“In the next few years you will see regulators in Africa adopt this type of technology.” stated John Kamara, director at Naija Lottery, on the debate of the use of blockchain technology.
During a 40 minute discussion on day two of SBC Digital Summit Africa in a session titled ‘Everything you wanted to know about blockchain gaming but were afraid to ask’ the panel discussed the uncertainty surrounding what blockchain has to offer and how it actually works in a gaming environment.
Speaking on the mentality of regulators in Africa, Kamara believes the industry has started to adopt its approach to blockchain: “We’ve started to see a few more regulators, who have started to think about it more from a centralised platform, so now showing them the power of the blockchain and the incorruptible nature of it means that were now beginning to show regulators that this is better than doing it on a centralised network.”
Harmen Brenninkmeijer, CEO of Quanta, moderating the session, expressed that running a blockchain company, at the moment is ‘quite challenging’ explaining: “Running a blockchain company today is quite challenging, not in the sense that it’s like any other technology that needs to find early adopters, it’s challenging because of all the negativity that hangs around our industry.”
Joining Kamara and Brenninkmeijer on the panel was Ian Sherrington, CPO at Quanta, who explained the importance of educating more people about blockchain.
“Quanta set itself out to be the first blockchain lottery available to the general public and in order to achieve that a lot of understanding about blockchain was necessary, a lot of experience was needed to be gained and most programmers come back from a standard client architecture and when you’re talking about blockchain you need to throw those old ideas out and you learn some new ways of doing things.” claimed Sherrington.
“For me the blockchain is the cryptographic proof of a transaction of a digital identity. It’s something that can not be corrupted and something that distributes ledgers, transactions, and value means that the user is maintaining control.
“When we started out with QuantaPay the very first thing that we needed to do was to create a wallet and why do we need a wallet? A, to store your crypto tokens but secondly to sign transactions.
“On a blockchain you can’t sign a transaction on a users behalf so an operator that’s running a sportsbook or casino, their used to transferring money or placing bets on behalf of the user, despite the user saying ‘I wanted to do this’ it’s actually the company who is carry that transaction out.
“In the case of a blockchain, it’s the users themselves who are carrying out the transactions. So the user maintains control over the value that they hold in their balance/wallet.”
Following Sherrington’s point, Brenninkmeijer asked the question why it’s not more widely accepted by operators at present. Karama responded: “Speaking from a business perspective, it’s a disruption to the way that they currently work and because people think in silos. It’s not a sign of they don’t want to adopt it but it’s a sign of mentality.
“If I am in silo I can manage competition whereas in this type of network it’s a little bit more thinking for them to understand that it’s a lot more valuable for them and it saves them time and money to generate more revenue.”
SBC Digital Summit Africa (6 – 7 October 2020) is the leading virtual conference and exhibition for the African betting and gaming industry. It features more than 60 expert speakers sharing insights and ideas about the future of markets across Africa, with all 17 conference sessions available both live and on-demand.
Delegates can also enjoy a programme of networking roundtables and an interactive product display area showcasing the latest industry innovations. Click here to register for your free pass.