[Concept] Political Futures

[Ryoting]

I have been working with a solidity developer on a concept for a Political Futures market using smart contracts. Essentially, a 'stock market' for political predictions. Unlike Augur or any other 'prediction platform' this would be narrowed to fit political futures specifically, and not necessarily tokenized - as it would just be operated using ETH & smart contracts.

There are some fairly good examples of this concept already functioning in the fiat world, but I've spoken with the big ones, and they're uninterested in the crypto space.

Our developer has a fair amount of code already on github for a proof-of-concept which he is working on moving to testnet, and we've got the methods down for scraping the results data that bets would ultimately be based on. (poll averaging site)

I am interested in hearing ideas, or from web developers or potential investors. I have a fair amount of knowledge when it comes to these markets, as I've been using them myself for years, but I'd love to hear thoughts & opinions on how this could be made better, as well as gauging general interest. Personally I think it could be one of the first legitimate smart contract 'games' that isn't just a glorified ponzi. More than that, the market itself could eventually be used as a polling & prediction model.

Anyway, let me know if you have questions.

[kittucrypt]

What will be the futures drawn upon? There aren't many political events that will make this as a continuous market. Moreover, this seems to be more of a binary option - wherein the final outcome is binary - rather than a futures contract. Can you elaborate more?

[Ryoting]

What will be the futures drawn upon? There aren't many political events that will make this as a continuous market. Moreover, this seems to be more of a binary option - wherein the final outcome is binary - rather than a futures contract. Can you elaborate more?

The futures markets are actually rather robust, in their existing form. There are longer-term plays such as Presidential/Congressional/International elections, but there are also shorter term events such as Presidential approval, Congressional Approval, direction of country (Positive/Negative), as well as daily Gallup ratings - most of which are updated daily/weekly.

One of the sites that currently does this (fiat only), Predict It, has 50+ active markets at most any given time.

Example:



And like in the example,  within each category there are several possible options one could wager on. Their method is that the winning choice pays $1, losers pay $0, and options can be sold numerous times with 'No' prices balancing 'Yes' prices.

There are also other potential markets based on events, such as 'Assault weapons ban by end of 2018?', or 'Presidential tweets between [date range]', and issues that pop up during various news cycles.

With a lot of the potential markets the results aren't specifically binary since, like in the above picture, you have several potential ranges that polling can fall under. Most of this data can be pulled from trusted polling aggregaters (RCP), and set against the contract using Oraclize It.

[kittucrypt]

Range of possible outcomes doesn't change the underlying wagering mechanism. So let's say you talk about tweets from president. How will the future be structured? If you say the future will be based on number of tweets by president. OK..in that case no one would sell this future as the count can never go down.

In all of your cases above, the outcome has to be binary in order to make money. For example, if you say tweets in next 24 hours - 1-2 - Yes/No, another one could be 3-5 - Yes/No...etc. Even if you count the 1-2,3-5,5-10 as separate outcomes of same event and not a different event, it will be spread betting principle.

I am not saying political marketplace can't exist. Just that it will be more like a binary option/wager/spread bet rather than a futures market.

Your idea to clone Predicit for crypto can be done, though not sure how many people will be interested in exclusive such space.

[Ryoting]

Range of possible outcomes doesn't change the underlying wagering mechanism. So let's say you talk about tweets from president. How will the future be structured? If you say the future will be based on number of tweets by president. OK..in that case no one would sell this future as the count can never go down.

In all of your cases above, the outcome has to be binary in order to make money. For example, if you say tweets in next 24 hours - 1-2 - Yes/No, another one could be 3-5 - Yes/No...etc. Even if you count the 1-2,3-5,5-10 as separate outcomes of same event and not a different event, it will be spread betting principle.

I am not saying political marketplace can't exist. Just that it will be more like a binary option/wager/spread bet rather than a futures market.

Your idea to clone Predicit for crypto can be done, though not sure how many people will be interested in exclusive such space.

Right. The outcomes would be based on certain time frames. PI generally has the rules of any market stated beforehand.

I'm not necessarily looking to clone PredictIt, but that is definitely the best example I could find. As a previous user of those markets I feel like a lot of the issues they have are with being pegged to the dollar & with the cost of withdraws. Both of which can be handled more efficiently using Ethereum. I'm also not sure of the interest, which is why I'm trying to gauge that beforehand. I know that millions are wagered on PI, but it is mostly geared towards US players. I simply don't know how many people, internationally, would be interested in this sort of prediction exchange.

[kittucrypt]

Range of possible outcomes doesn't change the underlying wagering mechanism. So let's say you talk about tweets from president. How will the future be structured? If you say the future will be based on number of tweets by president. OK..in that case no one would sell this future as the count can never go down.

In all of your cases above, the outcome has to be binary in order to make money. For example, if you say tweets in next 24 hours - 1-2 - Yes/No, another one could be 3-5 - Yes/No...etc. Even if you count the 1-2,3-5,5-10 as separate outcomes of same event and not a different event, it will be spread betting principle.

I am not saying political marketplace can't exist. Just that it will be more like a binary option/wager/spread bet rather than a futures market.

Your idea to clone Predicit for crypto can be done, though not sure how many people will be interested in exclusive such space.

Right. The outcomes would be based on certain time frames. PI generally has the rules of any market stated beforehand.

I'm not necessarily looking to clone PredictIt, but that is definitely the best example I could find. As a previous user of those markets I feel like a lot of the issues they have are with being pegged to the dollar & with the cost of withdraws. Both of which can be handled more efficiently using Ethereum. I'm also not sure of the interest, which is why I'm trying to gauge that beforehand. I know that millions are wagered on PI, but it is mostly geared towards US players. I simply don't know how many people, internationally, would be interested in this sort of prediction exchange.

The cost of setting up such a site isn't huge, especially because you say that you already have someone developing the smart contract? What's stopping you from launching the site as it is?

[Ryoting]

The cost of setting up such a site isn't huge, especially because you say that you already have someone developing the smart contract? What's stopping you from launching the site as it is?

Mostly worrying about design. I don't have a creative bone in my body; I trade, do fundamental analysis for a paid group & youtube, and occasionally come up with project ideas. I've helped a few projects as a volunteer, but mostly with moderating telegram/discord, problem-solving issues with the platform, etc.

I'm just not a web developer, though. I'm trying to feel out the more talented people in our Discord to see if any web developers would be interested in working on it with us, but also wanted to try here because it's a much larger pool to pull talent from.

Frankly, I'm mostly looking to work my tail off in whatever way I can for the smallest slice of this pie, if it succeeds. Fully aware that the coder & web developer are much more necessary to the project than I am, for coming up with an idea & scraping poll data.