Betting Platform Augur Spreads Its Wings and Migrates to Its Own Mainnet
The highly-anticipated betting platform Augur migrated away from Ethereum and onto its own mainnet yesterday. Augur provides a platform for prediction markets on which users can bet on future events, such as political outcomes, natural phenomena, and business trends.
The launch of the mainnet is a step towards more usable prediction markets. Augur has been in development since 2014 and launched its own REP token in 2016. Though it was a niche platform until now, the mainnet will gradually introduce new usability features, including reduced transaction costs, faster transactions on the 0x platform, and automated rollover contracts.
The fact that online betting is a legal minefield in the United States makes Augur a somewhat radical innovation. Rather than running a market itself, Augur takes a hands-off approach by providing a decentralized platform. On Augur, peer users can create their own markets with minimal costs and legal restrictions. The team claims Augur will
[Enable] anyone, anywhere, at anytime […] to create and speculate on derivatives at a low cost for the first time / Augur co-founder Joey Krug on Medium
Migration away from Ethereum is a common step for budding blockchain projects. Because Ethereum is widely used and has an existing value, many projects build on it in their early stages. However, Ethereum has price volatility and scalability issues, leading projects like Augur to part ways with it.
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