Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So this is a mic test, please let me know if you hear me well
so guys please let me know if you hear me well guys from my post team okay perfect perfect perfect
so yeah we are going to you know put some of our speakers on the
what's up Benjamin how's it going hey hey how you doing right all good all good
you know I'm just excited about our upcoming space so yeah nice much alive with us meeting yeah excuse me GM nice
to see everyone here and thanks for having me at GM GM GM so yeah we're
just waiting for Phil we're waiting for Dale I love Daniel you're from a
research account so yeah please just accept invitation
so feel like you know please I have us
hey let me know if you can hear me yeah Paul God perfect perfect I'll go to my
end so yeah Daniel please accepts because it's love okay yeah but. Let me put you on the scene.
GM Daniel, let me know, please.
Perfect, perfect, perfect.
I believe some listeners will jump in very very soon uh unfortunately
dino will not be able to join us so he's very very busy with the testnet preparation so wish
him all best with his testnet preparation uh yeah so guys let's start immediately i'm really happy to see all you here
actually it's kind of you know our recurring prediction markets pre-cycle there is space
um and yeah of course prediction markets are booming it's very hot topic so yeah i'm really
happy to discuss it uh with you today uh so let's start with very simple one-by-one introduction
regarding yourselves, your positions, your company,
and things you're working on.
Looking forward to discussing prediction markets,
oracles, a little bit about myself.
August is my pseudonymous kind of
name but in the space since about 2014 when 2014 it's kind of got the early stages and 2016 happened
with the dow hack and everything i'm not going to go back into history too much but lately the last
five years i've been working really hard on the prediction markets on the oracle space uh so i'm
the co-founder and the executive director at Littus Foundation. So
Littus Foundation was formed about last year, and we pitched to raise the Augur treasury. So we
figured that Augur, the state of things for Augur was not where they should have been. Augur is a
truly decentralized permissions as Oracle, and it's something that is needed inside the space.
So I was really big on trying to get it back online,
just for a public good perspective.
And there was quite a bit of dev funds left over from the initial Augur days back in the ICO.
So we raised it for the purpose of rebooting Augur in 2025,
modernizing Augur with all the learnings in the space,
and really making it the top prediction market
and Oracle in the space right now. So the top prediction market and oracle in the space
right now so looking forward to discussing prediction markets in general oracles hell
everything i got quite a few learnings and would love to get to some of the nitty-gritties of of
these topics yeah so i probably feel you're a little bit humble person and probably some of our
listeners even don't know that augur
is what i remember it has been the first iso on ethereum right uh so it made a lot of noise the
days it was the first decentralized prediction markets and yeah definitely will be really happy
to discuss some kind of stuff about uh um let's say a new life of ogre today so yeah uh phil the mic is yours please
introduce yourself sorry me again oh sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry daniel daniel yeah okay
all good yeah uh i'm daniel guys research and media lead over at Elliott Research for around three years now
from the start of the company.
So yeah, Elliott Research,
we're basically a crypto research firm.
We specialize in sort of long form research reports,
simply like technical deep dives on protocols,
and then also more like analytical performance reports
commentary, that sort of stuff.
And yeah, I think on the topic of prediction markets, we definitely covered like obviously
Polymarket and then even just personally, some published some long form reports like
MetaDAO and more of these like iterative solutions using prediction markets for some other functions.
So yeah, glad to be here and look forward to hearing
from some of the other guests
who are more actively involved in the space.
And yeah, I think we definitely look forward to working
with some prediction market projects
as the space is heating up, right?
I think you just saw Polymarket made like 100, 110M acquisition, right? So I think the space is heating up right i think you just saw um polymarket made like 100 110 m
acquisition right so i think the space is definitely heating up and that should
yeah hopefully spur um some opportunities to collaborate with these kind of projects
yeah perfect as soon as i hear someone's familiar with metadao you know what it means it means we're
going to discuss futarki a little bit at little bit today. So yeah, let's move on. Benjamin, please introduce yourself.
Hi guys, thank you so much for having me. My name is Ben White. I've been working in the space
pretty prolifically since 2022. Came in via the, I guess, I guess I was really, really excited about Web3 specifically, actually,
before we get into prediction markets, because of this idea that you could kind of connect
audiences with the things and the people and the clubs and the topics that they are passionate about in a manner that allowed the kind of the person who was responsible for that content to really own the audience, own the conversation.
And that for me was super exciting. I've worked with project in partnership with OpenSea before moving into a
role from a community, well, a creator community point of view with Rug Radio and Decrypt,
where I started to become more cognizant of what was happening in the world of prediction markets and really excited about the fact that
you can invite an audience to make predictions and, you know, encourage an incredible conversation
around any kind of topic. And typically, the outcome of that is pretty accurate, which I love,
but also it stimulates amazing discussion and conversation. And so for the last six months, I've been building Predictfully.
You can see it in the audience there,
the little white circle with the question mark P in it.
Predictfully is a prediction market, which is going to be incredibly sports specific
and launching in the next week or two on AVAX.
I will get into a little bit more about that.
I guess we can weave it into the conversation.
Needless to say, it's been a really exciting build.
We're very close to our MVP.
We're excited to be inviting people
into a beta testing group.
And I'm really excited to come in,
talk to you about, I guess,
what we've learned about prediction markets
during that time and what we're hopeful for in the future.
Yeah, perfect. Actually, now it's very interesting i will be to discuss with you benjamin you know
the use case of prediction markets for sports as soon as you know over the last um i don't know
maybe three or even five spaces a lot of guys said okay so sports betting is too over let's say overloaded so there's a very huge competition
right now with big players so no more rooms to compete with them and you know new prediction
market this should focus on some other topics so it's very curious for me to discuss that with you
because yeah you're building this field and the other thing uh another interesting thing is you're
So for me, it looks like, you know, the E-check system needs its own prediction market, isn't it?
So yeah, definitely we'll touch this topic as well.
And yeah, there's a lot more in place.
So Mitchell, please introduce yourself.
Basically got into this space, not quite as old as Phil, but around 2017, 2018, and focused mostly on trading, worked at a crypto exchange called Woo for a while, and worked on the venture side of a hedge fund called Kronos Research.
