We are participating in Based Africa to showcase SoloBet, a decentralized peer-to-peer betting platform designed to tap into the vast betting and gaming communities in Kenya and across Africa. Africa's rapidly growing tech scene and increasing adoption of mobile money services, such as M-Pesa, offer the perfect environment for blockchain-driven solutions like SoloBet to thrive.

Our goal is to address key challenges in the betting industry—such as a lack of transparency, high fees, and unfair odds—by leveraging Base and the power of blockchain to provide a transparent, fair, and decentralized betting ecosystem. The betting industry is huge in Kenya and Africa, and SoloBet has the potential to onboard new users to the blockchain ecosystem by simplifying the experience and offering incentives like low to zero commissions for crypto-based transactions.

Moreover, through SoloBet's Play-to-Earn feature, including the Gamer’s Lounge and Prediction Market, we are creating new income opportunities for professional gamers and bettors alike. By providing an accessible, user-friendly, and transparent platform, we hope to empower users across Africa with greater control over their earnings and help professional gamers build a steady stream of income.

Participating in Based Africa is our opportunity to bring Africa's first decentralized betting experience to life while helping onboard users into the blockchain ecosystem in a way that’s tailored to the region’s unique needs. With SoloBet running on Base, we are leveraging blockchain to solve real-world problems and make decentralized finance accessible and rewarding for the African community.

We are addressing multiple key challenges in our community, particularly within the African betting and gaming ecosystem, with the support of Base:

1. Onboarding Users to the Blockchain Ecosystem: By tapping into the massive, established betting market, we have a unique opportunity to transition users from traditional fiat-based systems to blockchain-based transactions on Base.

2. Increasing Winnings for Gamblers: Traditional betting platforms often take high commissions, reducing the amount bettors can win. With SoloBet’s peer-to-peer betting feature, users can bet directly with each other, reducing intermediary fees and thus increasing the winnings that users can take home.

3. Lack of Transparency in Traditional Betting: Traditional betting platforms often lack transparency, creating distrust among users regarding payouts, bet fairness, and odds manipulation. This is a widespread issue in many African countries, where bettors lack confidence in existing systems.

4. Creating Steady Income for Professional Gamers: Professional gamers in Africa often struggle to monetize their skills in a sustainable way. SoloBet’s Gamer’s Lounge provides an opportunity for these players to earn consistent income by betting on multiplayer games and challenging their peers in skill-based competitions. This creates a viable revenue stream for gamers in the region, helping to professionalize the gaming community.

With the help of Base, SoloBet leverages smart contracts to ensure fair, automated, and transparent transactions that can help address these challenges effectively. By reducing middlemen, facilitating trust, and making decentralized betting accessible to all, we hope to make a significant impact on the local betting and gaming communities in Africa.

Our submission, SoloBet—a peer-to-peer (P2P) betting platform focused on three key markets: sports betting, prediction markets, and multiplayer gaming—addresses several key challenges:

1. Incentivizing On-Chain Participation: The betting industry is huge globally, especially in Africa. SoloBet taps into this by incentivizing users to use crypto networks through low to zero commission charges for bets placed via crypto wallets. This reduces fees compared to traditional bookmakers and encourages users to move on-chain, ensuring they keep more of their winnings.

2. Simplifying Crypto Usage: To ease blockchain adoption, SoloBet abstracts the complexities of crypto transactions. Users can deposit fiat (e.g., via M-Pesa), which is automatically converted to ETH via smart contracts. This allows users to transact with crypto without having to manage it directly, making onboarding into the blockchain ecosystem effortless, further promoting the shift towards decentralized finance.

3. Decentralization for Fairness and Higher Odds: Traditional bookmakers control the odds to favor the house. SoloBet eliminates the house altogether as the platform is decentralized, meaning all funds staked are distributed fairly among players. This results in higher odds and better returns for users, as there’s no central authority taking a cut or manipulating outcomes.

4. Revenue Through Commissions: SoloBet generates revenue through small commissions on each bet, rather than manipulating odds. Additional revenue comes from forex conversions when fiat is converted to ETH, creating a sustainable model while ensuring fairness for users.

5. Empowering Gamers: The Gamer’s Lounge allows gamers to compete and earn rewards. Gamers can be staked by other users, and a percentage of the commission goes to rewarding the staker if the player wins. This creates a new earning potential for professional gamers, and incentivizes competition and growth within the gaming community.

1. Funding/Deposit on Smart Wallets: Onboarding new users into the crypto space is often difficult, especially when it comes to using wallets. While smart wallets simplify the process, funding them with assets remains a hurdle. To address this, we integrated a feature into the SoloBet contract where users can deposit fiat through popular payment options like M-Pesa in Kenya. The contract automatically disburses the equivalent ETH to the connected wallet, abstracting the complexities of crypto transactions for new users.

2. Cryptocurrency Volatility: The fluctuation of cryptocurrency prices poses a challenge since SoloBet supports both fiat and crypto. Stakes placed in crypto can fluctuate in value, affecting the system’s odds. To mitigate this, we transfer all assets on-chain and use ETH as the base currency. This stabilizes odds based on ETH’s value, preventing market volatility from affecting the betting system.

3. Unit Odd Problem: In peer-to-peer betting, sports with no active stakes default to an odd of 1, which discourages users from placing bets. To solve this, we are exploring the use of bots that automatically place small stakes to ensure better odds are available for users.

4. Lack of Real-Time Currency Conversion Data: Accurate currency conversion rates are essential for handling both fiat and crypto transactions. However, we lacked up-to-date data during development. As a short-term solution, we implemented constant variables for supported currencies. Though not entirely accurate, it provided a functional fix for testing and basic transactions.

5. Basenames on TestNet: Testing the dApp on Sepolia Testnet revealed issues with loading *.basetest.eth names, for reasons yet undetermined. Despite extensive troubleshooting, we were unable to resolve this. We continued testing other features, and are working on finding a permanent solution for proper testing in production environments.