Visionary & Founder of Delphy, Bo Wang, delivered an Inspirational Speech at the Conference of Ethereum Technology and Application 2018

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Delphy

7 min readJun 11, 2018

Delphy participated in the renowned Conference of Ethereum Technology and Application 2018 held in Beijing, China, on June 3, 2018. The conference focused on the Ethereum Ecosystem, Ethereum core technology, and Ethereum high-quality applications. The celebrated event was well attended by top domestic and international developers, core members of Ethereum team, and top project leaders to discuss the best Ethereum technology and applications. Bo Wang, Founder of Delphy, delivered an inspirational speech to the conference participants.

Bo began the speech by asking the participants, “How many of you have heard of prediction markets? Please raise your hand.” The crowd responded by only 20% raising their hand! After which he delivered his speech titled — “Delphy, leading you pass across the cognitive boundaries of traditional predictions.”

Extracts of his inspirational speech-

Today I would like to briefly introduce what is prediction market. I got to know bitcoin and blockchain back in 2013 and began researching on prediction markets in 2014. For a long time, I was really interested in prediction markets.

If anyone is interested in science fiction, you might know The Foundation Series, written by American science fiction writer Isaac Asimov. In his books, he described, Galaxy Empire that was created after 10,000 years, in which there are 25 million planets, each planet is inhabited by people, the territory has spanned hundreds of thousands of light days, there are countless people in it, there are many things happening in this galaxy empire, war, earthquake, plague, disaster, but no one really knows what’s happening to this empire or what direction it will eventually take.

To understand where the universe civilization will go, psychological history was created to predict the direction of this civilized empire. This is hard to do, why? Because cosmic empire is a very complex system, it is almost impossible to describe this complex system with a simple system.

It is also difficult to predict the future in today’s society. Things have become extremely complex, post development of science and technology. On one hand, the world is cluttered with complexity, and on the other hand, there are more choices when making decisions. Is it possible for us to create a system that is sufficiently complex to describe the current world?

There are a lot of people doing this and I will give you two examples.

The first example, philosopher Hilary Putnam wrote “Reason, truth, and history.” The hypothesis here is “brain in a vat.” It is to cut a person’s head down and put it in a vat. This vat has the elements of brain survival. Using a supercomputer to connect with neurons in the brain, the brain is given all the signals it used to. However, there are two problems - First, does the brain know whether it is a brain in the tank or the brain in the skull? Second, how complex is this system so that everyone can realize that it is the same as the real world?

As another example, we have seen the British television series “Black Mirror”. One episode, Hang the DJ, talks about online dating, creating a virtual reality, simulating the relationship between two people in virtual reality, and simulating 1000 All over again, if two people can still be together after 1000 passes, it may really be able to be together.

From these scenarios, it is concluded that the simplest system for simulating a system is itself, and any other system is more complex than that, because at the very least, the log system is added, which is more complicated than the original system. Complex systems are difficult to describe with simple systems. Simulating a real system requires creating a more complex system of reality.

Asimov proposes to use the concept of psychological history to study historiography with the help of psychological principles and methods, especially to study future historiography. Because history is created by people, researchers may predict the future. This is a way. We have different methods. What are our methods? Forecast market! We use economics to make predictions.

So what is prediction market?

It’s pretty much like the stock market, the price of any stock is discovered and determined through the buying and selling of stocks.

Prediction markets is to use the trading mechanism to collect the probability and judgment of the event and bringing everyone’s opinions together to form a consensus, this consensus is everyone’s judgment on the future. This is how one can make market forecasts.

For example, this same time, 4pm in a year, will the price of Bitcoin exceed 10,000 U.S. dollars? Everyone has a judgment on it. If people think that it will exceed the limit, they will buy, when they buy, the price will go up. When someone sells, the price will go down. Then at 4 o’clock in a year, the results will come out.

What’s a Prediction Market? It’s wisdom of crowd!

There are two steps to reach there. One is to take out the ideas in everyone’s head. The second is to gather everyone’s ideas into a consensus.

A good example is how accurate that Intrade predicted the US 2008 election. The United States has 50 continents, 49 continents have the correct predictions, and predictions are very correct at each major node of the election. The prediction is 40–60%. Finally, Obama won about 57%, and it is very accurate.

Why is it accurate? Because it gathers a large number of people, who came from different backgrounds of knowledge, they come up with effective predictions.

There are three factors in predicting effective markets. First, diversified opinions are broad. Second, those who participate must think independently. Third, they should reflect their true ideas instead of being forced by everyone.

Every knowledge in the prediction market is valuable. If your perception is correct, you are likely to earn a lot of money. But if your perception is wrong, you might pay for the wrong choice. In addition, the prediction market is a platform for anyone. Any opinion, no matter how strange it is, as long as it’s valuable, can be heard.

Why do we need to build prediction market on blockchain?

There are many problems in the traditional prediction market. One obvious one is that data is centralized and easy to be manipulated. Therefore, in China, few people believe in its authenticity.

However, blockchain solves this problem. There’s a natural advantage for prediction market to be used in blockchain industry, as blockchains provide self-proof due to the characteristics of decentralization. Furthermore, prediction is not one-time action, but it can be done repeatedly. Last, but the most important is that because of the economic incentives. you are more intended to tell truth, rather than tell a lie.

Basically, no one in China has studied prediction markets. That’s why Delphy decided to first launch in China. Delphy v1.0 Chinese version went live on June 1st, 2018. To make it fully compliant, Delphy is structured as no-lose mechanism. There are all kinds of topics, especially the World Cup topic, which we focus on for the current couple of months.

Thank you!

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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