Cheeps: The House Never Wins
In the gambling industry, there is a popular saying:
The House Always Wins
This saying is based on a principle known as the house edge. It basically denotes how casinos have an expected profit and no matter the stakes that are pooled the minimum house edge must be gotten. It’s that principle that makes gambling odds exploitative towards people that stake.
What if there was a permissionless way of making predictions and making bets on any scenario, opinion, etc.
I have never been a betting man but there have been certain situations where I want to stake my money on an opinion I have or cases where I want to make a prediction, unfortunately, a large part of the betting world revolves around sports or going to a casino or trusting an exploitative person to secure the stakes. The problem with this is that the predictions market or betting generally is institutionalized and the rules are rigged to favor the house. That is: The institutions or companies must always make a profit by putting in place protocols that will make players lose more than they gain.
Today’s spotlight product is one that is literally democratizing the ability to strike a bet. Every time I think about how this product works and the fact that it exists, I get chills from excitement (I clapped the first time I got on the landing page). The product in question is none other than Cheeps.
The product has implemented a decentralized finance use case that Africans and residents of decentralized economies have been known to jump on; Betting. I am not kidding, people sit down to read number tables to predict a number in a lottery, lets not get started on how crazy it is with football.
About Cheeps:
Cheeps allows you to make predictions on future events. If these events or event should happen then you earn money. Think about Cheeps as that product you can use every time you tell your guy:
“Make we set money”
It’s a Nigerian way of placing a bet and putting your money where your mouth is. In this case, you’ll put your cheeps where your mouth is.
So if you ever have an opinion or want to prove you are right by making a prediction, you can up the stakes with Cheeps. One of the most exciting things about Cheeps is that it leverages cryptocurrency and ultimately functions as a de-fi product.
Cheeps are gotten by funding your wallet with USDT(Tether) which is a stablecoin pegged to the dollar.
Another interesting thing about Cheeps is that it that the company does not influence the mode of receiving the benefits of a positive prediction. The payouts from every prediction made is gotten through the pool of funds from the different staking parties.
To break it down, if 5 persons predict that the Naira will drop and 10 people predict it will keep rising by the end of 2021 and they all chip in 1 cheep, if the parties that support a drop win, then everyone there gets 2 cheeps and that is gotten from the losing side. Cheep does not in any way play house and take cuts from the winnings.
The Futures For Cheeps:
Cheeps has made p2p betting a reality and has decentralized the industry by taking out the exploitative “house”. It’s a valid example of a free market economy focused on enabling people to monetize predictions and make bets between themselves.
As a product person, I’d explore deepening Cheeps offerings via integrations on social platforms and in communities. The plan would be to:
- Engage trend tables and get people to monetize their predictions: The goal here is to get people to stake on trending topics by creating stakes or options for prediction. This will basically ensure people stop making empty predictions and have some fun as they stake cheeps based on their opinion.
- Engage communities on discord and slack and get them to monetize their predictions: Getting people to make predictions on slack and discord channels would be something. It can be a fun activity for communities and boost engagement in community activities.
- Get people to invest their proceeds by staking their cheeps: After acquiring a large amount of Cheeps, it only makes sense that I stake the Cheeps on a De-Fi product of my choosing. If Cheeps is ever listed as a token, I might as well stake for fixed returns.
- Convert prediction-based polls to stakes on Cheeps: Every other day on Twitter and Linkedin, people are voting on something via polls. Cheeps can give people the option to put their money where their prediction is.
These are only just a few ideas of the top of my head and I am sure that the Cheeps team has even better ones considering that they get to interact with their users. That ultimately will be the source of inspiration for verticals and horizontal for Cheeps.
Let’s leave all this talk for now, you need to try our Cheeps, you even get free cheeps to kick off your journey and it’s not just football.
Try it out here.
