by JC Collins
Welcome back to this edition of the CasinoCoin blog. Today we’re going to talk about the milestone of having the digital asset CasinoCoin (CSC) added to the decentralized world of Flare Finance. That’s right, CSC is now a new addition to the Flare Finance suite of digital assets.
Breath. Exhale. Let’s continue and understand what this means.
The first time I walked into a Las Vegas casino, I was 26 years old. The MGM Grand was green, loud, bright, and damn if it wasn’t sexy as hell. Most looked their best. Some looked their worst. No one cared as they rolled dice, sipped drinks, and ran back and forth between the ATMs and poker tables. The Motorola flip phones were everywhere. It was foreshadowing the things to come.
Here it all was, I thought — one of the last scenes in the Casino movie starring Robert DeNiro and Sharon Stone, in real life. The MGM Grand was like a city inside a city. Money flowing and people moving about everywhere. The Casino movie represented the transition of Las Vegas from one era into another. Thinking back on those days, I feel something similar now as the world transitions into tomorrow and the world of digital assets and decentralized finance.
But what does that all mean? Are we like the Casino movie characters, about to be blind-sided by something we never saw coming? Let’s find out together.
DeFi, or decentralized finance, is the most popular term in the cryptosphere right now, and there’s a good reason for that. Decentralized finance is a trustless financial network developed on a blockchain protocol. Its primary function is to remove intermediaries and allow for the frictionless flow of value, or capital, across the Network’s series of smart contracts.
Okay, that’s a lot. So, let’s break it down into easily relatable terms.
First, let’s understand that Flare Finance and the Flare Network are two different entities. The Flare Network is a new blockchain developed with partial support from Xpring, the funding arm of Ripple. XRP is the native token on the XRP network, and Spark is the native token on the Flare Network.
So far, so good.
Both the XRP network, or blockchain ledger, and the Flare Network (it could have been called the Flare Blockchain Ledger, but Network sounds badass) can accommodate other digital assets alongside the native tokens of XRP and Spark, otherwise known as FLR. The obvious example of this is CSC being moved onto the XRP ledger, capturing all the speed, scalability, and cost advantages of the XRP ledger itself. This move has made CasinoCoin a contender amongst a family of digital assets developing around the XRP ledger, Flare Network, and Flare Finance. Not to mention making it the best digital asset for use in online gambling platforms and brick-and-mortar casinos worldwide.
Let’s take a quick learning break. Smart contracts and what are they?
In short, smart contracts are computerized transaction protocols that execute the pre-determined terms of a contract. These smart contracts, once developed, are autonomous and require no intermediaries. It is more straightforward than it sounds. Every time money, or value, moves is through a transaction. These transactions are between two parties. The world of yesterday required these two parties to use an intermediary for any transaction that wasn’t a cash transaction between two people. All meaningful transactions in business, banking, insurance, foreign exchange, real estate, etc., all required an intermediary to provide trust between the two parties. Smart contracts fulfill this transaction in a trustless and autonomous manner. No intermediary is needed.
For our understanding in this article, I would ask you to think of Flare Finance as a country, smart contracts as cities, or common economic zones, which is, in essence, the purpose of cities. Later we will consider how value moves between cities or smart contracts and how family trips, or family visits, occur between those cities. Do you see where I’m going with this? Larger digital and decentralized economic zones.
Digital assets are value vehicles that move around within the cities or decentralized economic zones, being smart contracts. Flare Network and Flare Finance (the country) also allow them to move without friction across smart contracts (from city to city) on different blockchains. When a vehicle travels down a road or highway (imagined as the network channels and intersections for our purposes), it encounters air resistance or air friction. More friction equals more bleeding of value. People eventually made better, sleeker, and more efficient vehicles to reduce friction. Digital assets don’t just lessen this friction; they remove it — value-efficient.
People walking across a casino floor between ATMs and poker tables or using an intermediary to load funds into an online gambling platform can also be considered a form of friction.
Now let’s revisit our opening statement on DeFi.
“DeFi, or decentralized finance, is the most popular term in the cryptosphere right now, and there’s a good reason for that. Decentralized finance is a trustless financial network developed on a blockchain protocol. Its primary function is to remove intermediaries and allow for the frictionless flow of value, or capital, across the Network’s series of smart contracts.”
