Why Royale?

Innovative Technology Creates New iGaming Opportunities

Growth in the iGaming industry is expected to hinge on several trends that are shaping its future. Among these, the crossover of iGaming and video game markets, the improvement of user experience through virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) technology and, of course, blockchain technology applications potentially offer a panoply of new ways to gamble via cryptocurrencies and interactive technology that will be attractive to a whole new generation of iGaming entrepreneurs.

Addressing Current iGaming Industry Challenges

Centralized finance stifles growth in the iGaming industry. Many of the following challenges remain unsolved:

• New entrants are shut off from liquidity.

• Major players maximize yields exclusively for their own benefit.

• Governance models are controlled by established centralized parties.

• Barriers to entry for iGaming entrepreneurs are extremely high.

• There is a lack of accountability and transparency mechanisms.

• The global market is highly saturated by staid brands lacking in innovation that cut the iGaming industry off from potentially lucrative demographics.

Of these issues, the lack of liquidity for new entrants, the oligopoly of incumbent players and opacity of the sectors are the most critical. Banks are often not willing to invest in gaming companies, which leaves them at the mercy of gaming incumbents. The end result is that new iGaming concepts find it difficult to come to market.

The established enterprises in this space use their hefty bankroll to protect monopoly profits. Ironically, this stance prevents the innovative new ideas that appeal to the Millennial and Generation Z gamers, whose participation is needed to drive exponential growth in the industry going forward. Not only have land-based casinos struggled to attract younger clientele, but online casinos, whose games are often unimaginative retreads of Atlantic City and Las Vegas classics, are also failing to capture the interest of 20-to-34 year old gamers. According to Statista, the share of 25-34 year olds who gamble online, at least in the United Kingdom, has curiously declined in the past two years. In a classic academic paper published by Wood and Williams in the New Media and Society journal, the researchers found that 50-year-olds comprised almost 50% more of the Internet gambling population than 20-year-olds. For a generation that grew up with video game systems from birth, we find this statistic exceptionally curious. Our contention is that the iGaming industry needs an overhaul to target this demographic. We believe that Royale funding solutions made possible by decentralized financial protocols can help to bring these new games to market.

Trust (and Transparency) as a Catalyst for Growth

Ultimately, players want to play games that are fair. The trust players have in the House is what gives players the confidence to place significant bets and more importantly trust is what brings players back to play again. The iGaming industry has traditionally been characterized by an environment where trust between players and operators is virtually non-existent. One of the largest concerns that has plagued the traditional and online industry is the distrust that has emerged from unreliable auditing of the black-box algorithms that are often used to drive iGaming today. A new generation of iGaming operators recognizes that providing a trusted player experience ultimately leads to a hyper-engaged community, which is the lifeblood for any profitable online gaming business. This emerging segment of the online gaming market is currently experiencing the majority of growth. And they are exactly who are being ignored by the larger iGaming companies.

The lack of trust throttles the growth potential of the global iGaming industry, and even its traditional counterpart. Advances in blockchain technology make it possible to guarantee the trust needed to unleash the full potential of the iGaming industry. Provably fair algorithms deliver absolute transparency with self-verifiable methodology, bridging the gap between user and operator and embracing a new generation of true randomness.

Access to Capital

In addition to Provably Fair technology that can be verified with blockchain technology, the other critical component that blockchain brings to the Royale platform is the incredible financial flexibility offered by liquidity pools. In the most recent bitcoin bull run of 2017, much of the accompanying runup in altcoins was due to a massive shortfall of liquidity for the flood of new cryptoassets that joined the market as a result of the explosion of initial coin offerings (ICOs). The slightest buy pressure very quickly pushed up the prices for these tokens to unsustainable levels. Conversely, when those buys had been filled, there was no orderly market for these thousands of new tokens. The "crypto winter" followed.