And then more recently started Sierra Money, which is a liquid yield token that we're planning to kind of, I would say, integrate into a lot of consumer apps,
prediction markets being one of them. And then in my kind of spare time, personally, I've been
quite avidly trading prediction markets and also sports betting a lot as well.
So dabbling quite a bit in the space personally, too.
Perfect. So, Mitchell, the short question for you. So which prediction markets is your favorite one? So where do you spend the most time? Where do you mostly trade?
i have been i haven't traded on polymarket much recently since then but um yeah yeah historically
it's been polymarket for prediction markets and then for sports betting it's been um shuffle uh
pinnacle uh and then some of the local ones like uh mgm that 365 fan duel draft kings those kind
of things yeah perfect yeah i just know enough life for your ex account.
I saw like you, but it was actually sued.
So yeah, definitely interesting case.
So I'll be really happy to touch it with you a little bit later.
So guys, yeah, let's start.
The rule is one and actually it's very simple.
We have a virtual discussion, so I'm going to have some, you know, topics, some questions, but as soon as someone is going to have some you know topics some questions but as soon as
someone is going to add you know a couple of remarks or you wanna just you know uh say you
agree or disagree with any of the speaker please feel free to do it uh it's not like you know a very
you know very formal discussion so yeah feel free to share your opinions anytime okay so
let's start and the first question on the floor everyone but i'm going to start with benjamin so
you know a lot of people they saw like this huge fundraising by um you know polymarket and culture
there's definitely a lot of interest, especially from the last US elections.
The question is, for a lot of time, prediction markets have been under the water.
A lot of geeks or guys who are really deep in specific topics or even academic researchers knew really much about prediction markets.
So let's say Normies didn't care much about the market culture or whatever.
So for now, what's your feeling? In what kind of stage of the market adoption on this curve of
market adoption we are? We're still very very very early or you see prediction markets are
already here it's like i don't know uh something where retail is going to be unboarded and they
are already unboarding so where we are right now yeah it's a great question i think in honesty i
think we're incredibly early i think it's um it's think it's a new concept to people, the idea of
trading as opposed to betting. And when you're still at the point that every conversation you
have, you have to explain what a prediction market is to anyone who hasn't heard about one already,
you know that you're incredibly early. I think one thing that's
super clear, though, is that Polymarket have done like an incredible job and Kalshia following on
now, along with a number of others, at really kind of like stealing the march and like good for them.
They've done an incredible job and they've also like there's a whole load of open source stuff
about what they've done. And so they've kind of paved the way for a lot of other things to follow. I think it would be remiss for
people to think though that they can just copy paste the Polymarket or the Kalshi um like playbook
and think that it's going to work and and so when we sat down and decided that this was something
that we wanted to do, we considered two things that I think are really important for an emerging
prediction market to actually penetrate and potentially transcend the kind of the small
ecosystem that we all operate in right now. The first of those things is a niche. I am absolutely confident that
anyone who tries to cover politics, finance, current affairs, the weather, crypto, sports,
and all of those things and everything else in between is going to be spread too thin and is
effectively just going to become another version of polymarket. And so I
think it is really, really important for an emerging market to pick a niche and really think
about like why they are creating the markets they are creating and who they are marketing them to.
And that's why we chose sports. We're passionate about sports. We've got a huge network of people who are working within and around the sporting space.
Lots of access to ex-professionals, clubs, leagues, rights holders.
And so that's where we really wanted to focus on that.
And the second thing, I think, is your method of distribution. a prediction market platform to burn an incredibly large amount of money in marketing and trying to
onboard users when actually I think there are clever ways to be able to distribute your markets
via the clubs, the ex-professionals, the content creators who already command incredibly large
audiences in the space that you're working in.
And so that's what we're trying to do with Predictfully.
We're focusing on sport, but also we are making a real point of working with as many rights holders, clubs, brands, leagues, content creators as possible so that we're able to leverage their audiences and provide a really sticky, engaging platform
for all of those different audiences
to engage with one another.
And you just said, like, you know,
Polymarket, culture, they made a really great job.
But I believe we made a really great job.
because they have been the first project yeah actually the first decentralized prediction market
in the space uh so phil uh my next question is for you uh of course uh i'll be really happy to get
your thoughts regarding where we are right now in terms of adoption of picture markets but what
probably even more interesting for me and I believe for our listeners as well.
So what's going on right now with Ogre?
What are you planning to do?
What kind of things are I working right now?
And yeah, the problem, the last but not least.
So from your, let's say a point of view as soon as ogre uh has been the first player
in the in that space yeah in that field so uh what happened uh why ogre uh from its initial
version did become so much successful as polymarket yeah for sure it's uh quite a slew
questions there so i'll be talking for a
little bit here. So, you know, anyone else on the panel, feel free to just jump in and kind of
give your feedback, give an opinion or ask a question because I'm just going to try not to
ramble on. So, you know, I do agree with Benjamin in the current state of prediction markets. I
think that we got our foot in the door. So, you know, you touched on it a little bit, Benjamin.
We still have to educate people. What is the difference between a prediction market and just another betting exchange or a betting platform?
Right. And I believe, in my personal opinion, the difference is a North Star.
So when you look at a betting platform like an exchange, like a Betfair, one of these centralized bookmakers, their purpose is to make money for the house.
Right. So they facilitate these negative expected value trades.
They have a trading desk that predicts the odds and then turns the odds into payments.
And then they go and they try to get retail users to go and participate inside their betting and just take it from there, right?
Sometimes they're kind of branching out. So really the point of a betting platform is to make money and facilitate trading. The point of a prediction market, in my opinion, is a little bit different. It's predictive power, right? So it's our way to decentralize and allow people to really be the house themselves and trade against one another, depending on what information they
think they have. So for example, there's many ways to answer a question like who will win an
election, right? We want to predict who will win an election. So we can either do polling,
so we can ask a variety of people what they think, and then they will tell you,
and then you can aggregate the results. And there you go. The polling says 52%.
You can just ask experts.
You can ask political analysts who they think has the best chance of winning.
