Meet Oluwaleke Fakorede, CTO at Prediction Market Platform: Gowagr

Tell us about Gowagr

Gowagr is the biggest and largest prediction market in Africa that allows everyday people trade their beliefs in everyday conversations be it the Economy, Entertainment, Sports, Politics, Stocks, Sports, and Culture conversations.

With over 170,000 users and over $2.5 million in trading volume, we are powering people to reveal their truths and solving the problems of trust and misinformation. We also provide infrastructure for Esports tournaments and Fantasy Premier League weekly and seasonal contests.

How did you come up with the idea for the company?

Our initial solution and idea was simple; create an escrow platform for everyday users who want to bet against one another on their opinions and the video games they played. The real catalyst came during a FIFA match among my friends where we had placed wagers, but when it came time to pay out the winnings, everything descended into a contentious dispute. At the same time, my co-founders experienced fraud in a Fantasy Premier League contest where an administrator disappeared with the participants’ funds.

These experiences made me ask: “What if we could create a platform where participants secure their stakes beforehand, ensuring automatic and guaranteed payouts to winners?” That’s when I realised blockchain technology, with its immutability and transparency, was the perfect solution to these widespread issues in esports wagering and beyond.

Tell us about your core product or service: Gowagr

Gowagr is a blockchain-powered prediction markets platform that enables everyday people to trade their beliefs on topics ranging from the Economy, Entertainment, Sports, Politics, Stocks, and Culture. Our core product is our Prediction Markets, where users can take positions on real-world events and outcomes, creating a transparent marketplace of opinions backed by actual stakes. This solves critical problems of trust and misinformation by putting skin in the game—people reveal their true beliefs when there’s something at stake.

Beyond our main prediction markets feature, we also offer peer-to-peer wagering capabilities where users can create and participate in informal wagers on various topics, events, and games through our Wager Marketplace. Additionally, we’ve developed our Fantasy Premier League Contests technology, which enables English Premier League fans to integrate their FPL contests with Gowagr, addressing the persistent problem where contest administrators would sometimes disappear with participants’ funds.

Everything is powered by blockchain technology with automated payouts and In-App Wallets that allow users to fund their accounts with local currency or stablecoins like USDT. Through our blockchain-based solution, fraudulent activities are rendered impossible, allowing users to focus entirely on their predictions, strategy, and competition.

What most excites you about the esports and gaming industry?

The future of esports and prediction markets is incredibly exciting. While AI is already transforming how players train and compete, blockchain brings an essential layer of transparency and fairness to the industry. What really excites me is how we’re building an ecosystem that’s not only fairer but also more engaging for everyone involved. We’re moving beyond just gaming into broader prediction markets covering everyday conversations—Economy, Entertainment, Politics, Stocks, Sports, and Culture.

This creates exciting opportunities for people to engage directly with topics they care about, make predictions, and prove their knowledge while earning rewards. The industry is booming, with massive growth projected in the coming years, and we’re at the forefront of solving critical issues like fraud, trust, and misinformation that have held it back.

What has been the biggest challenge you’ve had to overcome along the way?

The biggest challenge has been building trust in a space where trust has been fundamentally broken. When we started, many people had been burned by fraud, disputes, and unfulfilled commitments in informal wagers and prediction markets. Convincing users to try a new platform when they’d lost money or been scammed before required not just great technology, but also education about how blockchain makes fraud impossible.

We’ve also had to make sophisticated blockchain technology accessible and intuitive for everyday people who aren’t crypto experts. Balancing security and transparency with user-friendliness has been an ongoing challenge, but it’s one we’re committed to solving as we scale to over one million users.

What is your number one piece of advice to aspiring entrepreneurs?

My advice is to build solutions to real problems you’ve experienced yourself. Gowagr wasn’t born from market research or trend analysis—it came from a contentious FIFA match among friends and the fraud my co-founders experienced. When you’re solving a problem you’ve lived through, you have deep insight into what users actually need, not just what you think they need.

Also, don’t be afraid to experiment and iterate. We started by facilitating wagers using spreadsheets and a Twitter account before building our full platform. That validation process was crucial. Finally, focus on creating meaningful value by combining integrity, trust, and entertainment—that’s our mission, and it should guide every decision you make.

What can we hope to see from Gowagr in the future?

We’re scaling Gowagr to reach over one million users, creating Africa’s largest prediction markets platform that integrates blockchain technology on an unprecedented scale. Our vision is to continue expanding our prediction markets across more categories—Economy, Entertainment, Politics, Stocks, Sports, and Culture—empowering everyday people to trade their beliefs and reveal their truths while solving problems of trust and misinformation.

We’re also enhancing our secondary features like peer-to-peer wagering and Fantasy Premier League contests, and developing our B2B gaming and esports infrastructure further, making it available for licensing by other gaming and esports companies. Our goal is to become a global leader in prediction markets and gaming infrastructure while maintaining our commitment to user-centric innovation and high-quality service. We’re not just building a platform—we’re redefining trust in prediction markets and creating a transparent marketplace where people can prove their beliefs and knowledge.