2022/11/05 Augurもっとリサーチ
To understand Augur better, I read an article titled "What is Augur? (REP) | Kraken." It mentioned that there used to be competition with Gnosis, but it seems that Augur is no longer involved in prediction markets. I also read about Gnosis in the article "What is Gnosis? (GNO) | Kraken." Augur allows users to create prediction markets on various topics. There are two types of markets, such as "Will Alice win X election?" with "yes" and "no" options, and "Who will win X election?" with five candidates as options.
I learned that Augur relies on reporting nodes, and users who report receive tokens as incentives. This means that the reporting oracle needs to function properly for the prediction market to work effectively.
It's interesting to note that Augur's contracts were compared to binary options by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. This led to Augur being placed under its jurisdiction. However, Augur's decentralized design allows it to avoid some regulatory challenges. Joseph Krug, one of the developers, mentioned that it could shift legal responsibility for the platform.
I came across an article titled "This new blockchain-based betting platform could cause Napster-size legal headaches," which discussed the creation of an Assassination Market. It highlighted the potential legal issues associated with such a platform. I also found out that one of the co-founders of Augur, Joey Krug, is also the co-chief investment officer of Pantera Capital. He has been involved in various projects, including launching a Bitcoin club in school and convincing local businesses in Claremont to accept cryptocurrencies. Around the same time, a research team at Princeton University published a influential paper on decentralizing prediction markets and order books. This paper, titled "On Decentralizing Prediction Markets and Order Books," caught Krug's attention. Krug and his friends, Jeremy Gardner and Jack Peterson, collaborated on a project called TruthCoin, which aimed to incentivize accurate predictions using an improved version of the Bitcoin blockchain. However, Vitalik Buterin, who was working on the launch of Ethereum, reached out to Krug and explained the advantages of Ethereum's smart contracts, which allowed for more sophisticated instructions between bettors. Augur conducted the first ICO on the Ethereum blockchain to raise funds. The Forecast Foundation sold and distributed 11,000 REP tokens, with 80% going to the public, 16% to the Augur founding team (including Buterin), and 4% to support the foundation. The ICO raised approximately $5.2 million by selling over 1 million Ether tokens and 12,000 Bitcoins. Currently, these tokens are worth nearly 500 million yen.
It's worth mentioning that Gnosis, another project, saw its value increase by more than double after Augur's ICO.
In the Augur ecosystem, "reporters" play a crucial role in determining the outcome of events. They are required to stake REP (Reputation) tokens. If reporters reach a consensus and their reports are accurate, they receive a small portion of the protocol's fees, and their REP tokens remain intact.
Considering the future of governance, there is a perspective on whether prediction markets could play a significant role. I found an article titled "Is Prediction Market the Future of Governance," which discussed Gnosis's Conditional Tokens. It made me believe that this could be the future, and I would like to find a way to integrate it somehow.