Azuro raises $4 million to build a decentralized betting ecosystem

Azuro, a platform that aims to decentralize the betting market, has raised a $4 million round. 

Investors in the round included Hypersphere, Gnosis, Merit Circle, SevenX, Quiet Capital, Formless Capital among others, according to a release on Monday. The startup said there was no lead investor in the round and the valuation wasn't disclosed.  

Traditional betting companies go to great lengths to make betting unfair and opaque, said core contributor Rossen Yordanov in the announcement. Azuro uses smart contracts to build a protocol that it hopes can be the base layer for more betting applications to build on top of using web3 technology. It believes that this can bring full transparency to the sector and increase liquidity in betting markets. 

"Betting markets are one of the few applications where crypto was always supposed to shine, said Hypersphere co-founder Jack Platts in the release. "So far though, none have been able to crack the nut of bootstrapping liquidity for popular betting disciplines. We believe Azuro's team can finally make that promise true." 

Azuro most recently launched its mainnet on Gnosis Chain, with its first frontend experience going live earlier this month. The company plans to use the funds to expand to different chains with Polygon being the current main contender, add further betting markets and create a non-fungible token (NFT) bets marketplace.  

Correction: This story has been updated to include further information regarding Azuro's investors.