The Rise of India-made Blockchain Gambling Apps
There has been a rapid scale-up within the Indian-gambling tech sector, with a new focus on blockchain and NFT games. The concept of blockchain games and there legal positioning in India is a rapidly evolving landscape. Currently, 60% of game development in the west is focused on the blockchain niche, and investors in the broader ecosystem seem a lot more inspired to support projects targeting this new technological frontier.
The value of NFTs within mobile gaming and gambling products has been proven throughout the past 18 months. India is witnessing a surge in activity from teams building products for this market and target audience. ©amhnasim/Pixabay
The vast scope of blockchain technology has seen the rise of a variety of successful projects in the NFT ecosystem. The earliest memories of which can be seen in CryptoPunks, a series of 10,000 unique 8-bit profile pictures that minted in 2017, and now sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars each. The craze doesn’t end here, there are numerous projects seeing daily trading volumes in the millions of dollars.
Sport NFTs have become the new vertical tipped by investors to soon explode. First movers here include a wide-berth of organizations and individuals. Leading the charge at the moment is a Canada-based technology company named Dapper Labs, creators of NBA Top Shot and the Flow blockchain. The NBA video moment NFT project saw enormous success throughout 2021, and ushered in a new era of commercialization for sports image rights.
In the gambling sector of web3 there is yet to be a serious contender to enjoy such mainstream adoption; the current leader is Sorare, the French company has developed a daily fantasy betting NFT product featuring several football leagues around the world. Built on the Ethereum blockchain, users can buy and trade cards with other users to win points and earn prizes based on the players in their deck.
The Legality of Blockchain Gaming in India
Most Indian jurisdictions regulate gambling in the same matrix, that is how much is the product a game of skill versus a game of chance. The ramifications are fairly clearly defined in the region, with games of chance being firmly outlawed, but gambling products that introduce what can justifiably be argued as a game of skill are allowed. The Supreme Court have already recognized that no game can be purely a game of skill, as elements of chance exists in all facets of gaming. This flexibility advantage is very important for the success of blockchain-based gaming products.
Given how archaic the Indian gambling laws are, and the fact that they were originally created in an era prior to the formation of the internet. These laws were made in the context of gambling in a physical premises, so the latest internet revelations in iGaming are open to a broad interpretation. That being said, the law currently stipulates that the games cannot become games of chance as oppose to games of skill. Very much in line with all other types of gaming product in India.
So blockchain game developers need to first show that their product would be considered a game of skill, which will be difficult given that the Supreme Court of India has already said video games have too much interference meaning the skill of the player is not a dominant factor in success. This creates an issue whereby the concept for the gambling game will need to adapt and not become limited by these legislative factors.
The second legal limitation that may disrupt the current outlook is the ongoing debate around cryptocurrency legality in India. The Finance Ministry of the Indian Government already made a ruling that all private cryptocurrencies would be banned within India. Independently of that, the Indian Finance Minister in her budget speech for the next fiscal year announced that income tax would be levied at 30% for revenues generated from the sale of virtual digital assets, such as NFTs.
In light of this, it is expected that a large number of Indian game developers and entrepreneurs are going to step foot into this new gambling landscape.
