Omen Latest Release Launches Scalar Markets and expands to xDai Chain

From the beginning, DXdao’s goal for Omen has been to create an unstoppable, permissionless prediction market platform with the best user experience for the community.

In 2020, the community has seen the launch of Omen with over 2,800 unique users, over 260 markets created leading to over $6 million in bets across Omen Markets. Highlights include multi-million dollar wagers across the presidential markets, a number of high-profile Ethereum 2.0 related markets, and successful market settlements including a contentious Kleros arbitration.

During this journey, DXdao has always been listening to the Omen community and appreciates all the feedback, both positive and negative, from users along the way.

To position Omen to continue to succeed into the future, DXdao is excited to kick off 2021 with a big week for Omen. The passage of this proposal officially launches Omen Version 1.2.2, which includes some very interesting features:

- Launch of Scalar markets.

- xDai Chain and Sokol network support.

- Embedded Reality.eth support.

- Native Ether support.

Scalar Markets

Omen scalar markets have arrived! Until now, Omen has offered binary markets (two outcomes) and categorical markets (up to eight outcomes) where the market resolves all-or-nothing to one of the outcomes. Scalar markets are important because they allow a user to express a view on an underlying asset without the outcome being all-or-nothing. Scalar markets are like binary markets, but depending on where an asset settles in a range specified by a lower and an upper bound, the outcome pays out.

Scalar markets open the door to interesting markets related to price movements and other numerical markets, where participants may take a long or short position on the underlying price within a range.

The below ETH/USD price market shows an example of taking a long ETH position increasing the New Prediction price versus the Current Prediction price.

When entering the market, the user also has the ability to use the Settlement price slider along the range to understand what payouts will be at various Settlement prices.

Omen on xDai Chain

Over the past few months, Omen users have been asking for a way to use Omen without paying extraordinarily high gas fees on mainnet and the first solution is here. Omen is now also on xDai Chain, a popular EVM-compatible sidechain to Ethereum where the native currency of the chain is xDai (a representation of the USD-pegged DAI token). There is also an easy xDai TokenBridge that allows users to quickly get started on xDai Chain, and transaction costs are a small fraction (~1/5000th) of the cost of mainnet Ethereum transactions.

Omen users can start using Omen on xDai just by switching networks to xDai Chain. Users who are unfamiliar with how to access xDai Chain can find a how-to using MetaMask here. Omen on xDai provides an impressive user experience with trades happening quickly and cheaply, with the additional advantage of pricing markets in USD terms.

Embedded Reality.eth support

Without needing to go to Reality.eth, users can now contribute to finalizing categorical markets from within Omen.

When an Omen market reaches its Closing Date, it moves into a “Pending” state where the Outcome can be Finalized. Users and community members who want to participate in the process now have the ability to interact with Reality.eth from directly within the Omen interface. To help settle the market, a consumer can monitor the status of the settlement and also put a bond on a result. There is also a new button ‘Call Arbitrator” that brings the user to the place for this action if necessary.

The below picture shows how a user can Bond ETH on a chosen Outcome.

Native Ether support

This latest version for Omen now allows for the user to use ETH instead of having to use WETH on Omen mainnet. This improves the overall user experience, while Omen uses Contract Proxy Kits in the background to obfuscate the conversion of ETH to WETH and vice versa, achieving the smooth UX you have come to expect with top-notch Dapps.

Omen on xDai Chain also has this great improvement — users can use xDai (the native currency) in addition to using wxDai (wrapped xDai) when participating on Omen.

Looking Forward

Overall, the goal is for Omen to continue to be the community’s preferred and most decentralized prediction market platform.

You can access Omen directly via https://xdai.omen.eth/ if you are using a Web3 browser like MetaMask or Status Wallet. Your other option is to reach Omen via https://xdai.omen.eth.link/

Alternatively, you can access mainnet Omen at https://omen.eth.link/ and switch your MetaMask to the xDai network.

About DXdao: DXdao is a decentralized collective that builds and governs DeFi products. DXdao was spawned in May 2019 through a collaboration between Gnosis and DAOstack. Reputation (REP) is voting power in DXdao, and DXD is the financial token with a claim on profit from DXdao products.

DXdao products include Omen (prediction markets), Mesa (batch auction DEX), Swapr (governance-enabled AMM), and Rails (L2 payment app).
DXdao believes in governance and decentralization.

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