When I release a new feature or capability for Degen.club, I like to anticipate the kind of options people might want and build in as much of that as I can.

This is a known issue in software development. People who write code think about how it might work and build in lots of options, not concentrating on how it needs to work and getting that portion done. One name for this phenomenon is “goldplating”. And it slows things down.

Ultimately, you do not need all those options. Eventually, you can get them.

So I released a stripped down parimutuel contest option for picking the winner of the ‘25-’26 NBA Championship that had the basics of a Parimutuel, but not all the options I wanted.

What I wanted to add was all the pools you typically see in a horse race: for sure the win, place, and show. But also the “exotics”: exactas and trifectas.

Knowing that I had to do a lot of extra wiring. Separate pools for place and show are already extra work to account for. Exactas and Trifectas mean accounting for even more in terms of positions and selections.

But I did it, and I am now testing exotics in use. Once that is done, I will have a new contest option available, all the time, to set up your own parimutuel with as many betting pools as you need.

It also adds a nice wrinkle to tournament picking contests, because you can have a pool that let’s people pick the winner and runner-up. If you anticipate enough interest in your tournament market, that is a fun option.

So it is definitely slower than if I had just put out win pools. However, I think the goldplating was worth it in this case.