The problem with both these approaches and part of the reason why Augur was the first ICO
and the first kind of implementation of the blockchain and of crypto into the world was
those are both very corruptible ways to get
information, right? If you ask a bunch of experts, well, the experts have potentially incentives or
their own reasons for them not to give you the truth. If you poll a bunch of people, well,
when you poll somebody, you don't really get their true feelings. You only get what they feel they want to tell you, right?
So it's like, you know, you're not going to get the truth from polling.
With prediction markets, it's a little bit different.
You're asking people to put their money where their mouth is.
So if they have a prediction and they think that they know better than the average crowd,
they can actually make money off it, right?
And that's what you're doing.
these traits. Now, the other beauty of it is if you leverage a technology like decentralization
and blockchain and immutability, permissionless, all these great things, well, they become censorship
resistant at that point. At that point, anybody with information about a specific topic can use
a prediction market to anonymously make money off of their
So there's really no way to stop a truly decentralized prediction market from giving you the best
predictive power that's available inside the aggregate of human knowledge, right?
So I think that's the North Star.
The North Star is, you know, we're here to get as close to the truth as possible without any ways to kind of go off the path.
And I think we're in the early stages of that.
So I believe Polymark has done a great job of getting traction inside the system.
They have made some very, very feasible tradeoffs and very good tradeoffs in terms of user experience versus the technical requirements
of it. And they've got a lot of traction and they've done a fantastic job in getting out to
the retail. And I really like their latest pivot that they're looking to kind of position themselves
as a news platform, right? It kind of, it underpins the truth narrative of prediction markets, right? So it's not about betting.
It's about getting closer to the truth.
And I think as Polymarket leans into that,
that's where we're going to increase the maturity level
and really start to sell the true value of prediction markets
to the larger kind of crowd, really,
like the ecosystem and the world at large, right?
There's another way to aggregate information and get close to truth, and that is a prediction
So I feel like that's a very powerful tool for society in general, and why I really like
prediction markets, and why I got into the space, and why I really like oracles.
So that's for the first one.
So for the second one, what happened to Augur?
What is Augur in the first place?
So Augur was the initial coin offering back in 2016. the first one so for the second one what happened to auger uh what is auger in the first place so
auger was the initial coin offering back in 2016 uh they raised quite a bit of money and then they
launched their v1 their v1 was live i believe it was for the 2016 presidential election it did quite
a bit of open interest uh then v2 came around because there are some issues with v1 i can get
into them if you guys are interested but then v2 came around and it was a 2020 election and they did very well they did i think it was like
15 million dollars in open interest which is a good big number at the time before kind of poly
market blew everyone out of the water but ever since then kind of auger has died you can say
that and there's a couple of reasons for it, right? So some people
say that the user experience was bad. Other people say that the capital lockup was too long to get
your money out. But I believe the main issue was that it was on the Ethereum blockchain.
And as DeFi summer started, as the gas fees kind of went up in price, you know, the average retail bettors just weren't willing to
pay $25 in gas fees to put a 50 or 80 or $100 wager on the book. Because then, you know, you're
kind of sapping away your profit at that point, right? So it just didn't make sense. So I believe
that was a big part of why the trading stopped. It just, it priced out
the retail crowd, which is what you need to come in and kind of do the trades. And then Augur,
ever since then, has kind of been on the back burner, right? So that's kind of the story.
Now, where we are today, so where we are today, so I'm the co-founder of Lydis Foundation. So Lydis Foundation is a 501c3.
So we grazed the development, the leftover dev funds from Augur.
So we talked to the original founders.
They kind of believed in us that we can bring it back.
So we're funding two separate development teams to build out Augur again.
back it may be a little bit different because we're highlighting the oracle part but before
i get into the oracle stuff you know first i want to focus on the prediction markets
so yeah so that's where we are today so we're one quarter in so about four months into the revival
so just trying to get our feet under us just trying to do some research on what the best way
forward is and then going to start building it out and looking forward to being in the space soon and kind of making a splash again with all the great things that Augur brought to the table that are a little bit lacking these days.
So yeah, Phil, thank you very much.
I believe you provided a lot of insights regarding the current status of Augur.
And you know, me personally, I jumped into this space, I jumped into the industry in, well, around 11 years ago. Yeah, literally. So even before the ISO hype.
so even before the iso hype uh so yeah uh me and i believe some guys you know sell this for iso uh
we're really happy to see uh what will happen with the new let's say a re-burn of these uh projects
so yeah let's move forward so mitchell uh i want to talk with you right now and yeah please feel
free to share your opinions regarding you know where we are right now in terms of prediction markets adoption.
But a specific question I want to address you as I got from Phil right now.
As soon as we have a truly decentralized prediction markets, there is nothing to stop you to make money.
But at the same time, in what kind of way i won't discuss it uh it's about you
know the lens case suit case um so uh polymarket they position themselves as true decentralized
platform and at the same time sometimes you know uh something happens with umo oracles right and uh
this case is probably one of the biggest one it made a lot of noise in the media.
So, let me know, what's your point of view? Was it fair or not?
I believe you are going to say it's not fair as soon as you're bet on yes, it was a huge.
And secondly, what could be improved to prevent these kind of issues in the
future so mitchell please sure yeah um this is actually the second time i got uh kind of uh
shafted by the umo whales so um i actually learned my lesson uh and so i didn't risk as much as i
would have in the zelinski suit one but yeah maybe just to bring
everyone up to speed so there was this market about Zelensky wearing a suit that expired at
the end of June and there was like a ton of consensus I would say amongst the media that
it was a suit like I'm kind of on the fence whether or not it was a suit but like the the
tailor of the suit said it the Instagram account of Ukraine said it. There was a lot of outlets like New York Post, I think
the Times, I'm pretty sure Reuters said it. And Polymarket in general uses this resolution mechanism
of a consensus of credible reporting. That's specifically in the rules. And that's how they
resolve these more ambiguous markets. Because if you're doing the rules. And that's how they resolve these more
ambiguous markets. Because like if you're doing the president market, it's easy to figure that
out. But for something like this, you have to use like this consensus of credible reporting.
And then what kind of was really frustrating, I would say, is that Polymarket said they provide
a clarification that the consensus of credible reporting had not been met after all of these outlets had actually
said it was explicitly a suit and pretty much no outlet said explicitly it was not a suit.
