Summary of Delphy Founder Bo Wang’s Interview with ErduoFinance

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Delphy

6 min readMar 26, 2018

Leading Chinese blockchain media ErduoFinance which has previously profiled various blockchain celebrities, reached out to Delphy for an exclusive interview with our visionary founder Bo Wang.

Bo Wang possesses practical experience in the application and development of blockchain technology. Bo elaborated on the notable role of predictions markets and blockchain technology and how the two concepts are naturally intertwined with each other. Below is the summary of the interview.

Prediction markets are a natural and easy-to-launch application in the blockchain industry

Blockchain technology brings in a new world of concepts and ideas. We were looking for native applications on the blockchain, with a business model, easy-to-launch and with market demand- prediction markets platform is exactly what we are looking for.

Prediction market are not new - In 1503, people began to predict the succession of the pope. In modern times, prediction markets gradually commercialized. For instance, Intrade prediction markets was a renowned American economic and political prediction markets web platform. The accuracy of their results was even better than that of public opinion surveys. It was often cited by various mainstream media and thus potentially effected the U.S. election.

Traditional prediction markets can do the following: 1. Efficiently collect diverse and dispersed information; 2. Provide an effective and transparent incentive mechanism to obtain relevant realities; 3. Provide an almost real-time information update mechanism so that manipulating the results becomes quite difficult. For example, Consensus Point, whose Chief Scientist is Robin Hanson, the father of prediction markets, accurately predicts markets at 92%.

However, traditional prediction markets are not that perfect and come with various problems, such as the inability of the centralized platform to prove its fairness sans manipulations, the limitations of financial supervision, and the lack of attention. In the 2012 election, Wall Street supported candidate Romney and tried to use $8 million to influence the election results. This was the case with Intrade prediction markets, as they found difficult to prove the fairness and sans manipulations in their predictions.

The existence of the blockchain technology not only deters market manipulation via predictions, but also makes it possible to turn those predictions into transactions. The blockchain technology provides: 1, the data can not be tampered with; 2, token incentive mechanism; 3, decentralization. Decentralization can reflect the wisdom of crowds.

Become the “TaoBao” of Prediction Markets Platform in Blockchain Industry

Augur crowdfunded 20,000 bitcoins and 1.1 million Ethereums since the publication of the White Paper in 2014, worth about $5.5 million, but has not launched the product yet. Delphy’s prototype was released in August last year, and currently is in the second-round internal testing. We are committed at delivering our roadmap, and it is clear that Delphy implements faster than Augur.

Delphy is the first decentralized prediction markets platform in China. The prediction markets community needs strong operations and management, which is exactly the strength of Chinese organisations. Delphy hopes to build a “Taobao platform” for prediction markets based on the blockchain technology. Anybody can “open stores”, which means to create prediction topics on Delphy platform, our platform will first be launched in China and then start working towards our international launch.

Generation of DPY token

Delphy has issued a DPY Token based on Ethereum Smart Contracts and with ERC-20 compliance. When a participant makes a prediction about any future event on the Delphy platform, DPY must be used to purchase the share(s) of an outcome of the event. Those who predict accurately will be rewarded with DPY.

Delphy uses Logarithmic Market Scoring Rule(LMSR) to reflect the market’s evaluation of each event outcome. LMSR provides the greatest liquidity for markets as “the number of shares is unlimited, there is no fixed amount”. Shares can be bought and sold at any time before settlement.

When a user wants to create a prediction market, a loss limit must be determined by the creator to calculate the creator’s potential loss. The higher loss limit is, the greater the loss the creator may suffer, yet the more liquidity the market has, and the less impact participants have on the price when they buy more shares.

Information is real-time. Everyone is free to participate and change their decisions at any time until a credible result is finally released.

The difference between prediction markets and betting

Prediction markets can help people understand the potential outcome of an event, which is both meaningful and profound. For example, the U.S. election prediction result can help assess financial risks; public expectations to house prices can serve as a reference for the government’s macro-control; whether predictions can help farmers gather information and hedge against extreme weather risks. In addition, the incentive value of the prediction markets will be controlled within a certain range, therefore it will not involve a large amount of risk, and the impact on the society will be very limited.

In the past, insurance and securities were once regarded as betting methods, while today people have fully accepted them as economic tools to help fix our practical problems.

Essentially, most of the decentralized applications have a corresponding existence in the centralized world. These are totally two different worlds. They do not cross one another. The experience Delphy would like to share with new entrepreneurs is to seriously consider what the benefits of blockchain technology and how it can solve real problems.

For details, please prefer to：【区块链108将】天算汪波：区块链为预测市场创造了新的交易场景

Thank you for your continued support!

About Delphy

A Decentralized mobile social platform for prediction markets.

Delphy is a decentralized, mobile prediction market platform built on Ethereum. The Delphy App is a light Ethereum node running on mobile devices.

Delphy uses market incentives to allow participants in a market to communicate, instantly and transparently, their wisdom regarding the outcome of upcoming events, effectively predicting the future. We design Delphy from the start to be decentralized, which makes it difficult to manipulate prediction results.

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