DogeBet

Screenshot of main view

Inspiration

Betting platforms are a big target. Centralised systems are vulnerable to downtime, but also censorship and inside-jobs.

What it does

DogeBet leverages Blockchain technology to establish a decentralised platform that is immune to tampering and intervention. It also reduces the cost of betting and does not require a trusted party to determine the outcome of bets.

How we built it

DogeBet consists of a smart contract on the Ethereum platform, which issues smart contracts for bets, which users can then engage in. For a first proof of concept, we decided to focus on the German Football League, allowing users to bet on the outcome of football games. However, a core principle of DogeBet is extendability, meaning that the platform is universal and can be used for any kind of bet, as long as the truth can be clearly determined. A electron front-end makes interactions with the smart contract quick and easy. The application automatically takes care of launching the appropriate utilities for maintaining the blockchain. All the user needs to do is type the password for their private key and they are ready to go.

Challenges we ran into

Blockchain technology is still in it's infancy and even the Ethereum platform continues to lack many fundamental features. This leads to even simple tasks like comparing strings to require a lot of additional code. On a higher level, providing a source of truth to smart contracts is not at all trivial. Smart contract run in a isolated and sandboxed environment, so we needed to use oracles to provide information that can be verified to be true.