Hello again,
Happy to see that this thread has revived. I've made a lot of progress since the project first started, for example I'm nearly certain we can add Scaled claims (which take a scalar rather than boolean value). Instead of voting .5 for incoherence, voters pick an extreme (max or min, chosen as least-frequent choice within that maturation-ballot [this prevents any possible strategic upward or downward bias]) which robs the author of money in the same way. Check the new excel for my thoughts, the R consensus-code is already written (but I have yet to do an example-test).
First and foremost I would like to thank gwern from the bottom of my heart, for defending the project while someone else submitted it to ycombinator last weekend. I was on vacation and had only my phone, and it would have been tragic if an unexpected publicity-event had gone to waste because no knowledgeable people were participating in the conversation.
Thank you gwern!
A lot of solutions are proposed for PMs but all lack volume. Why no solution is proposed using bitcoin which has already a lot of volume and users? Will a solution like side-chains help to go in and out without liquidity concerns?
In
https://github.com/psztorc/Truthcoin/raw/master/docs/1_Purpose.pdf I attempt to explain why Truthcoin would succeed where previous PM attempts have failed.
I actually designed Truthcoin as a side-chain (without knowing the name, and just hoping that someone else would figure out how to make one), so of course side-chains would be great. It looks like, instead of that ideal scenario, I may be forced to use my least-ideal scenario (at first), what I call "BothCoin", which is basically a true altcoin that, in addition to being spent like Bitcoin, can be spent on PM-trades. Its my least-desired plan, but you can't test something that doesn't exist.
Some ideas we had to at least kind of decentralize it:
1. We will publish a hash of every event description combined with the outcome "true" or "false" and sign the real outcome. Thus we can build up reputations and predictions can be placed completely independent.
2. With No. 1 bet amounts can be stored in a 2 out of 3 multi sign address. That would make it impossible for the central PM to run away with the money - just to choose the winning side. (of course this is only a little bit better, since the central PM could act as a bettor as well)
3. We though as well about finding a consensus by the user (to have less work by resolving events)
One solution would be that both sides put 10% more money in a multi-sign address. No the person that looses the bet can admit the loss and sign the transaction to the winner but he gets back the 10%. If none of both admits to be the looser we sign a transaction to the winner but take the 10% of the looser.
We think combining 1. and 2. and having multiple independent entities as described in 1. with a good track recored and betting on a consensus of these would be a good solution as well?
I also came up exactly with idea 3, its not as good as you might think, because in Nash Equilibrium you still need an incorruptible way of determining outcomes (for the holdouts [even if it were never be used on-path, the game theory requires that the off-path reasoning be persuasive]). One holdout can cause you to have to research the issue, and once you've done that, it costs nothing to re-use that research for all other traders. So a losing trader can easily force the administrator to research his claim, if the administrator is not prepared for the possibility that he will be required to research ALL claims, than this can be gamed strategically.
The only way you can lighten that load is if you can actually pull some weight, you see?
2, as you say, won't really work. gwern has already perfectly explained the 'exit scam', which is yet another reason why I went with reputation-tokens (you want to keep them pristine so that you can sell them, allowing for 'non-scam exit').
1 is, I think, consequentially the same as 2, is it not?
Although I'm
very happy to see all of this interest,
I'm greatly concerned that many people are duplicating work...for example SchellingCoin, which won't work, contains many ideas I had over two years ago. I'm sad to see other people spending their time when I did all of this work and released it to the internet for free. Another cause for sadness is the attitude of many developers, who say "econ people shouldnt mess around with crypto they dont understand", and yet when the tables are turned these devs feel comfortable messing with econ that they dont understand.
I am also uncomfortable with the Silicon Valley style of "just publish whatever you're thinking, even if it sucks". I have basically the opposite style and feel a lot of pressure to rush things out.
