The story of Augur, an Ethereum prediction market • Hacker News Board

Re: The story of Augur, an Ethereum prediction market

#41

Post by coralreef » Tue, Oct 16, 2018, 3:41 PM UTC

repomies6999 wrote: post #20

mattlondon wrote: post #14

Genuine question, why is this called a "prediction market" and not just a gambling exchange? As far as I can tell, this is no different from BetFair et al who let punters bet against each other on the outcome of the next football match? (apart from "oooh! blockchain!" and "oooh! decentralised!") I've read a lot of articles about this over the years and seen lots of lofty words about how this will change X/the world f…

You have missed nothing. It is just another traditional business implemented "on blockchain", and as usual the blockchain here doesn't add value.

Actually from what I can tell, it is a more liquid model.

In Augur you buy shares of an outcome, and the value of those shares can change day to day, and you can sell at any time. Whereas with a bookie, you bet on the outcome with fixed odds. Bookie lines may shift, but your bet will be locked in and unable to appreciate in value.

I'm not sure why bookies haven't implemented this share model, maybe its needlessly complicated.

Re: The story of Augur, an Ethereum prediction market

#42

Post by polezo » Tue, Oct 16, 2018, 4:43 PM UTC

paulsutter wrote: post #30

wslh wrote: post #29

If you are curious about the Augur usage metrics you can check http://dappboard.com/app/application/5a58431c5d7064dc7fb37cc...

The graph shows daily users at about 150-200 The only cryptocurrency "apps" with meaningful users are the exchanges like Coinbase or Binance with millions of users. The actual ethereum dapps have basically zero usage.

While I agree many of these apps have their values overly inflated if you look closely at their usage, I think measuring web 3 apps with web 2 metrics like DAUs is a bad premise. Most of these services arent replacing social networks or content providers, but are instead providing financial instruments (which users spend a high amount of value on, but don't necessarily use every day.)

Augur may not have a high volume of pure users but there's still a decent amount of money on the line in markets at any given time (1.1 million in USD, at time of writing, according to https://predictions.global/)

Re: The story of Augur, an Ethereum prediction market

#43

Post by pearjuice » Tue, Oct 16, 2018, 5:08 PM UTC

blunte wrote: post #12

I sat through some early presentations of Augur at the big monthly Bitcoin meeting that's been running for years in Amsterdam, and my first thought upon seeing it was, "who says what the factual outcome is?". Sure in some cases it's black and white, but like most things in life there is a lot of weight in the interpretation. So it's back to the original problem with smart contracts - you still have to trust an oracle…

FYI, chainlink will solve this problem. They are working on a decentralized oracle solution. You should really read the white paper. Your concern is addressed by having set a collateral demand for nodes participating. So for example the stake is x you want to have an even distribution of x/n nodes to actually insure your off-chain data.

If they deliver, smart contracts will actually take off because they can reliably use external data. Right now, there is no way to do so.

Re: The story of Augur, an Ethereum prediction market

#44

Post by tw1010 » Tue, Oct 16, 2018, 5:18 PM UTC

mattlondon wrote: post #14

Genuine question, why is this called a "prediction market" and not just a gambling exchange? As far as I can tell, this is no different from BetFair et al who let punters bet against each other on the outcome of the next football match? (apart from "oooh! blockchain!" and "oooh! decentralised!") I've read a lot of articles about this over the years and seen lots of lofty words about how this will change X/the world f…

Answer: branding.

Re: The story of Augur, an Ethereum prediction market

#45

Post by spir » Tue, Oct 16, 2018, 5:19 PM UTC

nsomaru wrote: post #6

Last I read, REP gave up on plans for a decentralised Oracle. That’s the hardest part of this whole deal,unfortunately

Augur (with their REP token) is a decentralized Oracle, with two caveats:

1. the price feed used by Augur for USD/REP is currency centralized, but will become decentralized in v2.

2. Augur v2 will use the DAI stablecoin, so that markets are effectively denominated in USD. DAI uses a semi-centralized price feed for the collateral backing the stablecoin.

