How to Launch a Profitable Crypto Casino in 2026 Without Getting Crushed

Want to launch your gaming business fast? Company set up in just 3 days and your license in just 2 months. Over 250 clients, 100% approval rate. Start legally with My Gaming License. Hello and welcome back to another episode of iGaming Real Talk. I'm very excited for this guest today. We have Ivan from EvoVerse. They're building something extraordinary in the space of crypto iGaming.

I'm very excited and thrilled to share this episode with you because we talked a lot about the custom development solutions in the crypto iGaming and why they are important, and what are the things that operators need to be aware of. What are the things that streamers and affiliates need to be aware of. So, this is going to be a really interesting episode for anyone looking to start their own operation. So, watch till the end. Give us a like.

Subscribe if you are not yet and I will see you within the show. Today I have with me Ivan from EvoVerse and I'm very excited to get into some of the interesting topics around custom development in iGaming. Ivan, welcome to the show.

Nice to meet you, Surya. Thanks for hosting me here.

Of course. So, for our audience who don't know much about Ivan, right? Could you give us a short introduction to your background, where you're coming from and your experience?

Yeah, sure. So, my name is Ivan. I'm 25 years old. I started my career as a software engineer back in 2019, I guess, and worked across various business domains including pretty boring ones, I would say, healthcare, fintech, crypto and media. Worked in both cultures, boring enterprise corporate world and also in fast-growing startups. So, during my career as an employee as a software engineer, I have glanced kind of pros and cons of both approaches.

Yeah, and later on I started my own company called EvoVerse.

So, you've been in the development space for quite some time. How many years was it overall?

Like working as an employee, it was around 6 years, I guess. Me and my partner, Edgar, we started our own development firm, which is called EvoVerse, and focused on iGaming solutions because it was just like a random call from my friend that has been in the industry for, I guess, around 10 years back then in 2023. And he was the one that was designing like banners, sites, some games for the most popular crypto casino players now. And he started like around 10 years ago.

So, he got me because he knew that I was in engineering, and he was just finishing designs for his client, and they needed someone who can actually code the site, and develop.

So, we discussed it with him, and they said, "Yeah, why not? Let's hop on a call with the client." Our first client and our current client is WatchGamesTV, very famous streamer for like Stake.

Oh, wow. Yeah. And the project. And that was your first client? Yes, that was my first client. And they still are with you? Yeah. Yeah, we're still enhancing the platform. We're still inventing new things, developing new features, and making sure that it's like top-tier product in the field of social casinos. Yeah, so the story was pretty fun, I would say, because I got on a call with the client, introduced myself, and he explained briefly what is needed.

Then, what I did is I investigated all the features, provided estimates, and told him how it's going to be structured. For example, we're going to have daily meetings, we're going to have reports, we're going to have a big chunk of work divided into sprints. All that corporate procedures that are good in terms of providing quality good software. He was, I guess, kind of amazed. I saw it from his face during the meeting. So, we got the deal and started developing.

Why was he amazed?

Because previously, everyone in this sphere just used to work with some random freelancer without clear structure and without experience in the past working in companies where they have like processes, some procedures, etc. Yeah. And it was something new, I guess, for him and that's why we got the deal. So, I grabbed Edgar, my partner, and we hired our first employee.

Who used to do the design, right?

No, no. The guy that was doing design just connected us. Edgar is my partner in EvoVerse and we're doing all the projects together. So, that was our first deal and the first project of the company. In the meanwhile, we're still working with clients.

When was the first project?

May 2023, I guess. This year, we're going to be celebrating 3 years of the company because we consider it as a day we got that first project as our company was born. Yeah. Wow, yeah. That must be something very reflective as well as successful because, you know, if someone is with you for almost 2 and a half, 3 years, it means that you're taking care of them well, right? Especially in our space, it's tough to keep a client, even B2B or, you know. Exactly.

And this is one, I guess, of our competitive advantages is that most of the clients that whatever they start working with us, they stay with us almost forever. Like, our retention rate is about, I would say, 85%. So even in case it is a really small project we deliver it but then once a guy need something or like a client or group of clients they're always coming back to us.

But on top of that, most of our clients are retaining ones that are working with us on a monthly basis, asking us for more and more features and work because the product that we deliver for them really generates them a lot of revenue and we try to explain to our customers that currently in crypto iGaming you need to amaze your players with product. That is why you always need to keep that pace of innovations and cool features for your players.

