Web3 Sportsbooks in Plain Terms: Pools, Wallets and On-Chain Settlement

Web3 sportsbooks take bets from a crypto wallet and pay winners from a shared pool of funds, while smart contracts or the operator records the result. Three pieces do the work: the wallet that signs, the pool that pays and the settlement step that decides who gets what. Each piece swaps a familiar part of an online bookmaker for a crypto equivalent. Logins become wallet signatures, the bookmaker's own balance sheet becomes a pool, and a results desk becomes an oracle or a published data source. One bet, traced from wallet to payout, shows how the pieces fit together.