So like the first issue I had with it was that Polymarket felt like pretty complicit in kind of
catering to the UMA whales who are definitely their power users probably for the most part.
But the market kept growing because as soon as you Google it,
as soon as you checked it on ChatGPT or any of the AI platforms,
it was pretty clear that it should resolve towards a suit, towards yes.
And I think the broader issue here,
coming to the main point about decentralized prediction markets,
is like, and there's people currently looking into this, I think you'll see more
on-chain data in the future, but like the large UMA voters are pretty clearly compromised
in the sense that they either directly bet on some of the outcomes they're voting on
or indirectly have some sort of economic incentive to resolve the markets.
I see Phil giving me thumbs up here.
I want his thoughts on this after.
But yeah, I think they basically, I think they are complicit.
Like, I actually think some of them are outright betting on it.
And you can kind of see it because the same people who bet no
or like the side that's priced at like 99 like uh
they risk like four million dollars to win 60 grand it's like they obviously know how the umavolt's
gonna resolve without uncertainty like they think it's less than a one percent chance that it's gonna
go the other way and i think you only really know that if you're either an insider or you're
And like, I'm the last person I worked at like an offshore crypto exchange and a hedge fund,
like I'm the last person to say, Oh, we need more regulation. But like,
it's pretty obviously insider trading to buy a prediction market, like share,
knowing how the vote outcome is going to be like you have material non public information.
And I just think it undermines the integrity of the whole platform like polymarket I looked they like upwards of
like tens if not hundreds of markets use either as the main source of resolution or as the fallback
mechanism this consensus of credible reporting and if poly market's going to take the stance that that wasn't achieved in that zielinski suit market what does that mean for every other
market going forward like i'm willing to bet there's going to be some market in the near
future that gets resolved based on consensus of federal reporting where there's a lower bar of
consensus than what we had in june and so, yeah, I just think like, to me,
they need to airdrop polymarket tokens to all of the users.
So you have a really wide distribution instead of a distribution of tokens
concentrated in like maybe 10 to 15 whales of UMA.
And you need to have a proper disclosure mechanism where like
you shouldn't be voting on the markets you're betting on or the amount you're able to vote should be like inversely proportional to how much you're betting. So like if I'm a really large better in a market, I shouldn't really be able to vote much and sway the vote.
And I think if they figure that out or whoever figures that out, will have a lot more credible market and and the
last thing i'll just say is like polymarket burns like hundreds if not thousands of retail users
like it seems like every other month now with these markets like if you look at the distribution
of of holders it's all small people like hundreds if not thousands of them that just get burned and
i don't know why they keep doing it
like catering to like the few power users like it just seems suboptimal from like maximizing the
value of their enterprise like long term but yeah i'll stop and hand it over to phil and benji as
well yeah everyone else that wants to chip in yeah it didn't take long to get onto the oracle
question did it i kind of saw that coming. So really with prediction markets, you know, the hard part is the Oracle.
When people bet on prediction markets, when they trade on prediction markets, there's
And the assumption they make is that the resolution will be the truth.
So they're predicting the truth per se.
The reality is they're actually predicting how the resolution source will resolve the prediction market.
So it really comes down to what is the Oracle design, whether it's game theoretically, economically secure or not.
Talking about the UMA design, I don't think we need regulation, to your point, Mitchell.
I just think we need a better Oracle system.
We need a better Oracle design that is not as exposed to these risks of these
UMA, of these whales. So particularly what is wrong with UMA? UMA has done a lot of great
things, right? In my opinion, what they've done wrong is they've implemented a majority
rules consensus mechanism. It's not strictly majority rules. You have to get a 65%. But
is it becomes a Keynesian beauty contest.
That's what we call it, the game theorists.
The problem with majority rules when it comes to truth
is that truth isn't always popular, right?
So if you're trying to predict how the overall,
what will be the majority, right?
So as you try to predict that, you probably want to predict
what you think other people will vote for
rather than what the truth actually is.
And as other people do the same strategy,
what ends up happening is the truth becomes
whatever is popular at the time.
So it's a fundamentally broken way
oracles for prediction markets that UMA is employing, in my opinion. Because what ends up
happening is everything centralizes, right? There aren't 10 to 15 UMA whales, Mitchell. There are
three. There are three UMA whales that control 65%. Some of them are the Polymarket, some of them are the UMA, then there's one other
big whale. So really, anytime you're betting on Polymarket, you're not betting on truth,
you're just betting on how you think these three Polymarket whales and UMA whales will end up voting
on that particular outcome, right? There are many other designs that we can do.
Augur is, in my opinion, the best design,
the most game theoretically and economically secure design
because we do not have majority rules.
We have escalating dispute games
and all these technical things
that aren't exposed to the risks
that would lead to the suit market
being resolved by three UMA whales. So I agree with you 100%. We need changes. And I think that's one to the suit market being resolved by three UMA whales.
So I agree with you 100%.
And I think that's one of the big things that Augur is bringing back to the table.
The meat and potatoes of Augur, in my opinion, is not prediction markets.
Prediction markets is kind of the more deterministic thing to build.
The hard part of prediction markets is the oracle itself.
going to resolve it? Because that kind of underpins your credibility, your legitimacy inside the space.
So Augur brings a truly decentralized design for it without any backstops, without any,
you know, three whales that everyone's just begging to resolve in the right way. Like
the whole thing just sucks. whole the whole setup just sucks um do you know it sucks it sucks to such an extent that we've actually taken the decision
like to launch with manual resolution of markets and we're just going to define our source of truth
uh and like announce it as the market launches and then use that to determine the outcome of the market.
Because the kind of consensus mechanism so far has been for us so contentious and so kind of like subjective
that we want to avoid it to begin with until we see some kind of resolution.
And hopefully we can grow predictably to such a size
where we can contribute to that resolution too.
But right now, I'm in complete agreement with you.
And also I think it's another reason behind our decision
to approach sports and be really careful about the manner
of the markets that we create so that really there can only be an outcome as opposed to a subjective opinion on how things are resolved.
Yeah, exactly, Benjamin. There's nothing wrong with centralized resolution.
A lot of prediction markets, when they initially launch, they can't really do the decentralized route.