You unpacked a lot of things in couple of sentences. I'm just curious to first of all understand really what EvoVerse does. If you can tell us in couple of lines simple terms like what EvoVerse does and then perhaps we can go into the unique features that you were explaining.

Sure. So basically in case we try to summarize what EvoVerse does we can divide it into three subcategories I would say. So first one is custom development for everything related to iGaming. Like most of the projects we have those are social casinos, crypto casinos, case opening sites, some CRMs. Even in-house games originally built for the client.

Secondly, it is selling the source code of the crypto casino that we have built for ourselves and I will elaborate on it a bit more. Later on, and third, the thing that kind of drives us as for now and I really enjoy it myself is slot development. We have started our own slot studio on Stake Engine.

That's quite interesting. And how did you come up with these categories? Did they just come because someone came to you asking for that solutions and then it's like, "Okay, we will do this." Or did you see that there was a provider missing in these categories in the iGaming industry? What came first?

Basically, it was all really natural. So, we started from custom development. Initially, we thought that we will be able only to provide this type of project because we have experience there.

But later on we started to take more and more work even without having domain expertise in there because we believe that we can achieve everything and with a proper approach and product vision, you can develop a really top-notch product in case you have attitude, you have smart people behind. So, we started to take more and more projects in custom development.

But on top of that, what allows us to expand our vision, our understanding of the industry is that we usually do a bit more, not even a bit, but a lot more than just coding the tasks. We try to take the product management role on our side as well. This is kind of things that differentiates us from other competitors. And we try to consider every project as it is our own one.

So, we don't just execute the task, we create products, we think about the cool features that we should implement, add, and that going to work for the client and for the players. Allowed us to expand our vision and understanding of the industry rather than just completing the tasks.

What I'm hearing is it's more like you're obsessed about the product, like what you can create differently for the specific project that will be an edge for them instead of just being another crypto casino.

Yes, exactly. I would say we always do the impossible just because our leadership team and our employees, we do really enjoy the industry. We do enjoy what we're creating and again.

Do they come from iGaming as well? Like most of them?

Not all of them. Not all of them. But in case a person comes into our team not from the iGaming, we have a lot of guides and lessons and we even deposit under their accounts on the casino so that they can experience the gambler behavior, their feelings. And everyone in the team just loves gambling, loves the industry, especially crypto.

And we're obsessed with the product that we're creating and we're always coming up with the cool ideas whether it is for the players or for the operators. For example, how they should track their.

Can you give me an example on any unique thing you have developed for one of your clients that has really helped them stand out from the product perspective?

Yeah, sure. Like I guess the good example going to be like DoubleRewards.com. It's our first project. I do remember that within like a year of developing a platform, adding more and more features. Like I saw in-house games on some website. I don't remember the name.

But then myself I took a laptop and coded pretty small mines game for DoubleRewards social casino and came up with this idea to the WatchGamesTV, the owner of the site and they said like imagine people would be able to gamble on your site with some virtual coins and that going to retain them on your site. You're going to have more visit time and most likely they're going to be wagering more.

And later on we can think about some sort of ways where they can exchange those coins that they're gambling on your site. And it was something really new because previously all the affiliate sites were just about having some banners, login, and your profile. However, here we introduced a feature where a person can gamble on virtual coins and actually it boomed the market and then all of competitors started to do the same.

So, some small things that are running out of you because you're obsessed with the things that you're working with. I guess this is our main competitive advantage here.

That's quite interesting. Is it the same time when social casinos started to become famous in the US because they, you know how US is. They always try to find a new way to make it work because of the regulations in the states.

Yeah, but I would say that the things that we create is a bit different because like affiliate platforms and those social casinos, they're not targeted especially the US because gambling there is prohibited. It's more about retaining players under your code and making sure you provide them much more than just some giveaways. You completely own their experience during the time when they dedicate to gambling.

So, once you have an audience, let's say you're a streamer, starting one or a big one, you should have.

And affiliates are kind of your main primary type of clients you have?

We're talking about social casinos and affiliate platforms. Yes. Those are people that understand that as for now it's not enough just to do a giveaway in Discord. You need to have an ecosystem for your players where they would compete with each other by wagering more under your code. And on top of that they're going to be given a chance to participate in some sort of raffle.

