Funfair Technologies has been around since 2017 and was recently acquired by one of the most prominent Bitcoin gambling platforms in the world, Freebitco.in (one of the largest in the world, 40+ million users). In this $FUN review I will provide a high-level overview of $FUN token and its future. The acquisition from Freebitco.in was a strategic move to utilize the $FUN token as part of their reward program to users. They are also continuing to develop the blockchain technology and DApps that Funfair Technologies has built over the years.
Funfair Technologies built their blockchain with the goal of providing a truly fair, decentralized gaming experience in the online gambling industry. The online gambling market was worth $66.7 billion in 2020 and is expected to grow to be worth $127.3 billion by 2027. Blockchain technology can do a lot to improve some areas of online gambling that is currently not possible.
These areas include improve speed of payments, greater transparency around games and payouts and reducing the fees the house (betting operator) charges for each bet that is placed. This fee is called RTP (Returned to Player), margin, vig, juice or cut.
The cut is essentially what keeps an online gambling operators in business. The online casino industry is a very profitable space and also defensive and recession-proof.
Funfair Technologies has been developing a 360 turn-key platform for online casinos (no sports betting). A promising solution with a fully functional front-end, back-end, wallet, games and several of the leading game providers integrated. However, despite a good solution ready to be integrated by gambling operators, Funfair only found mild success. At the beginning of 2021, Freebitco.in purchased Funfair and took charge of the project. Funfair Technologies has since been renamed to FUN Token. The project is going through a rebranding process but will, of course, keep its awesome token "$FUN".
Bitcoin's surge in value of the last couple of months have brought a greater interest for online gambling related to cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology. Freebitco.in have benefitted from this and expanded their user-base to more than 40 million users worldwide. To improve their gambling platform, they integrated the $FUN token in their rewards programme. The programme basically rewards loyal users and creates an incentive to play more. Holders of $FUN receives a daily interest which is rewarded in $FUN coins. Following the launch of the programme last month, on March 15th 2021. $FUN saw over 100,000 new holders following the launch - a number that is steadily increasing.
The adoption of $FUN as a reward in the Freebitco.in platform has increased the utility of $FUN beyond what was achieved by the previous owners that solely developed platform technology and DApps. However, Freebitco.in has no plans to stop the development of FUN's proprietary gambling technology. On the contrary, they are making big moves to improve it, starting with introducing sports betting alongside the existing technology.
For me, as a $FUN holder there was a lot of uncertainty around Freebitco.in intentions after they bought Funfair Technologies. I first invested in $FUN based on their existing technology, adoption as a game provider, attractive & feasible roadmap and the funds to deliver it. With new owners, the roadmap would, of course, be impacted. But in retrospect, it is improved. Freebitco.in filled the $FUN project with fresh air, and, most importantly, more funds. Another acquisition did not take long.
At the end of last they acquired all the technology developed by BETR. A project focused solely on the advancement of sports betting in the crypto space. Similarly to Funfair Technologies, they set out to deliver fully decentralized sports betting. The $BETR token was cancelled in the process. Freebitco.in intends to integrate the BETR technology alongside FUN.
Same as with Funfair Technologies, the use case of BETR is beneficial to the online gambling industry. Their technology enables peer-to-peer betting that eliminates the middle man (bookmaker) which provides punters with a greater return on their bets due to lower fees. In addition, users would benefit from greater security, faster payments and unrivalled transparency through blockchain technology.
A new CEO was recently appointed for FUN. The new CEO is Adriaan Brink that has a lot of experience from both the online gaming industry and fintech. He is the founder of BETR. He also co-founded Earthport in 1999, an online payments company that was acquired by VISA in 2019 for $257 million (now a part of Visa Direct). Adrian acted as a CTO in the early years of Earthport and even wrote the first version of the code. Through the years he has also been involved with different verticals within the online gambling industry, among one more prominent project he helped raise the market cap of an online gambling operator from $2 million to $138 million over a 2-year period.
From where I am standing, and with my 10+ years of experience in the online gambling industry, this guy is the perfect person for taking $FUN Token to the next level.
One of the first things on FUN Token's agenda is to move away from the very expensive ERC20 protocol. Gas issues are something that plagues a lot of ERC20-based projects. $FUN and $BTR included. Their plans are to implement ad side-chain supported by off-chain components to mitigate the high gas fees related to Ethereum. According to the CEO, a big announcement in this area is coming soon.
Integrating BETRs sports betting technology will significantly broaden the use case and provide FUN token with the full spectrum of online gambling. Besides traditional gambling applications, the team has plans to introduce social gaming to a greater extent. Playing in traditional online casinos and betting in a sportsbook is an isolated experience. Kind of like a single-player campaign where you do not interact with other users. FUN Token want to change that by introducing more games that have peer-to-peer and multi-player aspects and with a greater level of interaction to create a more immersive game experience.
Last month they released the first of many games in the scarcely populated multiplayer game genre within online gambling. The first game was "Payloads", built on xDai. The game offers a real-time multiplayer game with immersive graphics rarely seen in online casino games.
As soon as they have resolved the issues around gas prices relating to ERC20 token they will re-launch the sports book to offer a fully decentralized, peer-to-peer betting experience.
While the first weeks following Freebitco.in acquisition of Funfair Technologies were uncertain, the future of FUN token is nothing but:
