# Introduction

The sports betting industry is receiving an influx of attention on the back of rapid growth in demand and regulatory clarity. While there is no shortage of sportsbooks coming to market to capture some of this growth, there is a glaring need for a democratized and decentralized sports betting exchange with deep liquidity. 

**Bookies facilitates a brand new sports betting experience, leveraging trustless settlement, integrating into a social feed, and utilizing advanced cross-matching algorithms to create an efficient and novel peer-to-peer sports betting exchange.**

From first principles, blockchains remove intermediaries and allow for trustless settlement of transactions. While we think the knee jerk reaction to this realization was to create DeFi (disintermediate banking), we believe a less obvious application is the disintermediation of the sportsbook, who charge high fees and ban profitable bettors at their discretion. **DeFi to banks is what Bookies is to sportbooks.** 

Using an **exchange model** and a novel structure of decentralized platform ownership, we can effectively align the user’s goals with the platform’s goals. Users will be rewarded with ownership stake based on their contribution to the network, a mechanism only possible using the unique capabilities of blockchain technology. 

What further sets us apart from existing betting exchanges is our decision to integrate into a **social feed**. Sports betting is inherently a social phenomenon and interacting with other bettors, trash talking opponents, and placing bets should all exist in the same place. Because of this insight, we decided to launch our MVP on Warpcast, a decentralized social network built on Ethereum. Sports betting on a social feed is a brand new experience for bettors around the world and is drastically simpler in terms of UX compared to alternatives. Betting with just a few clicks on Warpcast combined with cross-matching bettors on either side of a binary event minimizes friction and increases liquidity across multiple price points.

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If you are a sports bettor, please see: [FAQ](/bookies/faq.md) and [Bridging Guide](/bookies/bridging-guide.md)

If you are a market maker, please see: [FAQ](/bookies/faq.md) and [Exchange](/bookies/products/exchange.md)

If you are a developer, please see: [Contracts](/bookies/contracts.md) and [Products](/bookies/products.md)

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