They can gamble on your website, which is not a casino, but they still have that charm of gambling on slots, on in-house games, whatever it is. And then they love you more. They retain with you even if you move to another casino to as a promoter.

It's about engagement.

Yes, it's about engagement and about spending more time with your player not only on stream but off stream as well.

I'm also curious, why should these affiliates and streamers count on custom development solutions rather than, there's a lot of white label solutions available in the market, right? You can just pick one, launch in 3 weeks, or there's also launch in 30 minutes recently the positioning with that kind of messaging happening. So why should they take down the route of custom development if they have these white label solutions available in the market?

I guess here we're just mixing two things. First of all there is like no white label for like social casinos or the things that are like free rewards. Yeah, there is a couple I guess, but those are just really simple ones. What we're talking here.

It doesn't work or someone didn't think about it?

I have seen couple of examples where it just stands for like $500 per platform, but it's completely different from what we built. What we build is a system that is even more complicated than casino. However, there are no real deposits and withdrawals, of course. But it's something unique where you entertain your customer without them actually depositing, but still providing them that gambling feeling.

And later on, by their achievements on your free-to-gamble website, they move to the casino you're promoting and then benefiting from the bonuses that they have earned on that free-to-play website. And after that, of course, they're becoming your referees, making FTDs, and competing with each other by wagering more.

Wow, that's really interesting. So, it's a whole other layer before they actually become a gaming player in that sense. Okay, so let's also talk about the other categories that you're working on. For example, custom development for crypto casinos, right? So, when we look at those type of clients, crypto founders, crypto iGaming, and crypto casinos have tremendously been the trend for the last 2 to 3 years. Now, they all have an option.

Either they can develop their platform in-house. That might take maybe up to a year and a lot of development resources and investment and funding. Or, they can go and take a white label from the market, which is much faster and much easier. The only thing is, of course, they need to pay the revenue share forever. So, why do someone, let's say, if I want to start my own crypto casino, should I go down the route of white label? Should I go down developing it on my own?

Or, there are other things that I can do? In your opinion, which you think is the best in the long term?

Long term, definitely, you should have your own product. Because white labels works for fiat casinos because you're competing only in traffic acquisition. I would explain it because the audience is completely different between gamblers and crypto gamblers. Crypto gamblers are a new era of gamblers. They're spending their time in Twitter, in Discord and they explore what is cool and what is bad about every platform available on the market.

So here on top of the traffic acquisition you're also competing by the features that you are offering to your client. Whether it is a cool reward system, some unique games that you have developed or like visibility, speed of the platform, UI, UX. So I would say for the long term definitely you should have your own product because while going with a white label you are tied as much as you can imagine.

So for example in case you need to add some specific feature let's say gamble on your rake back instantly or you would like to change color branding you're going to be put in a queue of other clients of that white label and most likely you're going to get your feature done within like I don't know months in case this is a small feature.

However, having your own source code allows you to create basically whatever and in case you are really a creative founder you can think about all the cool ideas you have and they can be implemented just within a weeks and you're going to go to market just because you offer something unique for the player.

Like crypto gamblers are the ones that are always trying to find something new because they're coming from crypto space, they're modern and they always would like to get a bit more than they're getting now. Which is not available on white labels because they're just everything the same and you don't have a way to offer something more to your players.

Okay. So, considering the player preferences and the way they are and their expectations, it's better in the long run to have your own platform so that you have the full control and you can just do the changes as per the needs on the fly.

Yes, exactly. And on top of that, well knows that the volume of gambling is just rising to the sky and being tied by some percentage of GGR and putting yourself at a risk in case they would like to change the conditions or something going to go wrong. I wouldn't recommend this way. I would still put heart on building your own platform and long-term definitely you're going to be a winner.

I talked to a lot of entrepreneurs, founders who are very ambitious to start their own crypto casinos. And one of the other things is that not all of them have the cash upfront investment to invest on a source code platform. What do they have to do in this case? In case they don't have cash to build their own platform.

Because you know what? A lot of them think in the beginning like, yeah, I mean I want my own platform, but the thing is I don't have that investment at the moment. I just want to get started, make revenue and then we'll figure it out kind of thing.