They resolve the markets themselves.
Now, this works for a time.
I like your strategy of just sticking to objective markets.
But sometimes what happens to some prediction market projects is they branch out into more of the popular culture markets, more of the sexy markets, right?
Like the political markets or the, I don't know, some other markets, right?
The problem with those is it starts getting ambiguous, right? You start either having the Cal Street approach where you have like seven, eight pages of your resolution criteria written by lawyers that you're paying for, or you take on the risk of people just crapping on you, right?
Because if you resolve wrong, sometimes with contentious markets, no matter which way you resolve it as a project, you're going to get heat from the other side.
You're never going to get heat from the other side. You're never
going to make everybody happy. So that's why a lot of prediction market projects, they start
with centralized resolution. They realize that it's a big mess of liability potentially and just
reputational risk. And then they try to offload it onto these decentralized providers. there is a way to do this decentrally it's auger so you know as
you scale up i guess benjamin you know just consider that there is a solution if you ever
get caught in the whole like why are we resolving the markets this is such a mess there is a solution
out there it's not yeah it's not i love that good plug i've dropped you a follow, and I'll keep an eye on how that's beginning to play out.
Yeah, that was a good plug for Augur.
Yeah, I think Phil kind of said it himself right there, especially earlier talking about how you want to be of the utmost importance that users can actually bet on what they meant to bet on, right?
importance that users can actually bet on what they meant to bet on, right?
Like on the event, you never want people playing this kind of metagame where you're betting
on how they think the Oracle provider will collectively interpret the scenario around
And then, yeah, for things like, especially for sports, right?
Like you're talking about, okay, who won the NBA championship?
Very easy to verify. No one's going to be upset about that. Things on the stat sheet, right? Like you're talking about, okay, who won the NBA championship? Like very easy to verify.
No one's going to be upset about that.
Things on the stat sheet, right?
But then you started getting into things like more subjective stuff,
like is LeBron going to dap up his former teammate, right?
Okay, that's a little harder.
But yeah, I think definitely like it,
I think the market should prioritize like,
I guess the happiness you could say of the users should prioritize, I guess, the happiness, you could say, of the users or just avoiding scrutiny.
So I think no one has a problem with these kind of centralized resolution mechanisms for these objectively verifiable markets. It's, yeah, as you mentioned, these more subjective things where it can kind of play into, yeah, cause some problems.
But I think the accessibility aspect of things at Polymarket is much more of their strength,
not necessarily like the actual decentralization of the resolution mechanism. So I think, yeah,
like if you think about prediction markets, like their predictive power, as you said, right?
Yeah, I mean, like how accessible it is is like a huge factor behind how predictive it can be, right?
So, yeah, like polymarket isn't, it's not supposed to be in the U.S., but it's not like geofenced or whatever, but it's not too hard to access.
I'm sure there's a lot of Americans betting, especially in the election markets.
And yeah, like, so when you have it very accessible,
like Polymarket, it just makes the ability for the market
to be like interpreted as, you know,
something more akin to news, right?
Like that's what they're trying to brand it as now.
It's like, oh, we're the news before it hits the headlines, right?
So yeah, I definitely think the accessibility is much more of the like driving strength of that. it as now it's like oh we're the news before it hits the headlines right so yeah i definitely
think the accessibility is much more of the like driving strength of that like you even see this in
um like the uh israel iran situation you had like like goldman yeah it was goldman sachs that um
cited like polymarket data in a report on like how it might affect oil prices so i thought that was pretty um interesting
because they obviously have like they can just use the actual oil market themselves right like
the options market um but yeah they still find use in poly market and prediction markets just as
because whether you're you know a guy trading um under on the goldman stacks like commodities desk
or you're just like a dude sitting at home scrolling Twitter. It's like it's very easy, very simple to understand.
And apparently it's also it actually is rather predictive, right? Like you had alleged or
suspected like insider trading, if you want to call it that, like right, you had like those $200,000
Around the Iran conflict, no one really knows like, okay,
which side could this be from?
It's like, you know, people working in the government, like Qatar in the U S in Israel. But yeah, I mean,
so we've already kind of seen this, like the predictive power.
And I mean, I think it's like,
especially on the note of like defense and um
military applications like it actually has yeah prediction markets have already been used for
that like i think before polymarket um yeah the the founder shane was like previously trying to
like use prediction markets to kind of you know it's for the defense applications right it's like
threat detection and stuff and then even some other people like rob robin hansen markets to kind of, you know, it's for the defense applications, right? It's like threat detection and stuff.
And then even some other people like Robin Hanson,
hey, he's like a thought leader
in like futurearchy and prediction markets law and stuff.
I think he was working on something similar.
if something really has predictive power,
it's like, where is it going to end up being used?
It's going to end up being used
like in financial markets, right?
To make a bunch of money and then in defense applications, right.
Cause there's like, there's lives on the line and all that stuff.
So yeah, I think it's been like the,
the potential and power of prediction markets has been evidence.
And then yeah, these kinds of like kinks have to be ironed out.
Like, I don't think, yeah, like Phil,
I guess you would know much more about this than me, but yeah,
there's definitely like other solutions. I don't think this Umba debacle is like a, yeah, like a killer for a poly market or prediction markets in general. There's a lot of ways to go about it and preserve the actual value that prediction markets have come to provide.
I guess I've come to provide.
Yeah, Daniel, by the way, I have a follow up question for you.
So regarding footarchy, you just mentioned
Robin Hanson, so for listeners who probably are not working on the topic.
So Robin Hanson is actually the inventor of the footarchy,
the concept which had been created in the beginning of this age.
The idea is to have actually prediction markets and decision making.
There is some, you know, some projects, some experiments in this way.
One of the projects is MetaDAO.
There are some other stuff.
For example, Optimism Grand Council.
They are experimenting with Futarki and providing some grant support for the builders, some other guys.
So Daniel, let me know, please.
Are you bullish on footarchy as a concept?
And probably you have some kind of red flags or things you think,
And in what kind of way you believe foodarky could be implemented
especially in our industry so we see there's a very good result of experiments with implementation foodarky in meta governance yeah and governance in some daos uh by meta though but yeah maybe some
other cases yeah so putarky has a concept just like using prediction markets
to actually make decisions um so just being yeah much more active instead of just you know
using prediction markets to provide nudes like hey okay we're actually going to make a decision
based on this information on this um yeah collective group consensus. So, I mean, am I bullish on the concept
like from a financial returns point of view?
