Augur - a decentralized prediction market platform

[augurproject]

[Updated 3/26/2016] We're proud to announce that Augur has officially entered beta testing! The beta test is open to everyone, and nothing is more valuable to us at this point than blunt, detailed user feedback, so please check it out at https://augur.net.

Augur is a decentralized prediction market platform built on Ethereum.  Please visit http://www.augur.org to learn more!

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[TonyT]

Best of luck.  My only small complaint is that the Augur website, powered by simple machines forum, looks exactly like the Bitcoin Forum, which is somewhat confusing.  Best if you change the design layout a bit so not to give the impression it is part and parcel with this forum.

TonyT

[TonyT]

I read the paper quickly.  What Augur seems to be is:

1.  A prediction market, using bitcoin as the medium of exchange, but also allowing you to use other currencies, including it seems, Truthcoin, and, for stability (ironically!?) the US dollar

2.  using Augur one can avoid the numerous anti-gambling laws that apply to prediction markets (sad but true, as I am a fan of prediction markets; iPredict in New Zealand is one such example)

3.  using Augur you can buy or sell shares in a prediction, and it is locked in the Augur blockchain.  If your prediction comes true, then somehow (not 100% clear how) you can collect on your bet, if: (i) a super-user, or users, with high "reputation", reports that the event occurred as predicted, and, (ii) once this super-user(s) (with typically many such super-users reaching a consensus) says a prediction has occurred, then the Augur blockchain is 'unlocked' and people who made bets one way or the other can collect, via the blockchain, on their bet (if they won), or, if they lost, their bitcoins/truthcoins / USD amounts are also transferred to the winners.

4.  From the OP " If such an individual is dishonest, they are punished, and if they tell the truth, their reputation increases (this is discovered via principal component analysis)." - what is the punishment?  A hit in their Reputation points?  I suppose so.

Can any reader confirm the above?

TonyT

[augurproject]

Hey Tony,

Appreciate your interest!  Your summary is pretty spot on, I'll clarify a few things:

1.  Exactly!  As for the US dollar part, the way it would work is as follows: you buy some bitcoin, then when you want to use the Augur platform you can sidechain the bitcoin over directly.  The problem with this is if we make a prediction on something that happens a year from now, we may not want to keep our money wagered in bitcoin that entire time.  In this scenario what would be best is if we could hold USD, unfortunately there is no cryptocurrency-usd, however we can convert our money into a seigniorage-based coin.  Basically, if more people use the coin, supply goes up, so as to maintain par value with the USD.  One example of this is Nubits.

2.  No comment.

3.  This is more or less correct, with the exception that anyone can be a reporter on outcomes, not just an elite group of super users/oracles.  The more accurate you are, the more your reports are weighted.

4.  Yep, their reputation points take a hit. 

[Alex_crypto]

Have you considered using Factom for Augur?

How are you finding this project?

[dansmith]

Would it be possible to create a data feed in Augur with e.g. an hourly fiat exchange rate update?

[Heads-Tails]

Why Augur chose Ethereum as the development environment for its 'decentralized prediction market platform'
 
http://www.augur.net/blog/why-ethereum

https://blog.ethereum.org/

[Heads-Tails]

SF Bitcoin Devs Seminar:  Using Serpent on Augur to Build Prediction Markets

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7JVcAgP1nw

Published on Feb 11, 2015
Jack Peterson & Joey Krug present the details of how they're implementing a decentralized PM, why Bitcoin is the best fuel for a decentralized PM, and how (+why) they are using Serpent to do it.
http://www.augur.net/

[dansmith]

Would it be possible to create a data feed in Augur with e.g. an hourly fiat exchange rate update?

[qwep]

This is some what close to the binary markets, it was a great a idea, i wish we could have it for btc too, is anyone building something like this for btc at the moment?

[Giulio Prisco]

Just found out about Augur, very very cool. I started some threads on this forum to inquire about Bitcoin prediction market development projects, but didn't find anything really wow. This is the most promising project that I have seen so far.

[hashman]

This is hugely important work, thanks for your efforts!

Like many brilliant ideas around these parts, I am left wondering "where is the implementation?"

I think you will find that determining "the truth" or in the language of your whitepaper "accurate reporting" is the crux of the biscuit.  I see from your blog you are tackling this head on and moving past the days of suggesting that "Googling" is somehow part of the solution.  if we could trust a predetermined third party to report on outcomes we wouldn't need your project. 

