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With the rapid development and popularization of Internet, online sports betting has become a fast growing segment within online gambling market. However, some drawbacks of legacy online sports betting platforms are considerable and should not be ignored. One of the main issues is fairness since odds are massively in favor of the bookmaker, as they usually skew the odds slightly in their favor. In addition, the bookmakers have a mathematical advantage over the players and the bookmakers tend to have more (inside) information than the players, not to mention that, in most cases, bookmakers usually restrict or band regularly winning players. Hence, the lack of security, transparency, and privacy, extortionate fees and low returns, all of which are factors for us to explore alternatives and look for better online sports betting platforms. Since from the birth of Bitcoin, blockchain technology has catch massive attention in the past few years. It holds immense promise for a variety of industries, including health care, e-voting, supply chain management, financial services, on-line learning and more. Blockchain technology can solve different kind of problems, such as security, privacy, transparency and reliability of data processing on the Internet. In this dissertation we design and implement a peer-to-peer decentralized online sports/esports betting platform based on blockchain technology, providing the mechanisms for two players to bet with each other, without bookmakers or business entity in the middle, using ERC20 compliant coins and secure smart contracts. Completed trades will be published on the blockchain which provides transparency and traceable. The smart contracts act as a verifiable trust engine. Only when a deal is done and founds are confirmed available on both sides, would the transaction be stored on the blockchain. Hence, the players will know they will be paid when they win. We have explored how the blockchain technology integrating smart contract functionality can be used to realize a truly peer-to-peer decentralized online sports/esports betting platform and so will contribute to the paradigm shift of online gambling. In the future, this platform can be used for any activity where tokens/funds are escrowed prior to a result and then settled to the winner.
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