During this bear market, many innovations based on cryptography-enhanced decentralization efforts had the time to bloom, the most promising of which were those centered around DeCentralized Finance or DeFi. Although Bancor had introduced the concept of decentralized liquidity pools to the crypto markets in 2017, its adoption was limited mostly by bad timing but also the use of a poorly distributed utility token, BNT, through which all trades had to be routed through. When Hayden Adams launched Uniswap at almost the precise nadir of the bottoming crypto markets on November 2, 2018, he used a different formula for calculating price, xy=k, that significantly reduced risk for liquidity providers. Also, by implementing a constant transaction fee and using the Ethereum (ETH) coin and not its own utility token as its concentrated liquidity source, Uniswap was able to bootstrap itself within 2 years into competition with leading Centralized exchanges, like Coinbase, in terms of transaction volume.

While this intriguing concept of decentralized liquidity catapulted the crypto asset industry out of the bear market and into relevance once again, the application of DeFi to other industry sectors has yet to come to fruition. While DeFi is busy redefining the digital asset industry, its impact has yet to be felt in industries outside of just crypto trading. There lies huge potential in niche sectors that are tangential to digital finance.

The Royale Finance platform will tap into DeFi-driven stablecoin liquidity pools to provide a stream of financing for iGaming innovation, the lack of which has stifled the potential for massive growth in increasingly important younger consumer demographics. While a portion of our fund raising for the ROYA token will be placed in our monolithic optimized liquidity pool, we have developed a unique recursive token economy that encourages the contribution of initial liquidity provision. Moreover, for active Royale ecosystem participants, the redistribution of benefits from iGaming innovation and liquidity mining rewards denominated in ROYA should encourage them to remain engaged with the platform. It is our hope that having a self-sustaining liquidity pool at the very heart of the Royale ecosystem will provide the unprecedented access to capital that iGaming entrepreneurs have long so sorely needed.

The Five Pillars of the Royale Network

1. Network Driven Liquidity

2. Industry Focus

3. Optimized Stablecoin Liquidity Pools

4. Transparency - Provably Fair Technology

5. DeCentralized Governance

Network Driven Liquidity

Creating trust in the online gaming market relies on a few key elements. First, obtaining the proper license for your jurisdiction is a confidence booster. Second, removing friction and unduly high transaction fees through the use of blockchain-based currencies helps to onboard users quickly and conveniently. Third, having sufficient liquidity in the bankroll to payout wins quickly.

Liquidity is essential to help entrepreneurs develop their project. Currently, iGaming entrepreneurs face a huge difficulty in financing their platform. They either aren't able to raise enough capital or are bought by incumbents.

In the summer of 2020, liquidity pools and liquidity mining were two concepts that have been discovered, and explored, via various projects. Here is how it works, users provide liquidity to a protocol that rewards them either in governance tokens, or in stablecoin with the transaction fees accumulated.

With the current exponential growth rate of iGaming and DeFi products, we believe that simplifying access to the "House's Edge" could transform the equation for entrepreneurs looking to enter the global iGaming industry precisely at a time when this industry stands at an inflection point. Finally, regulators all over the world are amenable to online games of chance. The pandemic has pushed people to spend more time on the internet than ever before. And the world is awash with excess value to not only invest but also to play with.

Industry Focus

Royale.Finance wants to apply this concept to bankroll iGaming projects. What differentiates Royale from other DeFi projects is that most derive value from within the currently limited DeFi ecosystem. Royale aims to expand this reach by successfully targeting a growing niche of the fintech industry that has so far escaped the influence of cryptoeconomic systems. The Royale network will be a source of liquidity for these entrepreneurs. We want to create an ecosystem where $ROYA stakers are incentivized to provide liquidity with returns in $ROYA, stablecoin and exclusive NFTs that grant them exclusive advantages. Liquidity providers will receive stability fees paid by the iGaming platform who uses the Network liquidity. Moreover, while the capital is not used to bankroll a project, it will generate yield thanks to the integration with other DeFi protocols.