Maybe this is how a lot of them think, right?

Yeah, but in case you don't have cash straight away, you won't be able to attract traffic to your site. So, basically, even if you spend zero on the platform and you have really tiny budget overall, you won't be able to bankroll yourself, you won't be able to buy streamers, you won't be able to promote yourself, and actually it's just better to start a bit later once you have cash for traffic, for building your own platform. Long term, it's a winner.

Otherwise, you're just going to burn your money and this is going to be your awful iGaming experience as entrepreneur.

Behind the scenes when we were talking outside, you mentioned some things along those lines. Can you also share it in our conversation here? Did you make any mistakes as part of EvoVerse? Because I think from 2023 to now, within less than 3 years, you've grown a lot from what I'm understanding. Which is in a very fast-paced, volatile industry. So, was there any major mistake and setback that you had to go through and did you learn something from that experience?

Yeah, because basically we grew from like two people to more than 60 as for now, within like less than 3 years. And of course there were a lot of mistakes on our path. First thing is that my idea about a year ago was that in case we can build a platform, we can be successful as an operator. Launched our own crypto casino. We have spent a lot of time developing the platform because we really believe that you can go far away, only on your own source code.

But then we failed as an operator. We burned a lot of money because we didn't know how to manage traffic, we didn't know what is a proper bankroll. By that time, we didn't know about the companies that exist with the title of iBankroll. They would have saved us back then.

Oh, yeah. They are everywhere. I'm seeing some partnerships like almost every week I see a partnership with iBankroll.

Yeah, they are doing really well. So, our mistake was but I wouldn't say that this 100% mistake because after that experience we gained a lot of understanding in terms of how operators feel when they have a running platform. Alongside with that, we're left with the platform that we have built for ourselves that was.

So, just to rewind a little bit back. It was mainly because of the bankroll that operation failed or would you say marketing and acquisition was also part of?

I would say it's a combo because we didn't have proper experience in marketing and in traffic acquisition. Secondly, we didn't have good bankroll. We tried to raise but we failed. But nonetheless, the really cool thing that we're left from that experience is crypto casino platform that we have built for ourselves that we have production tested on load on various problems from customers, from players.

Building solid team experience on how does it feel while running an operator because all the devs that were working on the platform, they were involved in the operations being like support agents trying to feel the back office of the casino and just making sure that everyone understands that it's their product.

It's not something that we're doing for the client and we're all here together and we need to achieve the same goal and have more people playing on the casino and just to make it really robust scalable product.

That's very interesting. So, you launched your own BTC operation and it failed because of marketing, a combination of marketing expertise, lack of marketing expertise, as well as bankroll. But you understood that you had built an amazing product during the time. And then that is how you started offering source code solutions based on what you have already built and tested.

Yeah. By that time, I saw that it was a mistake launching our BTC product. But later on, once people started to come to ask whether we're selling the platform itself, we got an idea that wow, maybe we can offer something really different from what is available on the market because you had only two options, whether you can find someone or team companies that going to build custom solution from scratch for crypto casino and it can take like at least a year. With a white label.

Because it's a complicated system with back office, with a lot of integrations connected to gaming.

And you need the right talent with the right systems and everything.

You need to have proper tech management. You need to have people with domain expertise and especially crypto gaming expertise. However, what we did is we started to offer a fast way to have your own custom platform. Basically, we sell the source code with an already built-in everything. People are rebranding it under their colors, logos, whatever. They can create a completely different casino from the platform that we have built.

But, having all the baselines there, having it tested with a solid back office, it saves their time instead of spending a year and I guess half a million in development into something really lean and they can launch within like a month having their own platform with their own branding having full control over it.

In case they don't have a dev team that going to make from the platform that we offer something really unique to them, we can offer them as well a dedicated team that has been working with the code that we're selling and we do have a lot of success cases like this. So basically it's saving their time and money and they're buying all the pitfalls that we have made while writing these platforms ourselves.

Still having the same result as if they have spent a year developing it themselves.

If I imagine myself as a founder and I want to start it, that's a very sweet deal. The only thing though that comes to my mind is what if I am not able to manage it after I buy something like this? So you're asking about operations? Yeah, like you know, imagine I bought the code and now I branded it, I'm ready to launch, but I would also need a team to manage the updates and everything that we want to do on a monthly basis, right?

