I can't tell if this is sarcasm or not, but I'll call you when my bookie puts his contract on the the blockchain.

not sarcasm, eventually nuanced web3 related posts will be the frequent front page articles, instead of hot takes about the parts not fulfilling their purpose and pretending its an irreconcilable issue with the concept

for sports betting and prediction markets, the main limitation is the size of the bets possible, which is pretty boring after 5 figures

so even if your bookie was pointing their oracle (api results) to a blockchain to dictate payout conditions of a contract, its still about the size of the pool based on other participants, which would probably be limited, at least initially

How do you write a smart contract that knows the outcome of a game? Presumably this means reading the results from somewhere. What happens if the wrong outcome is published and then corrected later?

> which is pretty boring after 5 figures

Why? What is the limitation? Also, is that five figures of participants, wagers, or payout? Does that five figure limitation ever change?

A five figure limitation on payout dollars is too limiting today for sports betting. Definitely after a decade or two of inflation.

The smart contract gets its state updated by trusted external APIs, in that ecosystem they are called oracles. So they would use the same one they use in their web2 system, just write the results onchain instead of just in their database or just on a tv.

And yes the low side of the market is one of the reasons why people start trading in capital markets, other ways to make money with bets are too limiting even if you find an edge. There are usually a couple places around the world with higher amounts possible.

Again, what happens if the oracle gets it wrong?

The problem I have with this scenario re: sports betting is that it decouples the trust of scoring games and paying out bets - which is not a "feature" for bettors.

If I'm using a reputable, "centralized" sports book, they have a reputation at stake. They have more of an incentive to accurately score games than a third party oracle. If they pay out in error, they are likely legally required to eat the loss and pay the true winners.

None of that is enhanced by web3 if sports betting is legal and regulated.

Check out chainlink ( https://chain.link/ ). Effectively, third parties are incentivized to run oracles which provide the data, and they all have to come to a quorum.

Thanks. I will look at this.

And there are plenty of other competitors to chainlink too

This won't work as the inefficency you found will be found & exploited by generalized frontrunners when you submit it to the mempool (or any transaction that unconditionally generates profit with the current chain state), running these strats now requires cooperating with/bribing miners (as they get to choose which frontrunner won this block).

Then bribe the miners

Caring about that reality is below my line

But with bribery you can skip the mempool these days