If you read the article, it says that "The smart contracts and UI to support DAO voting are currently in active development, with the smart contracts scheduled for audit by the end of November, 2021", so I guess it's not up-to-date. If you check on Augur's Discord, as of Feb there is no DAO yet. Some users calls it dead as well - not a lot to be optimistic about unfortunately
Hi Tao! Austin from Manifold here. Thanks for writing this up -- I think you did a great job explaining the benefits of a decentralized oracle system! I'm personally very interested in ways to adjudicate resolutions beyond "creator decides", though I don't speak for all of Manifold; James and Stephen lean more towards caveat emptor as where the buck stops. There may be some middle ground here, eg where the default is "creator decides" but creators can delegate to the community oracle.
We'd definitely like to get Manifold to a place where our money feels "real" as well. Crypto is the most obvious solution, but every crypto implementation so far fails the "easy to use" test of the Alexander cube. Polymarket blocks US users; every crypto prediction market requires you to figure out how to onboard money into a personal wallet (FTX is the exception, but they have very few markets atm). I think a managed wallet might be the answer (https://future.a16z.com/missing-link-web2-web3-custody-wallets/) but we have a few other ideas in this space such as cash-prize tournaments and charity prediction markets.
Finally: it seems like Polymarket's markets are no longer resolved by the platform, but rather use the decentralized UMA oracle? Nuno goes more in-depth here: https://forecasting.substack.com/p/2022-02?s=r . It's quite exciting, and I'm tempted to see if a similar mechanism could work for us as well!
Hi Austin, thank you for the detailed answer! This is really exciting for Manifold, I am looking forward to see where it goes, and will definitely look out for subsequent discussion on the Discord server.
Many people (including Nuno on Twitter) indeed pointed out that Polymarket switched to UMA. I have to read about it, so the article you linked to is much appreciated!
"decentralized UMA oracle" — the problem is this is less decentralization and more putting a committee in charge. The committee is the holders of the token.
Our creator-resolved markets actually allow a diversity of opinions, which is desirable. I'm very against these alternatives and prefer to evangelize the benefits creator-resolved markets.
Every other prediction market platform has gotten it wrong so far in part because they don't really believe in decentralization. ("But what if someone resolves a question in a way I don't agree with?" they ask. Tough nuggs.)
Trying to form and enforce a consensus on every question is decisively mid-wit. That's not how progress is made.
Hm, I don't think we disagree much; really I think some kind of UMA or committee should be the ultimate backing authority on a creator-resolved market. This is akin to how 99 percent of all transactions are settled between participants IRL; but individuals can always go to a court/jury to seek redress for particularly bad resolution.
I'm not sure if you missed it, but that seems to be what UMA encourages too - very few resolutions should actually go to token holders.
Also as a practical matter - the mob/committee/community is always actually in charge, at the end of the day. See the story of Justin Sun and Steem: https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/03/23/legitimacy.html It's better to formalize this than to ignore it and have it backfire later.
I was unaware Augur had died. But just checking their site, I see that 2 hours ago they made what might be their final blog post:
https://www.augur.net/blog/augurdao/
If you read the article, it says that "The smart contracts and UI to support DAO voting are currently in active development, with the smart contracts scheduled for audit by the end of November, 2021", so I guess it's not up-to-date. If you check on Augur's Discord, as of Feb there is no DAO yet. Some users calls it dead as well - not a lot to be optimistic about unfortunately
The time still reads as "2 hours ago" on that blog post, so maybe it was hardcoded. Very unusual for a software site.
Yep, I got the same timestamp, that's pretty weird
I can confirm that that post has been "2 hours old" for months now.
Hi Tao! Austin from Manifold here. Thanks for writing this up -- I think you did a great job explaining the benefits of a decentralized oracle system! I'm personally very interested in ways to adjudicate resolutions beyond "creator decides", though I don't speak for all of Manifold; James and Stephen lean more towards caveat emptor as where the buck stops. There may be some middle ground here, eg where the default is "creator decides" but creators can delegate to the community oracle.
We'd definitely like to get Manifold to a place where our money feels "real" as well. Crypto is the most obvious solution, but every crypto implementation so far fails the "easy to use" test of the Alexander cube. Polymarket blocks US users; every crypto prediction market requires you to figure out how to onboard money into a personal wallet (FTX is the exception, but they have very few markets atm). I think a managed wallet might be the answer (https://future.a16z.com/missing-link-web2-web3-custody-wallets/) but we have a few other ideas in this space such as cash-prize tournaments and charity prediction markets.
Finally: it seems like Polymarket's markets are no longer resolved by the platform, but rather use the decentralized UMA oracle? Nuno goes more in-depth here: https://forecasting.substack.com/p/2022-02?s=r . It's quite exciting, and I'm tempted to see if a similar mechanism could work for us as well!
Hi Austin, thank you for the detailed answer! This is really exciting for Manifold, I am looking forward to see where it goes, and will definitely look out for subsequent discussion on the Discord server.
Many people (including Nuno on Twitter) indeed pointed out that Polymarket switched to UMA. I have to read about it, so the article you linked to is much appreciated!
"decentralized UMA oracle" — the problem is this is less decentralization and more putting a committee in charge. The committee is the holders of the token.
Our creator-resolved markets actually allow a diversity of opinions, which is desirable. I'm very against these alternatives and prefer to evangelize the benefits creator-resolved markets.
Every other prediction market platform has gotten it wrong so far in part because they don't really believe in decentralization. ("But what if someone resolves a question in a way I don't agree with?" they ask. Tough nuggs.)
Trying to form and enforce a consensus on every question is decisively mid-wit. That's not how progress is made.
Hm, I don't think we disagree much; really I think some kind of UMA or committee should be the ultimate backing authority on a creator-resolved market. This is akin to how 99 percent of all transactions are settled between participants IRL; but individuals can always go to a court/jury to seek redress for particularly bad resolution.
I'm not sure if you missed it, but that seems to be what UMA encourages too - very few resolutions should actually go to token holders.
Also as a practical matter - the mob/committee/community is always actually in charge, at the end of the day. See the story of Justin Sun and Steem: https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/03/23/legitimacy.html It's better to formalize this than to ignore it and have it backfire later.
(Also, there's some more article discussion on our Discord: https://discord.com/channels/915138780216823849/916582360131182613/949846092781064222)