I think you will find that some use of proof of coin holdings by reporters for trust of event reporting is a good way to go.

You will also need to make a decent analysis of the monetary risk of corruption of reporting source (I guess people are using the name oracle for this which I don't like but hey that's pretty typical of language).  In other words, if the bids and asks on a given prediction market really start to heat up and the amount of BTC at stake starts to reach some function of the BTC that is being held and counted in use of reporting the event outcome, the reliability of this market is compromised. 

So sorry, just more ideas here, not the implementations you would like. 

Keep up the good work!  I have money riding on your success

 

[Heads-Tails]

"Augur Bets on Bright Future for Blockchain Prediction Markets"

http://www.coindesk.com/augur-future-blockchain-prediction-market/


The article w/ annotations by Joey Krug:

http://genius.com/4974142/Pete-rizzo-augur-bets-on-bright-future-for-blockchain-prediction-markets/His-latest-idea

[Heads-Tails]

Introducing the Team Building A Decentralized Prediction Market

"Tony Sakich, Augur's Director of Marketing introduces both Lead Software Developers for Augur, Joey Krug & Dr. Jack Peterson.  

Joey and Jack co-wrote the Augur White Paper and are a part of the brilliant development team currently working for Augur."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64ArAtF0flw

[fuznutts]

"Augur Bets on Bright Future for Blockchain Prediction Markets"

http://www.coindesk.com/augur-future-blockchain-prediction-market/


The article w/ annotations by Joey Krug:

http://genius.com/4974142/Pete-rizzo-augur-bets-on-bright-future-for-blockchain-prediction-markets/His-latest-idea

Are your block times under 10 seconds or do you still depend on the slower and older algos?

[joeykrug447]

Would it be possible to create a data feed in Augur with e.g. an hourly fiat exchange rate update?

Seems I don't have the email from my old 2011 account anymore & thus can't recover the password :/  Anyway,

Yep --- you'd basically create a branch with a quick reporting period

Regarding block times, currently looking at ~12 seconds.

[joeykrug447]

This is some what close to the binary markets, it was a great a idea, i wish we could have it for btc too, is anyone building something like this for btc at the moment?

We'll allow you to use sidechained Bitcoin once sidechains are released. 

[joeykrug447]

This is hugely important work, thanks for your efforts!

Like many brilliant ideas around these parts, I am left wondering "where is the implementation?"

I think you will find that determining "the truth" or in the language of your whitepaper "accurate reporting" is the crux of the biscuit.  I see from your blog you are tackling this head on and moving past the days of suggesting that "Googling" is somehow part of the solution.  if we could trust a predetermined third party to report on outcomes we wouldn't need your project. 

I think you will find that some use of proof of coin holdings by reporters for trust of event reporting is a good way to go.

You will also need to make a decent analysis of the monetary risk of corruption of reporting source (I guess people are using the name oracle for this which I don't like but hey that's pretty typical of language).  In other words, if the bids and asks on a given prediction market really start to heat up and the amount of BTC at stake starts to reach some function of the BTC that is being held and counted in use of reporting the event outcome, the reliability of this market is compromised. 

So sorry, just more ideas here, not the implementations you would like. 

Keep up the good work!  I have money riding on your success

You're exactly right that it's the crux of the biscuit (fellow biscuit lover here btw)! 

There's been a lot of discussion and work done on risks of corruption by Vitalik Buterin (his p+epsilon posts) and Paul Sztorc (Truthcoin whitepaper and forum discussions).  I think it'd be interesting to do some BAR (Byzantine, Altruistic, Rational) analysis on our system's reporting aspects.  Yeah, you're right on the BTC at stake part; the problem starts to appear when the BTC at stake in a market is > value of all reputation used for reporting.

Thank you, just finished a major codebase refactoring & put a bunch of our contracts on ethereum blockchain so I'm quite excited too!

[Heads-Tails]

"We recently put almost all of Augur's contracts on chain and last night made
our first live function call on Ethereum's Frontier testnet. "

http://www.augur.net/blog/augur-creates-first-on-chain-event

[augurproject]

We just made this announcement and wanted to share it here.

We've now gotten all augur contracts on the live Ethereum testnet. All function calls have been tested (albeit naively, with more testing ongoing) and confirmed working. Our code is now open source, lots of documentation & a UI will be coming soon.

https://github.com/AugurProject/Augur-core