Hello,

Announcing sigmanero.org, a new sports betting exchange website that uses Monero’s multi-sig wallets for each individual bet.

The use of multi-sig wallets should stop concerns about rug-pulls, exit-scams, or wallets becoming compromised by attackers.

In a betting exchange like Sigmanero, users bet against other users and the house earns a commission in each bet.

**The small innovation of sigmanero.org is that multi-sig wallets are auto-generated in the browser of each user, which hopefully significantly reduces the hassle of using multi-sigs. No need for command line interface (CLIs). **

The setup is as follows. User A places an offer for a bet in a particular event for example LA Lakers to win vs Boston Celtics. This offer will have the, side (Lakers or Celtics to win), the amount in XMR and odds that user A would like to bet.

User B can see user A’s offer and accept the offer. At this point, a new 3/4 multi-sig wallet will be created between A, B and Sigmanero.

This new multi-sig will have to funded before the start of the event by both A and B. Both A and B will also need to save their new multi-sig seed keys separately.

When the winner is known, the winning side can reclaim funds using his/her seed key to sign the transfer out of the multi-sig wallet. Important to stress that if they don’t save their seed keys, then they cannot reclaim funds, and there will be nothing Sigmanero can do about it.

At no point in time will Sigmanero have controls of funds or will any of the seed keys be shared with Sigmanero. Sigmanero will have 2 of the 3 necessary keys to sign transfers for extra security and to guarantee that it will always be a party to the transfers. Despite this, Sigmanero will always require one extra signature from one of the users.

For each bet both users will have to have at least 10% of the bet amount as a bounty deposit with Sigmanero. For example if the bet amount is 1 XMR, the user will have to have at least 0.1 XMR deposited with Sigmanero. This will be the only element of custody of funds that Sigmanero will have. However, as soon as the user funds the new bet, the 10% bounty is released which the user can withdraw back from Sigmanero.

The 10% bounty from each user will be used as an incentive for users to fund and commit to their bets with other users. If a user agrees to a new bet but does not fund the new multi-sig wallet with his/her bet amount, then that user will lose the 10% bounty, and 50% of this bounty will be given to the opposite side of the bet, provided that the opposite side has funded its side of the bet.

More details under https://sigmanero.org/info

Because the creation of multi-sig wallets needs synchronisation between users and Sigmanero, when a new bet offer is place by a user, this user cannot leave the page until the bet is accepted by another user or the user decides to cancel the new offer. This is not ideal, however the advantage for the user that makes an offer is that it can set an XMR amount and betting odd according to his/her like, as opposed to simply accepting the terms of existing offers.

To facilitate the coordination between users offering bets and users accepting bets, betting for each event starts only 6 hours before the event and closes 15min before the event start. This element of the user experience might not be ideal, but we hope that the 6 hour window is wide enough to provide flexibility for all, but also small enough to get users all in one place at the same time. The betting window closes 15min before scheduled event times to allow users to fund their multi-sigs.

Hopefully this is a good overview. Please let us know what you think. Feedback at this point is extremely appreciated.

  • sigmanero_org@monero.townOP
    2·
    5 months ago

    Hello!

    “would Sigmanero ecosystem be easily adaptable to politcal events (eg/ elections) as well as sporting bets?” – Yes we expect to add further options in the future such as election outcomes or other relevant events. Perhaps also making public the odds at which users are agreeing bets and therefore act as reference for prediction markets.

    The trusted Oracle problem is always present. However Sigmanero should be 100% neutral regarding the outcomes since it will only have earn a commission after the result is known. Therefore there is no monetary incentive to decree false outcomes. If A or B wins should not matter for Sigmanero, so why ruin the reputation and future fee income just to benefit one party?

    The problem that remains is indeed if Sigmanero decides to become a party in bets, including controlling 3/4 of the signing keys instead of just two. In this case if Sigmanero decides to scam users, it would not even need to change the outcome of bets in its favour, but rather just transfer funds out of multisigs. Or perhaps as you hint, a gray scenario would be if Sigmanero doe not simply run away with funds from its multisigs, but rather maintains a facade of trustworthy intermediary while decreeing an outcome in favour of the bets it placed.

    One mitigation to the scenario above would be to announce from the start that for the relevant event (for example an election) it will decree the outcome as per a known non-related third party or public source. This way Sigmanero could not deviate from the declaring an outcome in line with the third-party without suspicion.

    There might be a cleaver way to increase the level of assurance that users are placing bets with normal users instead of Sigmanero. Every time a new multisig is generated, both A and B will be able to see the main address of the new multisig wallet.This means that both A and B could in theory signal to each other that they are not Sigmanero. This could work in some third party forum where users could disclose this address to other users, and other users would know from reputation tracking or other sources that that user is not Sigmanero. A more simple example would be if two friends, Paul and John place a bet against each other in Sigmanero. They would be able to see that they what they share the same main multisig address, and therefore that Sigmanero cannot move funds without one of their keys. For very large bets users might want to get such a credible signal before funding their side of the bet into the multisig. However we only see this becoming a topic for larger events or bets as you mention, therefore we have not spent too much time trying to come up with solutions for these cases. We are open for suggestions though!

    “Sidenote: Does Sigmanero take donations?” – We are not taking donations at the moment. Sigmanero will charge a 1% commission on bets which we hope will be sufficient to keep the website running and provide the natural incentive for Sigmanero to actually work as intended.

    Final note: We have received very good feedback so far including from other channels. The website is under maintenance to implement some of the suggestions and hopefully will be live again on Friday 12th April. One in particular, we have decided to drop the requirement for users to have to place a bounty with Sigmanero to initiate bets. This means that we will have to rely more on good behaviour from users. That is, if A agrees to make a bet with another user B, there is no monetary penalty for A not funding its side of the bet. If we see that a particular user is disruptive in this manner we will suspend the user from making new bets for a period of time. That is, if A sends the funds but B does not, we will refund back A and suspend B for a period of time. This means that there will be zero elements of custody of funds by Sigmanero and that the process whole will be much more simple for users.

    Thanks!