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Introduction to Augur, an open-source, decentralized betting marketplace

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Re: Introduction to Augur, an open-source, decentralized betting marketplace

#31

> September 2015 - Augur’s token sale raises $5.2 million Conspicuously missing from this article: Augur's business model. They presumably get a house take?

My understanding is that the development of Augur was funded by the initial sale of REP, and that the organization presents itself as only developing the software, not as creating or running any of the specific markets.

So, no, I don't think they have a house take? However, the individual markets are each made by someone, and I believe that these "market makers" are financially rewarded through I guess a sort of a house take thing?

Re: Introduction to Augur, an open-source, decentralized betting marketplace

#32

> September 2015 - Augur’s token sale raises $5.2 million Conspicuously missing from this article: Augur's business model. They presumably get a house take?

No they do not. REP token holders get a "house take" in some contexts. Augur isn't a company, so a business model doesn't really make sense. Augur is a protocol, and the Forecast Foundation is a non-profit that supports some development.

Re: Introduction to Augur, an open-source, decentralized betting marketplace

#33

Hard pass. Blockchain and Gambling still don't really go together yet. Moreover, I wouldn't touch anything intersecting this space that doesn't have Rick Dudley directly involved. Not only does he have a 15 year headstart working on some of these problems, but he also owns patents on provably fair online gaming systems. The site acts like the main challenges are legal when really they're technical.

Could you point me to Dudley's patents? I attempted a USPTO search and didn't find it.

I'm interested in when the patents were issued and the methods they cover.

Re: Introduction to Augur, an open-source, decentralized betting marketplace

#34

> September 2015 - Augur’s token sale raises $5.2 million Conspicuously missing from this article: Augur's business model. They presumably get a house take?

No they do not. REP token holders get a "house take" in some contexts. Augur isn't a company, so a business model doesn't really make sense. Augur is a protocol, and the Forecast Foundation is a non-profit that supports some development.

> Augur is a protocol, and the Forecast Foundation is a non-profit that supports some development.

Who got the $5 million?

Re: Introduction to Augur, an open-source, decentralized betting marketplace

#35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No they do not. REP token holders get a "house take" in some contexts. Augur isn't a company, so a business model doesn't really make sense. Augur is a protocol, and the Forecast Foundation is a non-profit that supports some development.

> Augur is a protocol, and the Forecast Foundation is a non-profit that supports some development. Who got the $5 million?

> Who got the $5 million?

The foundation to fund development (which they kept in Ether so is much more valuable than $5million when the sale happened).

He's right, it's a protocol. There is no method for them to take a cut. The protocol gives the fees to the REP holders who report the outcome by staking their REP tokens.

Re: Introduction to Augur, an open-source, decentralized betting marketplace

#36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No they do not. REP token holders get a "house take" in some contexts. Augur isn't a company, so a business model doesn't really make sense. Augur is a protocol, and the Forecast Foundation is a non-profit that supports some development.

> Augur is a protocol, and the Forecast Foundation is a non-profit that supports some development. Who got the $5 million?

http://allcoinsnews.com/2015/08/27/augur-raises-over-usd-4-m...

Tl;dr is that 80% went to public, 16% to founders and 4% to foundation.

Re: Introduction to Augur, an open-source, decentralized betting marketplace

#37

> September 2015 - Augur’s token sale raises $5.2 million Conspicuously missing from this article: Augur's business model. They presumably get a house take?

I looked at their site briefly and didn't quite see the answer to this, on the bottom of their FAQ (https://www.augur.net/faq/) it says:

Fees on the Augur protocol go directly to the market creator and REP holders who report and dispute outcomes. The Forecast Foundation does not recieve any fees from actions, trades, markets or use on the Augur protocol.

I guess this has to do with them being a decentralized marketplace, which as the article discusses does have some cool perks.

In the USA, PredictIt.org is a site that is also aimed at prediction, but they take a 10% fee on profit, and then a 5% fee on withdrawal. Seemingly a lot more volume on their markets than Augur at the moment, with some of their markets having hundreds of thousands of shares traded, and thousands of comments.

https://www.predictit.org/About/HowItWorks?page=home

Edit: After I posted I now see that Gibsons77 gave a better and more concise answer to the question

Re: Introduction to Augur, an open-source, decentralized betting marketplace

#38

> September 2015 - Augur’s token sale raises $5.2 million Conspicuously missing from this article: Augur's business model. They presumably get a house take?

For the record, augur raised during time when ether was less than $10 https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/augur Who knows what that fundraised amount can be worth now

Re: Introduction to Augur, an open-source, decentralized betting marketplace

#39

The main problem on Augur right now is volume. Only a few markets have orders to trade against, and it seems like the cryptocurrency markets are the most actively used. I tried to use the platform to make a small bet against Tesla, but obviously you need someone to take the other side of the bet. Still a very cool platform. A lot of people use predictions.global to get a birds eye view of the markets. https://predict…

The main problem on Augur right now is volume

I think that the relevant term is liquidity

Re: Introduction to Augur, an open-source, decentralized betting marketplace

#40
Arbitrage opp:

Write a program to take the opposite side of any bet that you can hedge in the public market.

For example: if someone bets against Tesla, and you can take the opposite side, but (more) cheaply offset your risk in the option market.

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