So do your clients usually have their own team or do you support them with them or how is it?

It depends with the client background. In case they're coming from something like really unrelated to iGaming, we'll offer them teams that going to help them to run their casino mostly from the product perspective and tech perspective, but we do have also clients that are coming with their own tech team.

Whether they're switching from famous white labels or they just know that tech team from their past experience and they're buying a code from us, will help them to launch, to support their tech team sharing our knowledge on how to operate on the platform and then they just go in the market and totally independent from us.

So they don't need you after they buy the source code. It's not like okay, we made it. So if you need a little change you have to come back to us.

No. We're giving full control over it in case they have their own dev team. They're more than welcome to create.

How it is like in normal outsourcing companies, right? Like they create something for us and we have to keep going back to them to do some things because they built it in such a way that only they understand.

What we're trying to do is once we sell this platform, we provide with a solid documentation. We pressure clients to do a due diligence before the deal. As they can involve their tech teams, they can involve whatever they like in order for them to understand that this is actually what they're paying for because we don't like to do blind sales. We'd like to have proper clients that understand that they're going to be successful with this platform.

In case they don't have a tech team later on after the sale we can provide them with a dedicated team. Of course, they're going to need to pay for it additionally. It's not something that we sell as a black box. We're totally transparent.

Is that some of the reasons why your clients choose you? Like how do you differentiate yourself from other development or just outsourcing service providers? Because there's a lot, you know, even there's a lot of companies that just do iGaming as one category and they do big other sectors as well. How do you differentiate overall?

I guess our main differentiator is because everyone in the team is trying to spend as much time as possible in the industry, in the iGaming, exploring all the products we build and exploring the competitors of our clients in order to propose much more than just executing tasks. So, most of our clients are just coming to us and say that I have a brief idea. Make it juicy. And then we start to cook.

It's not about coding, it's about creating business analysis, it's about testing everything, it's about also understanding the market, right? Like what is in the market? And then how we can build something new, totally new, that will give this client an edge.

What we're doing as well is that the team that is working on the project, they are required to play on the competitors' projects in order to understand what is good, what is bad, where finding their deposits on the competitors' projects. So that they can explore. We also speak with support teams of every competitor of our client just understand how the players are treated, how this procedure works, just to make it better. And this is the thing that we are doing.

Review, you know, in terms of how you can make it better for your clients and that's your main differentiator.

Exactly. I truly believe and my partner helped me with this vision, we're successful only if our clients are successful. So, we're trying to make as much as possible for every project that we have built for it to be profitable and for the client to retain with us forever. That is why our retention rate is about like 85% I guess.

And yeah, I feel like this is way how you should treat your clients and you should think about their business not only about your commercial relationships with them.

That's a very important point. It's because when your clients win, you win and everything else is dependent on your clients winning. Just to switch the gears a little bit. You mentioned about slots and slot development in the beginning of the conversation, right? Can you talk to me a little bit more about what you do in the slots development? Do you have a separate brand or what's going on?

I would say quite recently we have launched our own slot provider titled EvoSlot. Thanks to Stake Engine providing us with this opportunity. Because we saw their platform and this program launching I guess in autumn and we're really thrilled about going in there. We had almost zero experience with slot development but we felt that it is something where we can execute our full potential in terms of creativity, in terms of our design forces and dev power we have.

Did it come from someone, some client requesting or how did it just?

No, basically I saw in Twitter that Stake is launching their platform Stake Engine and dev team can apply.

Like RGS? Like how what is Stake Engine? Because I'm not too familiar about it.

Stake Engine is their own RGS, which allows you to build on it and to be listed on Stake straight away. Of course, you need to pass some sort of moderation, review, etc. But, in case you have good designs, you have good creative slots with a proper animations and math behind it. On top of their RGS, you can build really solid products. And they're going to be listed on Stake, the most popular and the famous crypto casino.

So, we decided that it's going to be our next challenge among all others we have.

For Stake, just for me to understand it, is it like an app store where anyone can create apps and just to be listed in there?

Exactly. It works the same way. They just wanted to extend their own portfolio kind of thing. Yes, they wanted to extend their own portfolio and it's a great idea. They're brilliant in bringing it to the market. Because basically they encourage creators to create on their platform. They're going to have more content for their players. And alongside with that, those games going to remain exclusive on Stake.

