years ago was relatively quite young. Since then, it has grown to expand its product offerings, with the latest being Augur Turbo. This extension of the Augur protocol is built on Polygon, an Ethereum layer 2 scaling solution. It will also make use of Chainlink’s oracles for cost-efficient data feeds.
In a blog post, the project described Augur Turbo as “the world’s only fast-resolving, easy-to-use, decentralized betting platform with daily markets for sports, crypto, politics, and current events.” On the platform, betting and trading will now cost hundredths of a penny, with the creation of markets costing just a few cents.
In addition to Polygon, Augur is also integrating Chainlink’s oracle network. Chainlink has become the go-to provider of oracles that allow off-chain events to reflect on-chain. This has opened a whole new world of opportunities for blockchain applications, including being a bedrock of the decentralized finance (DeFi) world.
With the Chainlink oracles, Augur Turbo will give users “secure, cost-efficient data feeds and settlement.” Users can now create their own betting markets easily for a wide range of sport, from NBA and MLB to MMA and even the Olympics. The platform pledged to introduce markets for soccer, college football, tennis, NFL, golf and e-sports soon.
Chainlink’s highly secure and reliable oracle networks will then be used to deliver schedules and post-game scores, team, and player stats on-chain, ensuring each sports betting market on Augur Turbo is settled in an accurate, transparent, and timely manner.
Augur Turbo seeks to become a no-limit betting platform
The global betting industry has continued to grow rapidly. According to ResearchAndMarkets, the industry will record a 10.8 percent growth this year to hit $516 billion. Despite the growth, this industry continues to face several challenges, including restrictions on users. In addition, the betting companies continue to take a huge cut from the winner, sometimes up to 10 percent.
In comparison, Augur Turbo is a set of open-source smart contracts that give users the ability to create their own on-chain betting markets, leveraging the advantages of blockchain technology to provide fair odds, low fees, permissionless access, and guaranteed payouts upon settlement to a global audience.
The decision to build on Polygon is especially critical for Augur. In recent years, Ethereum has experienced a surge in users and applications, and with this has come an unfortunate side effect – ridiculously high fees. Fortunately, Polygon is solving this challenge by giving users the option of a Layer 2 protocol that scales, has very low fees and settles transactions way faster than Ethereum.
