Jez San, founder of FunFair technologies, sees an opportunity in the online gambling market place. Common concerns for new players are questions of fairness, access to their money, and transparency of the operators. San believes that through the adoption of blockchain technology, operators can help answer these questions, and he’s doing his part by developing games and technology to “unlock the true potential of the blockchain.”
San recently joined CalvinAyre.com’s Becky Liggero to discuss his company’s efforts in addressing these core player concerns. He said, “The initial innovation was how can we get players to trust online casinos, and the way we’ve achieved that is by making some fundamental changes to the way casinos work. The first one is there is no deposit and no withdrawal needed, so the players don’t have to leave their money in the custody of the casino. That is going to make everyone feel much more comfortable playing an online casino. We can make the games provably fair both of the random numbers and also the game logic itself, which is in smart contracts, running on the blockchain.”
He knows that at the moment, blockchain technology is not yet common language for all audiences, so he’s keeping his focus on those who are already interested. San explained, “We’re going after the crypto savvy audience, the people that already understand cryptocurrencies and blockchains and they already know phrases like provably fair. So they’ll be our low hanging fruit. And then eventually we’ll be able to work with payment processors to onboard regular people that haven’t heard about crypto before, but still want to get the fairness and trust benefit of the technology that we’ve invented.”
Regardless of player interest, San will first need to make sure he’s good with regulators, and that too is a process he will need to take in steps. He noted, “Some regulators are very pro blockchain and wish to take advantage of the new technology and the improvements in player fairness. Some regulators are a bit slow and will need more education.”
He expects these more cautious regulators to eventually come around, saying, “We hope that they will see in due course that we’ll be able to prove that this is the fairest possible games the players can get, and that their funds are protected better than ever before. And we hope that regulators that, right now are saying no to blockchain, we hope that, in a year or two, maybe they’ll come around.”
At the moment, U.S. regulators on the whole might need more time to cultivate, so FunFair’s is attending U.S. gaming conferences like the Global Gaming Expo to help educate the sector. San explained, “I think it’s spreading the word and educating, because we’ve done something completely new that’s very innovative and a lot of people don’t understand what we’re doing. Some people even think that blockchain and cryptocurrencies are a dirty word. And we have to show them that actually there is a real reason we’re doing this, and that the benefits to the player and the casino are extremely interesting, and maybe we’ll convince some of them.”
At the moment though, San is not yet expecting American buy-in, but doesn’t rule it out in the future. “We haven’t really focused on the U.S. for now. The U.S. regulators, we’re probably going to put in the category of very conservative. And they’re probably not going to be the first to embrace a new technology like blockchain. But we hope that in due course, maybe one of the forward thinking ones like New Jersey will consider something like that. “
