TheRundown to Run a Chainlink Node to Provide Smart Contracts with Signed Sports Data and Odds
TheRundown is excited to announce that we will be launching our own Chainlink oracle node to sell our premium sports data and odds to smart contracts across any blockchain. Running our own Chainlink node enables us to broadcast our sports data onto Ethereum and any other blockchain, expanding our addressable market as a data provider and servicing the developers wanting to build decentralized applications around sports (e.g. prediction markets). In addition to serving as a bridge between our APIs and blockchains, Chainlink’s built-in data signing capabilities allows us to verify via a unique cryptographic signature that data from our node came directly from TheRundown APIs, ensuring users can trust it to trigger higher value smart contracts.
Our initial focus will be on providing sports data on US sports, such as NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL. Recent legislation in the US has allowed sports betting to flourish in a number of states and this in turn opens up a whole suite of new smart contract applications to be built around this burgeoning market.
TheRundown is the leading platform for real-time odds, scores, stats, and unrivaled insights into the sports betting marketplace. We provide real-time odds from the most popular sportsbooks (e.g. 5Dimes, Pinnacle, Bookmaker), sports (e.g. NFL, NBA, UFC), and markets (e.g. moneyline, spreads, totals). Our API is extremely fast and in turn powers our Odds Comparison site, where you'll be able to see odds changes occurring the very second that they occur at each bookmaker we list.
Given the rise in decentralized finance (DeFi) and blockchain gaming, we see great opportunity in making our multitude of data APIs available to smart contracts as a means of supporting blockchain-based prediction markets, fantasy sports games, and more. These applications require sports data and odds in order to accurately price markets and determine outcomes, whether that be the current odds on a game, the final match score, or individual stats on a player’s performance.
However, smart contracts cannot natively make API calls to external systems that exist outside the blockchain (off-chain). They require an additional piece of middleware infrastructure known as a blockchain oracle. Oracles retrieve external data on behalf of the smart contract, attest to its accuracy (through digital signatures), aggregate it (when using multiple sources/nodes), and broadcast it onto the blockchain so smart contracts can use the data in its execution.
After reviewing various oracle technologies, we found the Chainlink Network to offer the most secure, reliable, and flexible oracle solution on the market. Some of the key features we identified with Chainlink that we did not find on other oracle solutions include:
- Data Signing Capabilities – Chainlink nodes cryptographically sign every piece of data they supply to blockchains, allowing us to prove the integrity of our data as being directly from TheRundown APIs.
- Accessibility to Any Blockchain – Chainlink nodes can provide oracle services to any blockchain, creating a single gateway from which we can sell data to all blockchains that exist both now and in the future.
- Large Market of Users – the Chainlink Network is the most widely used oracle solution in the blockchain ecosystem, presenting us with a large accessible market of potential users that are already familiar with and relying on Chainlink.
- Proven Security Framework – Chainlink oracles are thoroughly audited open-source software and collectively secure billions of dollars in value for live applications, serving as a proven in-production model for securing the movement of real economic value.
We’re confident that joining the Chainlink Network will allow us to become part of the industry standard, both for smart contracts relaying on its oracle services and data providers selling their data/APIs through it. We look forward to proving our reputation as a trusted sports data and odds provider in the Chainlink Network, supplying high-quality, origin-signed data directly to smart contracts to support fair and secure sports-based decentralized applications.
“Running a Chainlink oracle node allows us to grow and monetize our APIs, as well as take a more active role in provisioning new blockchain markets via supplying cryptographically signed up-to-the-minute sports odds, scores, stats, and more. We’re now able to expand what developers can create on the blockchain and can’t wait to support smart contract development teams building the future of blockchain-based sports markets,” said Gavin Wood, TheRundown President.
About Chainlink
Chainlink is the most widely used and secure way to power universal smart contracts. With Chainlink, developers can connect any blockchain with high-quality data sources from other blockchains and real-world data. Managed by a global, decentralized community of hundreds of thousands of people, Chainlink introduces a fairer model for contracts. Its network currently secures billions of dollars in value for smart contracts across the decentralized finance (DeFi), insurance and gaming ecosystems, among others.
Chainlink is trusted by hundreds of organizations to deliver definitive truth via secure, reliable data feeds. To learn more, visit chain.link, subscribe to the Chainlink newsletter, and follow @chainlink on Twitter.
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About TheRundown
TheRundown was founded in 2018, born out of a realisation that there was no credible platform offering a comparison of real-time, accurate sports betting odds. Simply put, we thought that we could do it better.
From the very first day we have built our company from the bottom up by using the very latest technology to ensure that we are able to access odds movements as they occur, and display scores as they are updated. A sports gambler needs to possess a wide range of tools in order to be successful, such as being able to see betting movements and the state of the market at a glance, as well as identifying which bookmaker currently offers the best odds for a chosen market. Our goal is to provide all of these tools.
We currently offer:
- An API for automated consumption of our data through third party software;
- An odds comparison website showing real time odds for a number of sports, bookmakers and markets;
- Graphical and tabular tools allowing users to see every historical odds movement as it occurred;
- An ‘average odds’ tool which can be used to compare and contrast the odds for your favourite bookmaker against the market average;
- Live scores and results;
- A blog providing regular educational content from our resident professional sports gambler, Gavin Wood;
There are a number of other features in the pipeline and for further information please get in touch here or at [email protected].