PredictX: Prediction Markets for DeFi
PredictX is a DeFi protocol that brings prediction markets to DeFi. Centered on automated liquidity and precisely designed incentives, PredictX ensures the best liquidity across all markets while allowing users to win off their predictions on a user-friendly platform.

Opportunities in the Existing Market:
Prediction markets are online platforms where individuals can set a price on the realization of a future event. These markets encompass a wide range of activities and events from sports betting, politics, to price predictions on stocks like TSLA, and even other events like albums releases, IPO’s, etc. For the average user or trader, a prediction market is an opportunity to make a profit off of the behavior of an event or asset. Sports betting a $200B+ industry is the most popular application of prediction markets, but there are also social markets like politics and global futures markets that are also in the several billions of dollars.

Challenges with Centralized Prediction Markets:
However, existing markets are highly centralized since centralized gatekeepers like sportsbooks, online betting platforms or applications exercise full control over what markets are offered along with having huge fees (3–10%) involved with each transaction. These centralized gatekeepers dominate the market and extract tons of value from the ecosystem. For example the best known prediction market for political betting, PredictIt, charges a 10% fee for all winnings. These fees make it almost impossible for users to consistently win on their predictions. Not only do centralized players charge exorbitant fees but they are also disincentivized to innovate on a model in which they profit enormously off the user. As a result, they focus their efforts on constantly acquiring new users to replenish the dying ecosystem.

Problems with Existing Decentralized Prediction Markets:
Plagued by high gas fees, minimal liquidity and poor UI, decentralized platforms like Augur and Polymarket among others have not attracted the volume like that of their centralized counterparts. A big part of this stems from the lack of liquidity, lack of decentralization (needing deposit and withdrawals), and lack of incentives. Incentives for users should be much higher in a decentralized model since there is no centralized middleman collecting massive fees for each transaction. The incentive design for PredictX will play a key role in maximizing the liquidity for markets and optimizing the incentives for all participants.

PredictX:
Inspired by decentralized prediction market protocols like Augur and Catnip, PredictX is the first DeFi protocol to fully integrate prediction markets on a decentralized platform where users can make predictions with speed and ease. PredictX prioritizes (1) the user experience (2) maximizing liquidity. Our end goal is to create a user-friendly prediction markets platform powered by a truly decentralized protocol that is easily integrated with other DeFi platforms and other blockchains like Polkadot. This means non-custodial, not centralized and open to everyone.

Source

[Is it worth buying XEMs to get their new blockchain business coin 1:1?]

In December this year, NEM is launching the Symbol public blockchain. By opting-in, XEM holders will obtain an XYM balance equal to that of their XEM balance at the time of the Snapshot.


$XEM is currently ranked 22 in CMC.



Is it worth buying XEMs to get their new blockchain business coin 1:1?

Blockchain has always been recognized because of its stability, trustless system, etc. and it provides assistance on the accounting, quality assurance side, etc. through its smart contracts and the technology itself for the businesses. But how come a lot of businesses are still not utilizing blockchain like how some of the big guns already are - Walmart, Visa, etc.

There's a private and compliant-ready blockchain that offers enterprises a real blockchain, while also using zero-knowledge technology to bring privacy to workflows that involve end-users. Existing major enterprise solutions are neither distributed (Hyperledger + Corda) nor have a focus on privacy. There is little to no progress here and these solutions are essentially just glorified databases.

Will this be enough for small businesses and big corporations to start using blockchain, and not shy away from this technology? If not, what does it take to make it happen?

I wonder if this is what will help scale blockchain up to the next level. AVA is using two key innovations that make repeated sub-sampling a perfect method to speed up consensus without compromises. One is in the insight that the random sampling + sub-sampling can be applied to consensus in permissionless systems. The second one, is mathematical proof that it works in such systems.
https://medium.com/avalabs/ava-is-scalable-sampling-3adc2601bfa6


Thoughts?