A great idea coming from their side, allowing really small teams to try themselves in slot development. Because once you try to launch your slot studio, it's kind of really challenging way. Distribution is a challenging part, right? Because you need to have the relationships. Yes, you need to have the relationships. You need to be put on lobby on top casinos in order just to earn something.

You need to attend all the exhibitions, invest heavily into the marketing, into the production. Even building your own RGS, which takes like at least 1 year and a lot of certifications, dev power, etc. However, here, Stake offer a really fast way for creators to just develop something, build, and then see the feedback of the crypto community straight away because they are listed on Stake. They have like millions of players. We started to develop things there.

We have really solid designs, animations, like sound engineers now, and we have already released two slots since 2026. They are doing pretty well. I guess I can share some numbers that are already public. We had more than 7 or even 8 million bets now, more than 15 million wagers, and more than 30K of unique players tried our games. Small numbers in case we compare ourselves to the biggest studios, but we have just only started, only two games.

We are just gaining the power, gaining the feedback coming from the players, and for this year, our really ambitious plan is to become number one studio on Stake Engine and to release at least two games per month. And I'm more than sure that we're going to get there.

Wow. I mean, at the rate where you're going, I can be also sure that you will get there. In 2026, you've launched two slots until now. It's already, we're not even end of February yet. So at the moment you're launching one a month kind of thing, and you want to increase.

Most likely once this podcast goes live, so we're going to have at least three. And from April, I guess we're going to be releasing two games per month. That's for sure because we're just gaining our power, hiring more and more creative and cool people in terms of the designs, engineers, animations, and everything.

Do you use any AI to develop your slots or because AI we are in the AI age trending the AI is everywhere?

We're trying to use it, but not much because we still believe that AI creativity is not there compared to the talents we have.

Really? Still because you know I saw a lot of AI slot development companies where you can go from concept to prototype instead of a month you can do it in couple of days.

In case you'd like to have let's say mid quality product, but do it fast, you can use like StakeGPT or SlotGPT. They have launched this product as well. Where you can create your slot just from a prompt. However, as a real gambler it's not the same. It's not the same. You need to have creative designers in order to create something really that going to feel special because me myself as a gambler I clearly see all the assets that are generated by AI without hands on.

I think it's the same for me as well like you know I create a lot of content on LinkedIn and I see when a text is written by AI when it's easily visible.

I'm not saying that it will not be able to become popular like slot generated with AI, but as for now we do not see that there is a soul in the games created with AI. But as for now we're relying on talents that we have. They're using AI in their work just to speed some things up or to help a bit, but it's not the same where you can completely replace your artist with ChatGPT or Claude AI or whatever it is.

Cool. And what are the plans for EvoSlot now? Do you only focus on Stake Engine or is there a way you can branch out and go outside as well? Or how does it work?

As for now, all the power we have is executed on Stake Engine. But for this year, again, we have real ambitious plans. Most likely we're going to branch out and launch, let's say, a separate studio that's going to be available on all the aggregators, just running on other RGS. Maybe we're going to rent an RGS or we're going to develop ourselves.

Not sure yet, but more than sure that we're going to get into other casinos as well with separate slots not only being available on Stake Engine.

You mentioned something about case openings in the beginning of the conversation as one of the categories. Can you explain to me how case opening works? And how do you develop these kind of solutions for your clients?

Yeah, sure. So, case openings, it's really interesting. I would say.

Because I heard it first time from you. Like we met in Barcelona. Yeah, I mean, I didn't know. When you were saying like what does it mean, you know?

Case openings, it's kind of a really interesting product because basically it is a mystery boxes approach where you buy a box which has items in it. Those can be items from real life. It can be like watch, car, sneakers, whatever it is. There is probability of a drop of every item. And you buy a box, for example, for $100 and you have a chance for getting, let's say, a car worth 10K from it. Of course, the higher chance you have for getting, say, a toothbrush for like $5.

But anyway, those products are really common for crypto iGaming audience. They're extremely popular for the ones that are looking after gambling streamers because it's kind of different way of content rather than just playing slots. You can have an experience by winning something from real life. For example, a car, a watch, a cool pair of sneakers, whatever it is. And a lot of mechanics are built on top of that mystery boxes.

