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Misplaced hype. “Today, Augur had 30 active users and 123 transactions in the last 24 hours. The market cap is roughly $269.2 million. That means that each act

Misplaced hype. “Today, Augur had 30 active users and 123 transactions in the last 24 hours. The market cap is roughly $269.2 million. That means that each active user is now worth roughly $9 million.” https://mobile.twitter.com/lawmaster/status/1027188396291235840 https://mobile.twitter.com/lawmaster/status/1027188396291235...

jrockway 8y ago
But if they scale that up to 1 billion users, their company will be worth 9000 trillion dollars. Sign me up!11!
snarf21 8y ago
Yeah, and the only real crazy stuff that happened was people put up "death" or "assassination" contracts. Famous person X will die in 2018.... The problem with decentralized betting like this is who is the authority that determines who the winner is. External and honest oracles are hard.
- DennisP 8y ago
  Solving that problem is pretty much Augur's claim to fame. It's a combination of outcome reports by randomly-selected REP holders, possible disputes by bettors who post a bond and trigger a larger group of REP holders, and (after several escalating rounds of that) a potential fork of the whole thing on the theory that the version of REP that reports the truth will have more market value. (I think in that case REP holders have to choose which fork they'll migrate to.) Whether this actually works over the long haul, we'll have to see, but it's a pretty interesting experiment.
  - cryptobeanbaby 8y ago
    It looks like Augur has no way to validate the "REP holders" though? This means a sybil attack can be launched by anyone behind the Augur project (assuming they set aside large reserves of REP for themselves, how would anyone know?), or anyone who acquired thousands of ETH in the presale for $0.50USD, or anyone with excessive capital can attack any Augur "prediction" and manipulate the outcome in their favor. Augur essentially gives total power to manipulate "truth" though tokens / capital. (edit, downvoting to suppress information? please explain why this post is wrong)
    - DennisP 8y ago
      They make no attempt to validate individuals. The more REP you have, the more influence you have. It's not exactly a sybil attack since you can't add influence without cost. I was about to say they do depend on a REP-weighted majority attempting to maximize the amount and value of the REP they hold. But that's not actually true since the forking mechanism lets a significant minority fork off in their own direction. This is the final backstop that (theoretically) prevents outcome manipulation by a majority REP holder; the general public can just switch to the fork that told the truth. On that fork, the liars will no longer hold REP. This would be a big deal but it shouldn't happen often, since the credible threat helps dissuade liars in the first place; they'll lose money and fail anyway. But I don't know what happens to the ETH at stake in this scenario. (Btw it wasn't me downvoting, these are good questions. I'm not with Augur and don't even hold REP. Have an upvote.)
- camjohnson26 8y ago
  There was maybe one active assassination market and it didn't even have that much interest. The world cup and the current cryptocurrency markets were where most of the bets happened.
MusaTheRedGuard 8y ago
Sigh. Copying my comment from below: Please note that an "active user" is an active address( i.e one that has made a bet on the platform) in the past day. This doesn't take into account users that made a bet in the past( most bets have long term horizons, >4 to 5 months) or users that have a current position but aren't betting anymore or users simply observing the markets( looking at a front end like predictions.global) Also note that active users is probably not a great metric for this application, as it's not a consumer app/ time sink thing. Money at stake is much a better metric
- berberous 8y ago
  By any metric it's a ghost town. But I think that has a lot to do with poor UX, low liquidity, etc., all of which could change as it improves. For example, you currently have to download an app to interact with Augur. There's also very few contracts, each with very little liquidity.
  - MusaTheRedGuard 8y ago
    You don't have to download an app to interact with augur: augur.casino Built on top of IPFS
    - berberous 8y ago
      Cool! So why did the main team insist upon the app approach (what's the benefit?), and what's this site doing to get around it?
      - MusaTheRedGuard 8y ago
        Decentralization. Anyone can run their own node of the software making it resistant to censorship, malicious control by the devs themselves or a third party. Augur.casino runs their own node of Augur but runs it on IPFS, allowing others to connect to it. Provides convenience if a user doesn't care about decentralization. Just btw, I'm not affiliated with augur or augur.casino or any of these projects. I just find them interesting

jrockway 8y ago

But if they scale that up to 1 billion users, their company will be worth 9000 trillion dollars. Sign me up!11!