Optimized Stablecoin Liquidity Pools

Liquidity provided might not be used to bankroll iGaming platforms all the time. Allocation will depend on the needs of the demand side. This means that a portion of the liquidity will be unused part of the time. However, liquidity is essential to the proper functioning of the ecosystem. A lack of liquidity might create a negative network effect; lack of liquidity leads to dissatisfaction of iGaming platforms that might leave the ecosystem. Those departures lead to fewer investment opportunities for the Royale Network, which leads to a decrease in the liquidity provided by Royale users, and the process is repeated as a vicious circle.

While liquidity is essential for the ecosystem, we acknowledge that liquidity should not remain in the Royale network without yield. Thus, we have implemented optimized stablecoin liquidity pools in order to incentivize liquidity providers to leave their liquidity in the Royale network. The objective is to still incentivize liquidity to enter the Royale ecosystem during the selection process, to avoid lack of liquidity when it is needed.

When liquidity is not used to bankroll an iGaming project, Lots will call the add_liquidity(Dai/Usdc/Usdt) function to trigger the Yield Optimizer contract. This action will query the best available yield in pools supported, provide liquidity to it and earn yield.

One pool will be available at the beginning, StableSwap 3pool from Curve.fi protocol. We expect to expand this list over time according to the needs and opportunities.

Liquidity pools will receive the majority of yield from both iGaming and DeFi yield optimization, with a percentage of yield being allocated to the Treasury Sink and to the Buy Back and Make Balancer Pool.

In the future, ROYA token holders will be able to contribute towards the Liquidity Pool management, including the selection and approval process through the submission of proposals and voting, as well the percentage of yield that is allocated towards Liquidity Pools, Royale Treasury and Buy Back and Make. This will be facilitated via the Royale DAO.

Transparency - Provably Fair Technology

As mentioned in the "Challenges" and "Trust as a Catalyst" section, transparency is fundamental to the development of the iGaming industry and the Royale Network. This transparency layer brings trust from the iGaming players towards games they are playing. This transparency layer also provides essential information to the Royale Network such as amount of liquidity allocated, stability fees distributed, and performance of iGaming platforms among others. While the blockchain will be used as an immutable ledger of the transactions, Royale network will ensure iGaming platforms use Provably fair algorithms.

Honest iGaming Aggregator

Royale provides a vehicle to drive provably fair software games and DeFi to mass adoption. SHA (secure hash algorithm) 256 algorithms are embedded into the game logic in order to create a trusted system allowing, in turn, for trustless play. Through three key components - security, immutability and transparency across the network - games can be played anywhere, anytime; on mobile, desktop and even integrated into traditional brick-and-mortar casinos. Using provably fair technology, players have no need to worry about fraudulent or unfair systems as the encrypted algorithms cannot be tampered with.

The algorithm powering a game is provably fair only if every participant has equal influence on in-game randomization, in a manner independently verifiable by each participant. Royale is poised to advance provably fair technology to the point where even non tech-savvy players are able to disassemble all relevant information, in order to verify the system's fairness themselves, without any prior knowledge of how SHA256 algorithms work.

Providing provably fair gaming with odds that are much more tilted towards the player, compared to the rest of the industry, is a long-term competitive advantage that attracts users. Finally, ensuring that sufficient bankroll facilities are available means that players are paid promptly when they win. These features work together to improve platform user experience and to increase customer retention rates.

DeCentralized Governance

The Royale DAO provides access to liquidity via a series of smart contracts that manage financial fairness and inclusivity, with yield farming, staking and governance mechanisms baked into the ecosystem.

Royale will utilise Aragon to create the framework for the governing structure of the founding tokens.

Governance for certain aspects of the protocol will eventually be designated to ROYA holders. This may include adjusting staking yield, plus loyalty rewards and incentives for network participants. Decisions on when and how much of the ecosystem development fund and foundation tokens are allocated to supporting game development and bankroll facilities.

ROYA holders will also be able to make decisions on the following.

• Adding ​collateral asset ​types once extensive risk assessments have concluded

• Changing the risk boundaries of collateral asset types or adding new risk parameters to one or more existing collateral asset types

• Trigger emergency shutdowns

• Upgrades to the protocol