Blockchain tech enthusiasts have been circling the iGaming space since the early 2010s, some enthusiasts even come from iGaming, as there is so much crossover. The most obvious point of intersection between these two worlds is in payments, especially for such high-volume transactions and an international customer base as in iGaming.
As time goes on and younger generations’ attention spans shorten by the minute, instant everything is key to retention, and traditional payment rails just won’t cut it anymore. From the operator side, blockchain-powered payments are cheaper and more efficient, so it’s a win-win for everyone.
Now here’s where things get really exciting. Payments are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to how blockchain tech can improve iGaming operations. During NEXT Valletta at the end of May, an iGaming expo with over 5,000 delegates, I moderated a “Blockchain Beyond Payments” panel to dive into this topic.
To give you an idea of what is possible with blockchain and iGaming, I caught up with two panelists—Simit Naik of Teranode Group and Steve Wyman of RPM Gaming, both seasoned blockchain advisors—and Brett Calapp of Wandando, an operator with several decades in the industry.
When asked for the number one way blockchain can improve iGaming operations beyond payments, Naik responded with two that immediately come to mind.
“One is around providing more trust in the data between affiliate marketers and operators, and brands, so we can focus on making customer acquisition more efficient, reduce disputes, increase the payout times, and also to get around some of the challenges we have with tracking using cookies,” he shared.
“The second, which I think is a big area that’s developing, is around loyalty and engagement. How can we use blockchain to make it easier for customers to earn and redeem across different brands and services that they interact with? How do we better engage people, retain them for longer? How do we identify the VIPs? Therefore, how do we reward those that make our platforms and brands successful?,” he said.
“I think blockchain has a real impact across those two areas. Retention, but also growing new users,” Naik clarified.
Wyman, who has a deep background in finance, sees a massive opportunity in creating a digital asset trading ecosystem within iGaming sites.
“The way I see it is that payments are the thing that allows companies to build a commercially viable ecosystem,” he said.
“So that means that you are able to develop a wallet infrastructure for your clients, to have client retention, client engagement, to develop new hyper-personalized solutions and opportunities for clients to build their own risk and bets, and to then transfer that risk amongst their other peers,” he proposed.
“So rather than have the current prediction markets where you’re talking peer-to-peer gaming, you have real peer-to-peer gaming where you have an asset that you’ve created, a bet that you have built, and you can trade that as an asset across your ecosystem, so then you get real retention and real utilization,” Wyman added.
From a more crypto casino perspective, Calapp emphasized that blockchain should work in the background and the need for greater diversification in games and loyalty programs, as Naik also mentioned.
“I think it’s not about blockchain itself because that’s really just piping, but I think it’s about what the essence of crypto means to people, and when we think about crypto, we think about freedom, we think about community, and we think about all these intangible things that surround a game,” he explained.
“Right now, you’ve just got a bunch of game catalogs online, and so every site looks the same, every site has the same games. We’re just now seeing a very high level of gamification, we’re seeing some community features, but really nothing that scratched the surface yet,” he said.
“So what we will see in the future is things like actual VIP programs, we’ll see actual rewards, we’ll do actual community building around these games so that they’re much deeper in gamification, not just leaderboards,” Calapp added.
Watch | Malta Gaming Authority: Blockchain regulation in the gambling space
Be the first to comment