snarf21 8y ago

Yeah, and the only real crazy stuff that happened was people put up "death" or "assassination" contracts. Famous person X will die in 2018.... The problem with decentralized betting like this is who is the authority that determines who the winner is. External and honest oracles are hard.

DennisP 8y ago
Solving that problem is pretty much Augur's claim to fame. It's a combination of outcome reports by randomly-selected REP holders, possible disputes by bettors who post a bond and trigger a larger group of REP holders, and (after several escalating rounds of that) a potential fork of the whole thing on the theory that the version of REP that reports the truth will have more market value. (I think in that case REP holders have to choose which fork they'll migrate to.) Whether this actually works over the long haul, we'll have to see, but it's a pretty interesting experiment.
- cryptobeanbaby 8y ago
  It looks like Augur has no way to validate the "REP holders" though? This means a sybil attack can be launched by anyone behind the Augur project (assuming they set aside large reserves of REP for themselves, how would anyone know?), or anyone who acquired thousands of ETH in the presale for $0.50USD, or anyone with excessive capital can attack any Augur "prediction" and manipulate the outcome in their favor. Augur essentially gives total power to manipulate "truth" though tokens / capital. (edit, downvoting to suppress information? please explain why this post is wrong)
  - DennisP 8y ago
    They make no attempt to validate individuals. The more REP you have, the more influence you have. It's not exactly a sybil attack since you can't add influence without cost. I was about to say they do depend on a REP-weighted majority attempting to maximize the amount and value of the REP they hold. But that's not actually true since the forking mechanism lets a significant minority fork off in their own direction. This is the final backstop that (theoretically) prevents outcome manipulation by a majority REP holder; the general public can just switch to the fork that told the truth. On that fork, the liars will no longer hold REP. This would be a big deal but it shouldn't happen often, since the credible threat helps dissuade liars in the first place; they'll lose money and fail anyway. But I don't know what happens to the ETH at stake in this scenario. (Btw it wasn't me downvoting, these are good questions. I'm not with Augur and don't even hold REP. Have an upvote.)
camjohnson26 8y ago
There was maybe one active assassination market and it didn't even have that much interest. The world cup and the current cryptocurrency markets were where most of the bets happened.

MusaTheRedGuard 8y ago

Sigh. Copying my comment from below: Please note that an "active user" is an active address( i.e one that has made a bet on the platform) in the past day. This doesn't take into account users that made a bet in the past( most bets have long term horizons, >4 to 5 months) or users that have a current position but aren't betting anymore or users simply observing the markets( looking at a front end like predictions.global) Also note that active users is probably not a great metric for this application, as it's not a consumer app/ time sink thing. Money at stake is much a better metric

berberous 8y ago
By any metric it's a ghost town. But I think that has a lot to do with poor UX, low liquidity, etc., all of which could change as it improves. For example, you currently have to download an app to interact with Augur. There's also very few contracts, each with very little liquidity.
- MusaTheRedGuard 8y ago
  You don't have to download an app to interact with augur: augur.casino Built on top of IPFS
  - berberous 8y ago
    Cool! So why did the main team insist upon the app approach (what's the benefit?), and what's this site doing to get around it?
    - MusaTheRedGuard 8y ago
      Decentralization. Anyone can run their own node of the software making it resistant to censorship, malicious control by the devs themselves or a third party. Augur.casino runs their own node of Augur but runs it on IPFS, allowing others to connect to it. Provides convenience if a user doesn't care about decentralization. Just btw, I'm not affiliated with augur or augur.casino or any of these projects. I just find them interesting