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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

#51

Post by IMTDb »

kingbirdy wrote: post #45
hedgew wrote: post #7

Augur will probably be used for betting but really it's a prediction market. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prediction_market Prediction markets are an interesting tool for determining the most likely answer or result for almost any question. Some economists hope that we could use prediction markets to make difficult political decisions. Many companies already use them internally. Sadly there's only one prediction mar…

What's the difference between using prediction markets for politics and having a direct democracy?

In direct democracy, you vote for what you want to happen. In a prediction market you vote for what you think will happen.

The whole point is that a sufficiently large and diverse groupe of people is better at predicting the future using those system than an individual. Being able to correctly predicting the future can lead to better decisions.

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

#52

Post by throwawaylolx »

the_cat_kittles wrote: post #49
kingbirdy wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the difference between using prediction markets for politics and having a direct democracy?

not sure how they are comparable to begin with, since one is people guessing an outcome, and another is people voting for an outcome. in the first, you are trying to guess how everyone will vote, in the second you say what you want. sorry if thats not what you are actually asking.

Also one is weighted roughly by number of individuals and one is weighted by the amount of $ that individuals are willing to pay

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

#53

Post by the_cat_kittles »

DennisP wrote: post #29
blanderman wrote: post #3

"In the summer of 2018, assassination markets became popular among bettors. If those markets are seen to incentivise people to take illegal action, Augur could be shut down completely."

I'm having a hard time seeing a way assassination markets are actually a good business model for assassins. If the prediction is tightly bounded (e.g. "Mr. X will be killed on Sept. 3, 2018") then you warn the victim. If the prediction is loosely bounded ("Mr. X will be killed within the next year") then the odds won't be nearly as good, since many non-assassins may bet in favor. The assassin will have to put up a la…

make a market, buy up all the yes shares when the price is low, kill the person, collect your reward.

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

#54

Post by [deleted] »

guiomie wrote: post #46

"Reporting - once an event has happened, Reporters are members of the network who verify the outcome. They place a bet on how much they believe their reporting is true. If they’re right they get a share of the pot. If they are wrong - or are at odds with how other reporters have documented the outcome - they are penalized and lose REP." Isn't the reporting part qui susceptible to a sybil attack?

[deleted]

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

#55

Post by glitch003 »

guiomie wrote: post #46

"Reporting - once an event has happened, Reporters are members of the network who verify the outcome. They place a bet on how much they believe their reporting is true. If they’re right they get a share of the pot. If they are wrong - or are at odds with how other reporters have documented the outcome - they are penalized and lose REP." Isn't the reporting part qui susceptible to a sybil attack?

Yes, but I believe their answer is that they make you hold a certain amount of REP tokens to report, and REP tokens cost $$$. So you would have to buy more REP for each new identity.

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

#56

Post by drcode »

camjohnson26 wrote: post #18

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…

I think the "volume" problem breaks further into two critical sub-questions:

1. A big selling point of these markets is that there are theoretical commercial value to predictions- i.e. a company could get information of the likely success of their new product line ahead of time, to help them make strategic adjustments. However, Robin Hansen (one of the top economists working on betting markets) says, counterintuitively, that industries have been very luke warm about actually doing this in reality, for various psychological and economic reasons (he got into this in his econtalk interview I think)

2. Suppose bets on Augur start ramping up- How do we know these are real bets from real customers? The Augur company has immense funds on hand and its easy on blockchains to simulate fake volume through anonymous accounts. I have no reason to doubt the ethics of the Augur team, but it's unfortunate that if their marketplace starts taking off that it'll be so hard to tell how organic the growth is.

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

#57

Post by lostctown »

DennisP wrote: post #29
blanderman wrote: post #3

"In the summer of 2018, assassination markets became popular among bettors. If those markets are seen to incentivise people to take illegal action, Augur could be shut down completely."

I'm having a hard time seeing a way assassination markets are actually a good business model for assassins. If the prediction is tightly bounded (e.g. "Mr. X will be killed on Sept. 3, 2018") then you warn the victim. If the prediction is loosely bounded ("Mr. X will be killed within the next year") then the odds won't be nearly as good, since many non-assassins may bet in favor. The assassin will have to put up a la…

Additionally, not all bets on a person's or persons' life will be made with malevolent intentions. A global non-profit can use prediction markets as an exotic form of donating. The donator takes the "bad" side of the market, and if the non-profit is successful at saving lives, or doing some other form of reportable good, they receive a payout from their bet. Now, if the non-profit pays its employees absurd salaries, operates inefficiently, etc then they stand to lose some amount of money in the prediction market.

If you approach it this way there is no reason all bets on the "bad" side have to have "bad" intentions.

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

#58

Post by the_cat_kittles »

hedgew wrote: post #7

Augur will probably be used for betting but really it's a prediction market. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prediction_market Prediction markets are an interesting tool for determining the most likely answer or result for almost any question. Some economists hope that we could use prediction markets to make difficult political decisions. Many companies already use them internally. Sadly there's only one prediction mar…

theres definitely more than one prediction market available in the us. for instance, https://www.predictit.org/ (assuming you were referring to IEM in your comment)

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

#59

Post by camjohnson26 »

the_cat_kittles wrote: post #53
DennisP wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm having a hard time seeing a way assassination markets are actually a good business model for assassins. If the prediction is tightly bounded (e.g. "Mr. X will be killed on Sept. 3, 2018") then you warn the victim. If the prediction is loosely bounded ("Mr. X will be killed within the next year") then the odds won't be nearly as good, since many non-assassins may bet in favor. The assassin will have to put up a la…

make a market, buy up all the yes shares when the price is low, kill the person, collect your reward.

Why would anyone take the other side of that bet?
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