Augur Launches ‘Augur Turbo’ on Polygon to Expand Sports Betting Program

Decentralized prediction market platform Augur announced Monday the launch of a new sportsbook, Augur Turbo, that will live on the Polygon Layer 2 network. 

Augur is a decentralized prediction market founded on Ethereum’s (ETH) ERC-20 protocol. Originally started development in 2014, Augur is one of the pioneers of crypto prediction markets with the aim to “democratize” and decentralize finance. Prediction markets, like the one Augur uses, primarily rely on the “wisdom of the crowd” approach. 

The move to betting on Polygon will cut down on Augur fees which, at times, can supersede what the bettor wins in the first place. Augur argues that “traditional betting exchanges are highly centralized and introduce a large number of restrictions on users, such as limiting payouts and withdrawals, siphoning fees of 5% to 10%, and limiting the types of markets that can be created.”

Augur Turbo will integrate Chainlink’s oracle network to enable users to create their own betting markets for Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association, various MMA promotions, and the Olympics, among others. Data such as statistics, scores, and schedules will be delivered via Chainlink. More importantly, to bettors, is that data to settle bets will be immediately available after the game ends or markets close.

In April, Polygon launched a $150 million fund, with the goal to make DeFi more accessible and cost-effective to onboard the next million users. Back then, the project said that a slew of high-profile DeFi platforms, such as Curve Finance and Aave, had launched on the network to offer faster and cheaper DeFi and open the industry up a little more.

There have been more protocols seeking Layer 2 implementations and better scaling solutions as the Ethereum network has been strained under the increased demand. For example, stablecoin infrastructure protocol mStable launched on a Layer 2 network for faster and cheaper transactions. It also chose the Polygon platform. The primary reasoning behind this is to avoid the congestion on the Ethereum network.