# Welcome to OpenBook

This document introduces OpenBook, a decentralized sportsbook where users can participate as both bettor and bookie. Our innovative model allows OpenBook to facilitate a wider variety of sports and individual games, higher limits, lower fees, and a smoother betting experience for bettors while introducing a new way to play by contributing to the betting pool.

OpenBook and the OpenBook sportsbook protocol offer solutions to numerous challenges facing the sports betting industry and its participants today. First, centralized and especially physical sportsbooks charge high commission fees, sometimes called the vigorish or “vig,” on all bets. Given the fundamentally different design of the OpenBook protocol over other sportsbooks, our vig is able to be significantly lower than the competitors. Second, decentralized sportsbooks primarily use the concept of split liquidity provision to create betting markets and allow bets in those markets. That model lacks the ability to scale for larger demand . Our model instead uses a single liquidity pool to serve all bets, allowing for much greater flexibility and accounting for the aforementioned shortcomings.