I mean, yeah, I put out a law firm report
Like I don't think it performed that well
It did have a pretty good run up last year,
but I mean, there's just a limited market appetite
for this kind of like, yeah,
it's like this kind of niche um sub-genre um but
i would say yeah i'm bullish on like the potential application whether that translates to like a
stock or a token going up completely separate story but yeah i think there's a lot of people
like um metadow initially raised their their seed round from Paradigm and they have like TIA,
they have like a lot of these kind of like crypto thought
leaders you can say that have like a lot of influence
in incubating founders and projects in the space.
So I think it's kind of like a nerd snipe
for some of these investors and founders.
And yeah, it's kind of like a very idealistic thing.
And you have to find like the actual,
like what is the reason to actually implement something like this?
So now, yeah, MetaDial has gone on to like,
they're putting out a launch pad now, a token launch pad.
So they're kind of like not pivoting,
but just trying to find the proper application
for this kind of technology, right?
So yeah, I would say like i mean the initial concept of futarchy is to be used to basically use prediction markets to
kind of like like run a government or something right um so and then over time it's kind of like
the scope kind of shrunk a little bit like you can't just like start at the government level i mean maybe in
some respects like um if you limit it to like certain defense operations things like that
it's already been done but yeah like so you go from okay running like a government or a
a government agency with prediction markets is like way way too unrealistic how about a business
and then from there now you have things like metadown it's like okay too unrealistic. How about a business? And then from there, now you have things like MetaDAO
and it's like, okay, how about a DAO?
Like how about a crypto protocol, right?
You have a founding team and you have, you know,
shareholders that are much more like accepting
of this kind of thing, of this kind of proposition of,
yeah, where the, know the the um governing power
isn't like centralized right so in a normal like fortune 500 company this kind of thing would
obviously like it would not it would not fly right um so yeah i would say futurearchy is a concept
like it has a lot of merit i think it's yet to proven. So for now it's kind of like a nerd snipe,
like it's a very interesting idealistic concept,
Over time we'll see if it can be
kind of implemented more realistically,
I think, especially as you have,
like you had the whole like internet capital markets
narrative as well, like, you know, small companies
or like startups and companies issuing
So if you have something like that,
I can see like the scope of projects
that something like a MetaDAO or these other,
yeah, future projects, like it's gonna expand, right?
Like if they have a token, then okay,
it's in the realm of possibility
for something like we target to be implemented.
Whereas before, if they just were a private company or maybe a publicly listed company it never would have been
um a possibility so yeah i would love to jump in if i can yeah okay okay let's go phil let's go yeah
i'll be quick i love the framing of nerd something because i just got nerd sniped about feature key
it's very easy to nerds night people that me too man about future key um
so just to describe future key for the audience here um so the thought is it's by robin hansen
by an economist who's in some university not sure which one hope you didn't take offense to that
um but basically you vote on values but you bet on your beliefs so the thought is when we have a
democratic system of governance the way people vote isn't necessarily what's best for society
that's the theory, right?
And the theory is that there's a better way to aggregate people's decisions into actually value for society.
Now, the way you do that is by using prediction markets.
And use prediction markets in the following way.
So first, you agree on a metric, on a KPI.
So to keep it easy, let's just do the GDP of a country.
We're replacing the government with
future, right? So now we want to do everything in our power, for better or for worse, just for
sake of a discussion, to raise the GDP of the country. So now we are going to have a potential
policy, right? So we're going to say, hey, we have a policy. Our policy is we're going to give all of
our, half our GDP to, I don't know, the homeless, right? And should we do this or not?
Now, the way this happens is you create a prediction app market out of it in the following way.
You say, if we implement this policy, will the GDP go up?
So now you have people, you're leveraging the predictive power prediction markets.
You're saying, hey, if you think the GDP will go up if we put this policy in, bet on yes and bet against the people that think it won't go up if you put this policy in.
And the thought is that you'll get your answer, right?
If it's 60% yes over no, then that's the policy decision you make.
And then you kind of track it to make sure that, you know, okay, we implemented this policy.
If it went up, then you kind of pay out accordingly.
But that's the thought of it.
The thought of it is any decision you want to make from a governance perspective,
instead of leveraging experts and consultants and advisors and polling and all that sort of stuff,
you just leverage prediction markets.
You just say, hey, I'm just going to give it out to society and I'm going to let them vote.
money where their mouth is on whether they actually think this particular policy decision will lead to
a favorable outcome inside our KPI. And that's the thought of it. And it's a very powerful idea.
But to your point, I agree that it's more of an idealistic idea rather than something that is
actually realistic. And one of the reasons that the scope has been kind of lessened on Featurearchy is that
basically the people in power don't want to give up the power.
Somebody in power can hire their own consultants, their own advisors, and they can maybe, you
know, swing towards them a little bit.
So it's a completely different game.
You're essentially asking them to abdicate their power
and say, hey, you're not the decision maker.
We're the decision makers.
And we're going to enshrine that in a decentralized way
for us to make decisions.
You're not going to control the advisors.
You're not going to control the narrative.
We're just going to allow it to happen, right?
And that is very difficult to implement
because unfortunately, that just doesn't happen that often. just going to allow it to happen, right? And that is very difficult to implement because
unfortunately, that just doesn't happen that often. It's something Robin Hanson has talked
about. He's like, yeah, the future case is like the autist at the board of directors, right?
They always say the truth, but they don't have any tact. They don't have any interpersonal skills.
They just blurt out the truth, which is
the truth and the right thing to do. But everyone gets pissed off because everyone has their own
motives and you have to know how to deliver a message. And they're just kicked out of the
boardroom and never join again, even though they're very good at predicting what is actually
the truth. So you have a lot of different,
governance gets complicated and predict and feature key just assumes that the issue with governance
is the lack of decision-making power,
but issue with governance,
as we know something a little bit else,
but that's completely out of scope of this discussion.
So I just wanted to get in there snipped a bit.
