Interview with Azuro CTO Dan Kaizer for Blockchain Reporter

Meet Dan Kaizer, the visionary CTO behind Azuro, the leading protocol in the world of prediction markets. In this interview, Dan shares his journey from coding Solidity and developing dApps to leading Azuro’s innovative efforts in transforming prediction markets. With a focus on decentralization, robust infrastructure, and user-level trust, Dan and his team are pioneering new standards in blockchain-powered prediction markets, offering unique solutions for liquidity, data integrity, and ease of use.

Can you tell us about your journey from Solidity coding, and dApps architecture to becoming the CTO of Azuro?

Azuro is a project that combines my lifelong interests and experiences perfectly. Before getting into crypto, I was interested in betting and probability theory during my university years. I developed strategies to make sports betting profitable, which was the first time I earned real money on my own. However, bookmakers often blocked my accounts, so I had to use accounts under my friends’ and relatives’ names.

Then I discovered cryptocurrency – it’s a pretty funny story, to be honest. I had a part-time job as a developer. One day, my manager asked me, “Dan, do you know anything about Bitcoin? How about we pay you in crypto this month?” I had heard a bit about it but didn’t know much. I decided to go for it, and that’s what kicked off my deep dive into the crypto world. I got super excited about it and started learning more and more, so I left my job and set aside my betting activities for a while.

One day, my future Azuro partners came to me with the idea of creating a decentralized betting platform. The concept was a perfect match for my background and expertise. I decided to start the project without any doubts after our very first meeting. It was clear we had the right mix of skills and vision to create something groundbreaking in decentralized betting.

What do you think is the main reason for predictions to finally come onchain?

In simple words, it’s probably because running prediction markets on-chain is a lot easier than doing it off-chain. When you operate on-chain, it simplifies so many essential aspects like technology development, staffing, legal counsel, and marketing. Not to mention, it streamlines payment processing and cuts down on those high fees. Plus, it makes risk management a lot more efficient. You can ensure proper monitoring and balance the bets placed in different markets to avoid liabilities.

Operating on EVM-compatible blockchains like Gnosis Chain, Polygon, and Chiliz provides the essential infrastructure. Azuro has already shown its capabilities on these platforms, being recognized as the fastest-growing protocol and a multi-month revenue leader. This broad compatibility ensures seamless scalability and security, allowing Azuro to integrate within diverse ecosystems and drive the adoption of blockchain-based prediction markets. This kind of scalability and security is hard to achieve with traditional off-chain models, making the case for on-chain predictions even stronger.

Azuro positions itself as a prediction market protocol. Could you share a personal vision of the platform and the main problems it appeared to solve?

One of the biggest issues we’ve tackled is liquidity. Traditional peer-to-peer prediction markets often struggle because they need a counterparty for every bet, leading to concentrated liquidity and high risk for liquidity providers. Our peer-to-pool model spreads out the risk and simplifies liquidity allocation, which is a game-changer for LPs.

Another key area we focus on is data integrity. Our oracle infrastructure brings real-world data on-chain from multiple sources, ensuring accuracy and reliability in betting outcomes. This is crucial for maintaining trust in the system.

Trust is a major problem in traditional prediction and betting platforms. There’s often a lack of trust between users and the platforms, which is why blockchain is such an obvious solution. Payments are also simplified — users can make predictions using their own wallets without needing to deposit money into a central account.

We also wanted to make it easy for developers to build on Azuro. Our modular tooling, including SDK, allows developers to launch prediction market apps quickly, often in under a day. Since launching, we’ve seen over 28 applications with more than 27,000 unique users, resulting in 4.5 million transactions and over $360 million in volume.

It seems like Azuro is seeking to lead the Prediction markets sector revolution. How do you see Azuro contributing to this transformation, and what unique features does it bring to the Prediction markets landscape and its users?

First of all, as I mentioned earlier, Azuro decreases the entry barriers for startups and apps that want to run their businesses easily and on-chain. The great advantage of Azuro’s architecture is that it brings together all the necessary pieces required to run an application: infrastructure, liquidity, and predictions — all covered.

Then, Azuro addresses a major pain point with its peer-to-pool model, which helps efficiently allocate liquidity across a wide variety of markets without overexposing liquidity providers (LPs). This model reduces the need for LPs to manually create markets or bear risks associated with specific betting markets.

Azuro operates on a permissionless basis, meaning all transactions and market activities are regulated by smart contracts. This setup ensures transparency for all involved parties, from liquidity providers to end users.

Could you name the main challenges you encounter while building in Azuro?

I think Azuro is the most complicated project I’ve ever built. Some auditors have told us the same — that it’s one of the most sophisticated projects they have ever seen. One of the biggest challenges from the beginning was making the system resistant to value traders and other abusers while maintaining the principles of decentralization and keeping all the key mechanics on-chain. This was especially hard to achieve with live betting.

Tell us more about how the protocol governance is organized in Azuro.

Governance of the protocol is managed by the Azuro DAO, which brings the community into the decision-making process to help adapt and update the protocol.

Our decentralized governance model is designed to ensure that the platform’s development aligns with the interests of our users. The AZUR token plays a big role here, as it’s used for governance, staking, and offers cool perks within the ecosystem.

With the prediction markets landscape constantly evolving, what future developments and innovations can users expect from Azuro in the coming months or years?

Earlier this year, we started to roll up our Live Betting functionality – the first decentralized solution of its kind. Live Betting is already operational and its adoption is progressively increasing among Azuro-built applications. The team is currently working on streamlining this solution, expanding its reach and delivering a better experience. After that, we have a lot of work to do to expand our offerings, especially when it comes to offering a wider variety of markets, including political and social events, and more.

As the CTO of Azuro, what will be your primary focus and top priorities for 2024?

As I mentioned earlier, we want to strengthen our data provider and offer more markets to our users. This is a very delicate task that requires great attention to safety. Ensuring the reliability and security of our data providers will be one of my key tasks for 2024.

As an industry leader, what advice do you have for newcomers looking to explore the world of prediction markets and get involved in the Prediction markets?

I think the best way to get started and make money in the prediction market is to, first of all, put a deposit in the Azuro liquidity pool. It’s a great chance to support our ecosystem by providing liquidity for prediction markets, while also earning an attractive APR on stablecoins. Secondly, consider building an application on top of the Azuro protocol. This will give you hands-on experience and a deeper understanding of how prediction markets work while leveraging the robust infrastructure we’ve built. Five applications within the Azuro ecosystem have each generated over $100,000 in revenue to date, and the largest of these applications has earned more than $2 million.

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