distributed to the most upvoted content.
SteemSports initially bootstrapped its project around the blog structure directly within Steemit.com, using the vanilla voting system to allow players to vote on sports and prediction game outcomes. It evolved with a custom web application to process transactions and distribute “FREE” winnings from post upvote rewards to the voters in Steem Power which is a gamification token on Steem, these tokens are convertible to a liquid digital currency on a weekly basis across a 3 month conversion period.
We have recently introduced PAY PLAYS with real Digital Currency pool based Prediction Games using the Steem blockchain to facilitate transactions and will be offering most games in this format with only featured games having FREE PLAYS options.
The unique thing about Steem is that the blockchain is designed to hold written content data, which makes for easy content creation and publishing. The community had already drawn talented, like-minded writers and developers onto the platform to help bootstrap our project with the common passion for sport and a goal of growing the value and utility of the Steem currency.
What about security of player’s funds?
The Steem wallets are decentralized, meaning no bank or business owns them, each account holder has their own private keys for ultimate trustless security. Idle funds stay fully within the control of the player, and in the case of Steem Backed Dollar as virtually pegged 1:1 to the US Dollar using unique market balancing adjustment rules, ensuring the funds are securely hedged against price fluctuations and the Digital Currency retains real world value for the duration of the PLAYS while earning dynamic interest of 6 to 10% APR from the Steem blockchain when not being used.
Only the Steem account posting private keys are stored in our database, these are the keys that allow voting and commenting so it is not a monetary security risk. The active private keys control the payment of funds and the web-app requires these to be entered in every time the player enters into a “PAY PLAY” game, the active key is not stored in the database, nor in the browser or cookies on the client side.
There is also a Manual Play option where players can pay the Digital Currencies directly from their Steem wallets to @steemsports on the Steem blockchain using the memo given for the particular selected outcome.
Anonymous participation is often highly sought after, a Steem social profile includes a Digital Currency blockchain wallet for secure Steem and Steem Backed Dollar (SBD) transacting and holding. This makes it attractive to players who seek to play and not give up their identity for security and identity theft reasons, especially when high stakes are involved that could involve localised attacks on one’s person.
You mentioned you also have a FREE PLAY option, tell us about that?
FREE PLAY options on featured games also currently act as a faucet for earning Steem Power tokens to act as a risk-free sandbox for novices to try their hand at Prediction Market gaming. All that is required is to have a Steem blockchain account and select the outcome for the predicted win, the FREE PLAY initiates an upvote on the blockchain for entry into the prediction and adds monetary value to the outcome sponsored by the daily Steem rewards pool, at no direct cost to the player.
Will your platform add value to the Steem Cryptourrency?
SteemSports is the first commercial use-case application for Steem that creates real demand for the Steem and Steem Dollar Digital Currencies and as other businesses come to see this and understand the transactional benefits, there will be increased adoption of Steem for transactional business models.
The price of Steem should rise as a result and the increased demand for SBD will help keep it at a stable peg to the US Dollar.
The easy-to-participate model will encourage non-bloggers to the platform to participate in games and receive rewards, thus giving positive support to the overall market cap of Steem.
What’s in store for the future?
The sky is the limit really, there are so many ways to engage with sporting communities, from merchandising currently available on [cryptoiskey.com](https://cryptoiskey.com