Will the future ever become decentralized?
Vancouver, July 26, 2016
In the most recent Decentral meetup in Vancouver, CARDANO Labo team member joined Decentralization enthusiasts to listen to presentation by Gnosis (http://gnosis.pm/) founder — Martin Köppelmann on the market prediction platform Gnosis which uses Ethereum. Gnosis is currently incubated by Consensys (https://consensys.net/)
Context
Martin Köppelmann, also the co-founder of Fairlay (https://www.fairlay.com/) — a centralized bitcoin prediction market platform explained in details the distinctive concept of Gnosis. Its predecessor, Fairlay.com — a prediction market, mainly utilizes a payment system. Martin didn’t want to be responsible at that time for BTC held at Fairlay in the sense of security, hosting cost, hacking etc. as any cryptocurrency in store simply attracts more issues and increases the risk of losing such funds. He has come up with the concept for Gnosis and will be using Ethereum where smart contract is possible to build up Gnosis.
What is special about Gnosis?
Gnosis is a prediction platform, where tokens are issued and somewhat similar to Augur (https://www.augur.net/) where people can vote to bet on the outcome. What mainly sets it apart from Augur is that within a democratic process like Augur, whether a voter is an expert in that field or some random rookie, the vote counts the same. With Gnosis, appointed oracles will provide expert opinion. Oracles can be software, hardware or human. And if such an oracle is not available, a decentralized oracle (smart contract) will take its place.
The two key differences vs. Augur are:
- In Augur, most token holders will have to vote. Gnosis currently has a few thousand votes per month. A decentralized oracle is triggered when the (signed up, default) oracle fails to perform. As a concept, the centralized oracle will mobilize first, and then a decentralized oracle.
- Difficulty with UX/UI design. Gnosis is currently aiming to design block similar to a Wordpress module. Gnosis wants to provide default ETH smart contract and makes it easier for end-users to select a few options.
Showcases
Let’s take an example on a prediction model!
Question: Will Trump become next president?
The system will generate Trump token. Normally the betting ratio starts at 50/50 and voters will place bets to change the prediction, unless factors that change the odds are already available. Say, if there is a 20% chance, for Trump to be the next president, the bid would be out of 100 ETH, 20 ETH.
Take another example with ExxonMobil stock. There is a variety of things that influence the stock value such as oil price, events in the Middle East, weather, presidential election, etc. Currently, prediction models have flaws, where the main problem being there are too many platforms and it is difficult to have everyone on the same platform. The solution is to utilize blockchain technology and a decentralized platform to synchronize all platforms together.
With voting, in game theory your vote doesn’t really count, as it only makes a small amount of change. Also in a democracy, your vote counts the same as an expert who are more politically literate. Hence, it would be ideal to have experts like Bloomberg sign-off on the reports and alter the percentage of the prediction.
Take another example: the DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization). A future market can be made feasible by creating two prediction markets, one that aims to predict the value of DAO today and one from one year from now. And it is also possible to formulate another prediction where such thing doesn’t happen.
Other implications
Gnosis can reduce costs of gambling as costs are mainly bookmakers. If you bet both odds , from $100, you would get $70 back. Bookmaker would keep $30. With Gnosis, the system will try to bring the cost per betting from 10%, to 1%. Reduce operational costs. Currently payout rate is about 90%. E.g.: If payout rate is >99% then, with $100 of betting a week, loss should be no more than $50 in one year.
In the long run, we can think of a platform for Public good. To sustain the fund, it might be possible to implement a digital copyright to the code or create a Gnosis token. Token holders can use Gnosis as a stake owner. Other non-token holders can pay a fee to use platform. As a matter of fact, Gnosis platform and business model can still be leveraged and functional sustainably for the good of the public.
Sharing the same vision with Gnosis on leveraging blockchain decentralized technology, CARDANO Labo is also keen on bringing more state-of-the-art and unrivalled solutions to address everyday’s challenge to humans’ lives around the world.
About CARDANO Labo Vietnam
To visualize blockchain contribution to local and regional economy, CARDANO Labo has positioned itself as the leading blockchain research and development startup focusing on blockchain-empowered financial and entertainment services. We are keen on bringing this technology to a broader audience where people will have better access and opportunities to enjoy their lives through unprecedented technical solutions.
To get the latest update & events about Fintech & Blockchain, you may click here to subscribe to our newsletter.
Website:
English http://cardano-labo.com/
Japanese http://cardano-labo.com/jp/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cardanolabo
Twitter: https://twitter.com/cardano_labo
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/cardano-labo/
Contact:
English Nicole Nguyen (thanhnth@cardano-labo.com)
Japanese Muuto Morikawa(muuto.morikawa@cardano-labo.com)
��8&�U
