How Augur Works [video]

augur.net

40 points·natrius··5 comments

I was unable to view the video, but after exploring the site found that this is a startup seeking to monetize prediction markets. This seems to me to be a worthwhile idea that hasn't been tried before. With the demise of intrade.com, their only competition seems to be PredictIt out of New Zealand. (Iowa Electronic Markets appears to be a research and teaching tool rather than a for-profit enterpise.)

Here are two of their main threats:

(1) Fraud. This may have taken down intrade.com and took down the Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox. One start-up that successfully avoided this problem is PayPal.

(2) Being shut down by the government as an illegal gambling site. They need to secure a no-action letter from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. (See the Wikipedia article on PredictIt.)

I plan to follow Augur with interest and wish them every success.

Augur's key differentiator is that it's decentralized. It runs on Ethereum, a programmable blockchain. There is nothing to shut down: it runs on thousands of computers around the world.

Prediction markets are a well-defined interaction between people. Blockchain technology lets us build anything in that category with near-zero transaction costs and huge censorship resilience.

How do I view the market? All I could find was the video and testimonials on the main site.

Augur is currently pre-alpha, and built on top of Ethereum, which is pre-beta. However, everything's developed in the open, so you're welcome to get set up and see how things look. Email me if you run into any roadblocks. niran@niran.org.

https://github.com/AugurProject/augur-client

more fun than going to the bookies?

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