Yeah, perfect. So yeah, actually, we didn't expect, yeah, I didn't expect we'll dive so much deep
into food turkey. It was not, you know, the topic of all this space, yeah, but always happy to, you
know, discuss it. So yeah, let's move forward. Actually, actually next question is for everyone but i want to start with mitchell
and yeah uh you know a lot of people say okay we are going to onboard new users in the prediction
market prediction markets is a great you know use case uh this is a real let's say consumer app which
industry needs but uh from your point of view prediction markets uh is it really the
thing uh retail needs and retail looking for because you know on the other hand we have for
example memes right uh it's you know probably stupid at the same time fun easy, and it has a gambling nature.
It has a nature you can be a millionaire, even a billionaire with just one lucky coin.
And your upside is almost unstoppable, right? At the same time, in prediction markets,
it looks like a little bit more complicated.
And your upside and falling market
is kind of limited, right?
So it's impossible to have, let's say,
So let me know, please, Mitchell,
what's the point of view there?
Prediction markets, is it really a consumer app which retail is looking for?
And yeah, by the way, especially with the current updates,
probably you're pretty familiar with them as well, with Zorro, for example,
and Creator Coins, which are looking like actually kind of, you know,
pump-up stuff, but in other way.
So retail, are you really looking for prediction markets
i mean look i'm probably biased here maybe i'm a bit of a boomer now and i'm kind of jaded but like
i just like if you actually look under the hood at meme coins, there's like so much insider trading,
like there's people that are like selling OTC undisclosed.
There's like all this like predatory activity.
And then there's like insane fees,
like the fees that like, the like photons and the axioms,
like the trading platforms, there's fees that like,
uh zoro they all charge right like they extract mid six figures low seven figures a day let alone
all the mev people who are like like sandwiching all these people's trades like like like if you
think about it from the point of view of a casino, meme coins have like the worst rake ever.
Like it's like there's actually like no one who's really going to be profitable long term that isn't doing something that's kind of shady.
And then like with prediction markets, I don't think they should be viewed solely as a mechanism
But I genuinely believe prediction markets is probably one of the only things crypto native I would say
or that like actually contribute to society like uh they actually are very accurate like
remarkably accurate on like a wide range of events and I think from that point of view it's good and
I think putting aside the uma stuff like assuming if things get resolved fairly I think putting aside the UMA stuff, like assuming if things get resolved fairly,
I think retail has a lot better chance of being successful in prediction markets where there's zero fees, at least on Polymarket. And it's relatively more fair. And so, yeah, I think
they're a better vehicle. And I think retail would probably be better served trying out prediction markets than gambling on like
Bart coin or like Titty coin or some random shit coin that's like gonna have like two weeks of
life or maybe it's the one in a million that that goes to like mid nine figure market cap but
I don't know I just think long term you're unlikely to be successful in that space compared
to prediction markets maybe you have a hope.
So Daniel, please add a couple of words.
Just wanted to add a couple of things.
I got to drop off at the top of the hour.
It's been great talking with you guys.
Yeah, I think the retail applications for prediction markets have kind of been proven,
even if it's not necessarily used like for actual betting.
Yeah, it was the number one app in the Apple App Store, right?
Like right around the election.
Maybe it's only for like, you know, five days holding that status, but it's still pretty significant.
Yeah, you have like the largest banks in the world.
You have like some of the most well-known politicians.
Yeah, you have like the largest banks in the world. You have like some of the most well-known politicians. Yeah, you have like, who was it?
It was a New York mayor, right?
That was citing public market odds as well.
So yeah, so I think that's arguably like more,
but like that's kind of like the whole goal,
like the idealistic goal of prediction markets, right?
And then maybe the kind of business level, the goal is like, okay, make a bunch of money.
But, um, yeah, for prediction markets as a whole, that's the adoption is like, you know,
I would say, um, I would say it would be for those, especially like those in building in
their prediction market space.
Like it would be important to make sure that prediction markets don't become synonymous
with just one or two names. So yeah, like, you don't want people
just like searching polymarket if they want to, if they want, you know, like prediction market
news, right? Like you want the broader term to kind of, you know, be in the lexicon and not just,
you know, completely, yeah, just have mindshare associated with, you know, polymarket and Calci.
yeah just have have mindshare associated with you know polymarket and calci but yeah i mean
even something like polymarket it's like yeah they're they're like for better or worse yeah
they're expanding their scope a lot like they're focusing much more on sports betting now like
you know any given like week out of the year like yeah these um who will win like the nba
nfl championship like these markets have some of the most volume, right?
And then I know they, I thought it was pretty interesting,
some of their marketing strategies, especially for sports betting. They had, they acquired a, I noticed this,
I don't know if they formally announced it,
but they acquired a TikTok account with 600K followers
who just made funny basketball videos and stuff.
this is like a polymarket i think it's called like polymarket sports or something so yeah i think
that's pretty interesting like they've been able to use sports betting to kind of keep keep volumes
high i mean they're um they're uh i think like daily volume traded is like around 30 million
And then the open interest is actually still like,
it's kind of on par with what it was pre-election, right?
Like a hundred daily interest. So yeah,
I think that it's done a pretty good job on that note.
And I think I look forward to seeing like other teams kind of replicating that,
that note and like kind of being able to break it to these new markets,
stuff like the more like political markets and then gaining headway in like, you know, traditional media or yeah, sports betting and actually getting like net new users to trade on
the markets themselves. So yeah, I'm going to drop off now, but I want to thank you guys for the time.
Thanks Alex for having me on. And yeah, I look going to drop off now, but I want to thank you guys for the time. Thanks, Alex, for having me on.
And, yeah, I look forward to all the prediction market developments from you guys.
Yeah, Daniel, thank you very much.
Thank you very much for being with us.
So, yeah, Benjamin, the same question for you.
So, also, I have kind of follow-up regarding the sport button.
Yeah, because you run a project in this way.
So, as I initially said from the beginning of our space, some guys in previous spaces said,
like, you know, sport button is very, let's say, an overestimated use case.
It's super full of competitors all the stuff so what do you think
is there still a room to have a prediction market and a support button it is possible to you know
compete for the market share with very big players who play in this field and And yeah, what's your goal? What's the plan?
