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

litepaper.com

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

#61

Post by dminor »

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 wonder if the creators were aware of Robin Hanson's market maker mechanism, in which an automated market maker always accepts a trade. It limits its potential losses by offering increasingly worse terms as the market deviates from even chance of the outcome.

It also allows different predictions to be linked, so that you can bet on the outcomes of two events, or on the outcome of one event given a particular outcome of another event.

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

#62

Post by ordinaryradical »

Misplaced hype.

“Today, Augur had 30 active users and 123 transactions in the last 24 hours. The market cap is roughly $269.2 million. That means that each active user is now worth roughly $9 million.”

https://mobile.twitter.com/lawmaster/status/1027188396291235...

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

#63

Post by djhworld »

IMTDb wrote: post #51
kingbirdy wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is there evidence of this working though, or is it the same concept as the 'wisdom of the crowds'

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

#65

Post by rishav_sharan »

IMTDb wrote: post #51
kingbirdy wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is there any well established study which outlines this? It feels very counter intuitive that masses are better at prediction than specialists of that domain.

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

#66

Post by otoburb »

dminor wrote: post #61
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 wonder if the creators were aware of Robin Hanson's market maker mechanism, in which an automated market maker always accepts a trade. It limits its potential losses by offering increasingly worse terms as the market deviates from even chance of the outcome. It also allows different predictions to be linked, so that you can bet on the outcomes of two events, or on the outcome of one event given a particular outcome…

They knew of Robin Hanson's work around futarchy[1], and interviewed him[2].

Augur initially planned to implement an automated market making scoring mechanism, but changed the dynamics[3] during alpha testing.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futarchy

[2] http://augur.strikingly.com/blog/augur-advisor-chat-with-dr-...

[3] https://augur.stackexchange.com/questions/104/why-did-augur-...

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

#67

Post by Nursie »

Not sure when this paper was written, but AFAICT Augur was launched with a lot of noise, caused a brief storm in a teacup as assassination markets were mooted/predicted, and then entered a steep decline as it became apparent (as with most blockchain-relates projects it seems) that nobody was actually going to use it, and the daily active users number was only in the double figures.

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

#68

Post by somebodythere »

toine_toine wrote: post #44
inputcoffee wrote: post #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.

The only problem is you don't know what the value of ETH will be 2-3 days in the future.

You could hedge the value of ETH in fiat markets, or you could wait until Augur supports betting with Dai.

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

#69

Post by ALittleLight »

rishav_sharan wrote: post #65
IMTDb wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is there any well established study which outlines this? It feels very counter intuitive that masses are better at prediction than specialists of that domain.

You should visit the good judgment project website. They've studied this for a while and have documentation outlining and explaining their claims.

The idea is not that an untrained mass of people are necessarily better than experts. Instead, it's that some people, with training, can learn how to make good predictions about many different fields. These predictions exceed the predictions of domain experts.

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

#70

Post by ulrikrasmussen »

IMTDb wrote: post #51
kingbirdy wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Isn't that going to turn into a voting system as soon as those predictions are used for making political decisions?
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