And I guess we're the pioneers that are building those platforms as an outsourcing firm. One of our clients is among top three in the world for mystery boxes websites.

Interesting.

This concept is genuinely coming from CS gambling sites. Because they are gambling with skins, all that scene with CS gambling. Where you have a mystery box, you can open it and you can have really rare skin or a common skin. And then it transformed into mystery boxes with items from real world.

Another vector of this side is coming up. Those are like Pokemon cards. So, basically you can be like creative, as you can imagine, while having that mystery boxes approach. It's quite interesting and fascinating as well because it combines all the elements of gaming, as we know, with real world presence in a way.

Exactly. I would say that it's kind of gamified shopping because basically instead of buying like Gucci t-shirt, you can open a box Gucci themed, and you can win much more than a t-shirt, but of course much less than the t-shirt. And a lot of communities are built around that projects, and they have really huge wagers and profits.

When it comes to the future, where do you see crypto gaming products evolving in the next two to three years? Especially in terms of original games and product itself because you're product focused, you're product obsessed from what I'm understanding. So what's your prediction in terms of where crypto casinos are going, where the players are going to go?

I guess we're going to see a huge shift from fiat operators, trying to step in into the crypto iGaming, due to all the issues they have with the regulations on different markets. So, we're going to have a lot more competition here. But do you think crypto casinos are a way to avoid regulation? Is that what you're saying? No, I'm saying that it has like slightly easier regulations and you're not restricted by one geo.

So, for example, in fiat, you need to have a license in every country you operate. Compared to crypto where you can just have, let's say, Nevis or Curacao or Costa Rica license, and you can operate almost worldwide just with one domain, with one license. And more and more operators going to be looking into stepping in into the crypto iGaming. Definitely, they're going to be competing for streamers, for traffic acquisition, and for the product itself.

We'll need to amaze customers with some unique features, with unique games. Also, it is really important how the crypto market going to behave because obviously, when the crypto goes up, crypto gaming also goes up. A lot of things that going to be gamified with creating own casino tokens, having some sort of NFTs connected to it, some raffles with airdrops, lotteries, whatever it might be.

But again, I would say that huge factor of volume in crypto gaming is crypto market itself.

If we look at your presence online, you've, I mean, EvoVerse has been quite publicly. So what's your intention behind it in terms of strategy around sales and visibility? Are you planning any expos in the near future?

Honestly, we didn't have any marketing till this year because all the clients and all the projects were coming just from the word of mouth. As for now, we don't even have a single sales person in our company. So, it was all coming naturally. No promotion, no sales. Someone was recommending us to someone by like showcasing what we did, and they were like satisfied with the level of service they have received.

For now, for 2026, I'm stepping out a bit from controlling the delivery because the processes are already quite good and I can dedicate some time to marketing and promotion of EvoVerse. 2026 going to be big for us. We're going to gain a lot of clients. We're going to have a lot of in-house projects as well. We have already started to attend the expos only as visitors as of now, but maybe this year going to see our booths somewhere on Lisbon and in Rome.

So, 2026 going to be a year of EvoVerse, for sure.

I mean, to hear from you that everything you have until now is completely organic without any marketing is successful in itself because, you know, this is all product-driven. Having a great product and having a great team makes marketing job easier when they start doing it, right? So, marketing is just kind of like an amplifier. If you have a great product, if you have a great team, they can do a great job.

But, if the product is not good and if they don't have a talented team, then marketing can't do much, you know. Maybe they can shout for a year, but the market will catch up and it's just going to be the trust is going to be lost. So, I'm really glad to hear that you have arrived to where you are right now just with completely product focus.

You know, one of the other things that I was also thinking is you're from Ukraine and we noticed that right now in iGaming the influence of Slavic community is growing and is a lot especially in 2025, 2026 and beyond. So, in terms of events and conferences, which of the five events you think has managed to let's say take care of the CIS and Slavic community in that sense? I guess Slavic community is really popular for their achievements in affiliate stuff.

And in tech, because I can say that Ukraine has best engineers in the world in terms of like software engineering, cuz we have solid universities, we have really good people with mass, like state of brain. And that is where we can compete on the tech field. Alongside with that, Slavic people are really famous for their presence in affiliate marketing, especially in fiat casinos. They are just, I guess, taking all the iGB booths on every conference and expo.