I'm a dev of https://predictions.global

Re: The story of Augur, an Ethereum prediction market

#46

Post by joosters » Tue, Oct 16, 2018, 5:40 PM UTC

coralreef wrote: post #41

repomies6999 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have missed nothing. It is just another traditional business implemented "on blockchain", and as usual the blockchain here doesn't add value.

Actually from what I can tell, it is a more liquid model. In Augur you buy shares of an outcome, and the value of those shares can change day to day, and you can sell at any time. Whereas with a bookie, you bet on the outcome with fixed odds. Bookie lines may shift, but your bet will be locked in and unable to appreciate in value. I'm not sure why bookies haven't implemented this share model, maybe its needlessly com…

Bookies have implemented this. Betting exchanges have existed for over a decade now, you can lay off your bets to lock in a profit if the odds have moved. Even 'traditional' bookies offer various forms of cashing out a bet.

Re: The story of Augur, an Ethereum prediction market

#47

Post by jsutton » Tue, Oct 16, 2018, 6:22 PM UTC

repomies6999 wrote: post #20

mattlondon wrote: post #14

Genuine question, why is this called a "prediction market" and not just a gambling exchange? As far as I can tell, this is no different from BetFair et al who let punters bet against each other on the outcome of the next football match? (apart from "oooh! blockchain!" and "oooh! decentralised!") I've read a lot of articles about this over the years and seen lots of lofty words about how this will change X/the world f…

You have missed nothing. It is just another traditional business implemented "on blockchain", and as usual the blockchain here doesn't add value.

You are misinformed, at least in this case.

Re: The story of Augur, an Ethereum prediction market

#48

Post by infodroid » Tue, Oct 16, 2018, 6:35 PM UTC

mattlondon wrote: post #14

Genuine question, why is this called a "prediction market" and not just a gambling exchange? As far as I can tell, this is no different from BetFair et al who let punters bet against each other on the outcome of the next football match? (apart from "oooh! blockchain!" and "oooh! decentralised!") I've read a lot of articles about this over the years and seen lots of lofty words about how this will change X/the world f…

Why couldn't you just fucking google it?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prediction_market

Your inane rant disguised as a question doesn't add anything to the discussion.

Re: The story of Augur, an Ethereum prediction market

#49

Post by DennisP » Tue, Oct 16, 2018, 9:45 PM UTC

adawes wrote: post #31

mattlondon wrote: post #14

Genuine question, why is this called a "prediction market" and not just a gambling exchange? As far as I can tell, this is no different from BetFair et al who let punters bet against each other on the outcome of the next football match? (apart from "oooh! blockchain!" and "oooh! decentralised!") I've read a lot of articles about this over the years and seen lots of lofty words about how this will change X/the world f…

Prediction markets are a form of gambling, but there is a key difference; whilst the purpose of traditional gambling markets is entertainment, the purpose of a prediction market is information discovery. Some prediction markets can even be subsidised in order to incentivise participants, where the house (ie the entity running the market) expects to lose money in exchange for the information that the market is reveali…

From the IEM's FAQ:

"The IEM is operated for research and teaching purposes. All interested participants world-wide can trade in our political markets. Other markets--such as the earnings and returns markets--are open only to academic traders."

"Trading accounts can be opened for $5 to $500."

These constraints are presumably why they got their no-action letter from the CFTC. If there's demand for markets other than political markets, or for larger accounts, then there's demand for a decentralized prediction market.

Re: The story of Augur, an Ethereum prediction market

#50

Post by coralreef » Tue, Oct 16, 2018, 10:03 PM UTC

joosters wrote: post #46

coralreef wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually from what I can tell, it is a more liquid model. In Augur you buy shares of an outcome, and the value of those shares can change day to day, and you can sell at any time. Whereas with a bookie, you bet on the outcome with fixed odds. Bookie lines may shift, but your bet will be locked in and unable to appreciate in value. I'm not sure why bookies haven't implemented this share model, maybe its needlessly com…

Bookies have implemented this. Betting exchanges have existed for over a decade now, you can lay off your bets to lock in a profit if the odds have moved. Even 'traditional' bookies offer various forms of cashing out a bet.

Could you name some of these exchanges? One problem is that they may not service certain jurisdictions as well.