Yeah, I mean, to be really, really blunt, like, yeah, there's loads of room to do it, because I think it's a completely different proposition. I think what prediction markets
do is they allow a PVP element to what's going on, as opposed to a group of people trying to play and ultimately
losing against the house and so i think that as the kind of democratization of information
and uh and things like that start to really come to the fore i personally think that prediction markets will overtake betting platforms because
they offer a fairer and probably more engaging interface. And it's going to take a little bit
of time to break down the grip of kind of betting platforms, et cetera. I'm going to give a little
bit of information about our intention at Predictably and why
we're doing it. So Predictably will launch as a free-to-play platform. Essentially,
what we're going to do is work on an XP basis. So people can create an account for doing so,
they will get some points. They can turn up on a daily basis and check in,
earn some additional points. they can be the first
to particular markets that we're running and some additional points they can refer their friends
and additional points and they can help amplify our content and maybe even create content themselves
about what we're doing and earn additional points for doing that and those points they can then take into the markets to make predictions
and ultimately earn more points again. Now, I appreciate that doesn't have the kind of fiscal
excitement about it to begin with. In time, our intention is to launch a token that powers the
ecosystem and there will be an exchange of points into aoken. But actually, the reason we're doing that and the reason we're exploring keeping the platform as a free-to-play points-based system
is because what we really want to do with sports is help clubs and leagues and rights holders of big sporting franchises to bridge the gap that they have in terms of the
revenue they're able to generate and the conversation they're able to have with their
audiences. You know, there are clubs out there like Manchester United, Real Madrid, Juventus,
who still don't even make $1 per year per fan worldwide. They've obviously become really, really good
at extracting value from fans that attend the stadium. You know, there are lots of places to
buy merchandise, food, hotels to stay in, bars to drink at, season ticket prices, all the rest of it.
But in terms of like being able to monetize their worldwide fans, it's quite a difficult thing to do.
And I think in order to be able to help those clubs bridge that divide and engage their fans more closely,
there needs to be a product that isn't going to come under such scrutiny as a gambling platform.
And so I think a prediction market actually, if run properly and from a free
to play perspective or has a free to play element to it, I think there's a really big opportunity
to work with sponsors, clubs, brands, ex-professionals, people who don't want to direct
their audience in a direction that means people could potentially lose money and get in trouble,
et cetera. And that's what we're currently exploring. So, yeah, I think prediction markets do have a great opportunity
to disrupt the betting market,
but I actually think they also potentially provide something completely different
that fans, clubs, pros, and content creators can start to get their heads around
and start to monetize in a different way,
which gives fans of any age, of any kind of political or financial background,
the opportunity to just get a bit closer in terms of engaging with the club or the person or the fandom that they really love.
And that's something that we're really excited about.
So we have our space for over an hour.
So I'm going to wrap it up slowly.
So we have just still two speakers, Phil and Benjamin.
So they had to go and we lost Mitchell somewhere.
So, as soon as you're around Mitchell, please raise your hand and request a speaker slot.
So, guys, closing notes regarding something you want to share with our audience and, you know, what kind of expectations you have
about prediction markets in, okay,
I believe nobody's interested in about short term,
about midterm and long term.
So, Phil, let's start with you.
It was a pleasure being here.
Thanks for hosting, Alex.
A lot of great questions,
kind of from the panel as well.
and hats off to the audience
about prediction markets,
heard a little bit about the UMA,
You know, there's a way forward here
at the end of the tunnel.
all these confusions that we're in right now are short term while we figure it out. We're still maturing
from the prediction market and the Oracle space. So we're still trying to figure out how to have
the best user experience coupled with the best security from an Oracle perspective and a
sustainable business from the project side. because these are all still different designs, different iterations of how we approach these core problems, but,
you know, we're still figuring out. So I think the medium to the long term future is very bright.
I think we're going to move to a state where we're using prediction markets more inside society,
not just for speculation, but for things like insurance, for things like RWA, accounting purposes,
futurearchy, you know, just general games, there's so much power that they can deliver.
And I'm looking forward to kind of seeing where this takes off. So, you know, just looking forward
to being involved in the space as well. And, you know, I think Augur brings a great tool for any
prediction market if they want to outsource the resolution to something
that's really decentralized and lives the values of crypto. We're here. And just my final remark
to everyone on the channel and on the space is we are in crypto. You are now in crypto.
In crypto, we care about certain ethos, certain values that makes our space unique.
It's not just an offshoot of some fintech.
We care about decentralization, censorship resistance, permissionlessness, trustlessness, immutability.
All these things that really make what we do and by extension what we allow our users or the people using production to do truly unstoppable.
No one will stop you from doing what you want to do
when you're working or when you're interacting with crypto
because that's the whole point of crypto.
So I just wanted to highlight that final piece
and it was a pleasure being here.
Perfect. So Benjamin, your closing note.
I'm going to be a little bit more shilly than my colleague there,
But Predictfully is very close to launching in MVP. We are opening a group right now for beta testers.
That's a telegram group. If anyone is interested in joining that, follow me or follow Predictfully, or both, better still.
Predictfully is in the audience you can see it a white circle with
a black question mark p in it and I will invite some people into that group you can be part of
the first people to test it out let me know if there are any bugs that you find and I'm obviously
going to be working with people to make sure that they are rewarded accordingly for helping out in
the early stages in In terms of where
I think this is going, you know, I'm really excited about prediction markets. I think they offer
tremendous engaging conversation about all kinds of things that are going on around the world.
And I am really proud to be part of a very small group of people that are trying to develop them
and move them forward. So I really appreciate you hosting this today, Alex. Thank you for your time. Thanks to everyone
here who listened. Recommend you check out Predictfully because we're about to go live
on AVAX and we're really excited for what we're going to bring. Thanks ever so much, everyone.
perfect so guys our team speakers thank you very much for this insightful discussion
Perfect. So guys, our team speakers, thank you very much for this insightful discussion.
many percent i really like it i really hope our listeners got some from you and yeah again thank
very much speakers our listeners our audience and stay tuned we are going to have more spaces
and more spicy discussions in the future thank you bye- Bye-bye. Nice one. Cheers, everyone.