Why it is coming from us? I don't know, really. Maybe because it's kind of one of the really few things that you can achieve success here, cuz we don't have proper social elevators or other things where you can try yourself in different domains. For example, like fintech, art, banking, like healthcare. So, basically, we need to focus our young generation on earning online. And iGaming is one of the fields where you can really have your good life here.

When we look at the main events in the industry, we have Clarion, we have SiGMA, G2E, SBC, and also Next. Which of these conferences you think has managed to create a Slavic community very well in their conferences?

I guess iGB, because it's about affiliates. And ICE, I guess it's just like the biggest one. I truly believe that it is the best conference here. And our presence there is solid.

Also, when it comes to just the ways of you working together, do you also work with model like revenue share, or do you only do like okay, selling the source code like a service fee?

No, we do have such partnership as well. And it's kind of really interesting for us to step in into some venture, but we already had bad experience in the past where we invested our time, our tech, our people, our expertise. But then it failed from another side of the partnership. So now I would say that we're really picky in terms of like going into the partnership with someone just having like wet dream idea.

So we're selecting partners now really thoroughly in case we're going into that sort of venture, but yes, we are really open to it.

You mentioned previously as well you've grown from scratch to 60 people now within less than 3 years. It means, when you bring people into the equation, the equation changes completely. So I'm curious to understand what's your leadership style. How do you lead people? And why do you want people to work for EvoVerse for example? I don't know, like someone is watching this episode and they want to work for EvoVerse, they like you or whatever, right?

What is your message to them? What is your leadership style and the culture?

Talking about the culture in EvoVerse, I would say that two words that come to my mind is young and hungry because we always try to hire people that are really not satisfied at the place that they are currently and they want to do more, want to get more responsibilities. And later on they would like to become, let's say, some sort of entrepreneurs inside the company.

Because we really try to grow leaders that can take projects under themselves, and then we're more than happy to do a profit share on some terms of like in-house projects. We treat our people well, but we demand from them a lot as well. There can be long work hours, there can be some weekend days where we need to solve some issues that is critical for the client or like player, in case we're talking about our own internal projects, are like top-tier priority for us.

The people that are living with us are really satisfied with the place where they are currently because we give them more responsibility, of course, they are like no, monthly wage, of course, raises. And they see a huge potential in working with us because in case they are proving that they are a good leader, they then bring in a lot of ideas to the table, most likely later on they're going to become like a partner with us.

And this is how we try to structure the team that we have. On side with that, we do have a really strict recruitment process where there are several stages. Among technical ones, we do have also like soft skills when we try to understand the emotional intelligence and goals of the person for the future.

How do you think emotional intelligence matters, especially when we are running like a dev shop, right? Like, they just need to build, or do they also need to have?

It's a bit more complicated because you need to be able to work under huge stress because in iGaming every bug can cost millions just within like couple of minutes in case someone discovers an exploit on your site or in your game. So, you need to be able to work under stress and alongside with that to bring on more fresh ideas how you can make the project better. And what features can we bring into the table to please customer and to add more into their experience.

So, it's about stress resilience, being inventive and striving for more that you have currently.

Just to close off our conversation and looking ahead to 2026 and beyond, what are the plans for yourself personally and also for EvoVerse, is there any goal that excites you really looking ahead?

For myself personally, I would like to get at least 99% of satisfaction rate for everyone that knows EvoVerse and myself personally from the work we do. Secondly, I would like to become number one provider of iGaming solutions in crypto iGaming world whether it is custom or B2B solutions that we are about to announce this year. And third, as I told you previously, would like to become number one slot provider on Stake Engine this year.

And probably increase people count at least to 120 people. And this.

Double. Yeah, double. At least double and 60 more new superheroes.

Well, I wish you the best for achieving all these goals. And thank you for coming on board and sharing everything so openly as well as your story. I'm sure it will be inspirational for many who are in the same phase as well as someone who is looking to start their own crypto casino or case opening or, you know, they have this as a reference material to understand a bit more about how it goes. So, thank you for joining me today. Thank you so much.

It was really nice talk and thank you again for hosting me.

Thank you, Ivan. So, that's it for today, guys. Thank you for watching iGaming Real Talk. Please like, subscribe, as well as share your thoughts in the comment section and I will see you in the next show.