Does that make more sense now? It should.
Flare Finance is the first to offer decentralized financial services built on the Flare Network with fully functioning financial products. It opens up the freeways for investors to experience new decentralized financial products. Such products are focused on non-custodial liquidity pools (non-custodial is just a fancy way of saying no intermediary), decentralized insurance coverage, Peer-2-Peer margin and spot trading, and much more. What this means is that an individual investor can be their own bank — a new era.
The full suite of Flare Finance products are as follows:
- FlareX — Is an intuitive and efficient margin and spot trading platform that can decipher trading algorithms while providing traders with an edge in a simple manner.
- FlareFarm — A versatile governance and yield farming platform that assists investors in earning yield benefits and percentage returns on staked assets.
- FlareLoans — Will assist investors in creating digital asset collateralized loans, which will drive more profound value into the decentralized financial products.
- FlareMutual — Provides digital asset investing into risk-based mutual funds, which further collects yields on those digital assets.
- FlareWrap — A non-custodial (no intermediary) cross-chain asset bridge that allows digital assets on other smart contract networks to migrate to the Flare Finance ecosystem. (Remember moving between cities for family visits or family trips?)
- FlareMine — Is a decentralized mining product that will allow Bitcoin and ETH mining platforms to mine Spark (FLR).
Let’s talk about the value vehicles (digital assets) within this decentralized ecosystem and common economic market.
CasinoCoin CSC is the newest addition to the Flare Finance fleet of digital assets. Others include the native YFLR, YFIN, and YUSD, along with FLR, XRP, LTC, XLM, XDC, DOGE, ALGO, ADA, TEL, CEL, BNB, CAKE, SHIB, and SANSHU. It is a true family of digital assets all interoperating within the Flare Finance ecosystem and across-network bridging with their native networks. All can take advantage of smart contract capabilities without using the native token of the Network. CasinoCoin CSC will now have that function as a Flare Finance asset.
The Flare Network, which provides the network infrastructure for Flare Finance and its native asset FLR (Spark), has also added F-Assets to its Network. These F-Assets are heavily utilized in the Flare Finance decentralized finance platform to provide deeper liquidity pools. These are XRP, LTC, XLM, and DOGE. In later releases, there is potential for BCH, ALGO, and more to be added.
At the start, CasinoCoin will integrate with FlareX, FlareFarm, FlareWrap, and FlareMine. FlareLoans and FlareMutual will incorporate as the CSC liquidity pools deepen after subsequent use within the Flare decentralized finance architecture.
The mission of the Flare Finance Foundation is to promote a positive financial impact and a positive moral and physical impact on the world. CasinoCoin now shares in that mission.
The core mission specific to CasinoCoin is to provide fast and secure solutions for the regulated gaming industry with both players and operators in mind. It includes Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Know Your Customer (KYC) verifications which remove additional friction from casinos having access to new pools of potential players — liquidity pools. The migration of CSC from casino utilization to decentralized finance on Flare Finance brings further advantages to both as value can flow freely and without friction between both worlds.
The Bank for International Settlements has now cleared the mass adoption of Central Bank Digital Currency or CBDC. CBDCs are the next gamechanger for digital assets. Each nation’s CBDC will provide a regulated on and off-ramp between the worlds of government money and the world of decentralized finance and other use cases, such as online gambling platforms and use within brick-and-mortar casinos in Las Vegas and around the world.
One day soon, I will walk back into the MGM Grand. Pulling my smartphone out of my pocket, I will open the CasinoLobby xApp, scan a QR code on the new poker table and instantly load funds into the table’s account. After some winning hands, I will move towards the bar, and while sipping whiskey, I will transfer those funds out of my CasinoLobby xApp into Flare Finance and stake it in FlareFarm to earn a percentage yield. All without having to walk to an ATM, visit a bank, use an intermediary, or look un-cool by waiting in lines.
Wearing oversized DeNiro eyeglasses, I might even sit there inside the MGM Grand, sip my whiskey, and play some online poker on the smartphone in my other hand. As I leave the casino, I will transfer unused funds back into my CBDC wallet, scan the QR code inside the electric limo to head back to the hyperloop terminal, and be home to my family in Canada within 2 hours. No friction. This is the world of tomorrow.
Tomorrow is now. Join the family with us.
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