Zeitgeist To Integrate aUSD Decentralized Stablecoin To Power Its Prediction Markets and Futarchy Platform

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Karura

4 min readMar 23, 2022

We are excited to announce Zeitgeist will be joining the Karura ecosystem! Zeitgeist will incorporate the utility of aUSD in their prediction market platform, allowing users to participate in prediction markets without having exposure to the price volatility of cryptocurrencies.

Meet Zeitgeist

Zeitgeist is an evolving blockchain for prediction markets and futarchy (a type of governance that uses prediction markets to arrive at a consensus). The core functionality of Zeitgeist is a decentralized protocol for creating, trading, and resolving prediction markets.

Zeitgeist has chosen to integrate with Karura to bring aUSD, the decentralized, multi-collateral stablecoin to users of their prediction markets. aUSD, or Acala USD, is the native decentralized stablecoin of the Polkadot and Kusama ecosystem.

Prediction Markets Explained

Prediction markets are financial markets that trade based on the outcome of a future event. They can be a useful tool in aggregating beliefs and perceptions of a large number of people on a particular topic with an unknown future outcome. Users who participate in prediction markets are essentially betting on the outcome of a future event. If they are correct, and the outcome they voted for happens, they can profit from their prediction.

Zeitgeist And aUSD

The majority of Zeitgeist’s growing user base is expected to come from outside of the blockchain ecosystem, making it crucial the user experience is frictionless. Today, Zeitgeist’s Beta App has only operated with a single native asset, ZBS, (Zeitgeist Battery Station — the testnet token), with each possible market outcome being denominated against it. New users are likely hesitant to participate in the selection of markets due to the risk of the volatile cryptocurrency prices, creating a considerable hurdle for the growth of their platform.

The integration with Karura brings the utility of aUSD, a decentralized, multi-collateral stablecoin, to Zeitgeist’s prediction markets. aUSD is designed to maintain a soft-peg relative to the US Dollar, allowing users to transact, trade, and facilitate services using aUSD, shielding users from the price volatility customary to the crypto asset economy.

More Pairs on Zeitgeist

Even though their platform is still in its infancy, the Zeitgeist app aims to interact with users’ Polkadot.js wallet extension, and users can select which token they want to denominate their predictions in. With each new asset added to their app, there will be a host of new pairs created (each market will have at least two: ZTG/EGNO, ZTG/EGYES). The pairs represent the potential outcomes of the prediction market.

Looking at the above example, EGNO represents “Example Market Prediction Result is NO”, while EGYES would obviously mean “Example Market Prediction Result is YES.” These tokens would be for a binary prediction market such as “Will Donald Trump run for president in 2024?”.

By incorporating aUSD into Zeitgeist, the platform economy increases by creating additional pools per prediction market covering various outcome-currency pairs for aUSD, like aUSD/EGNO and aUSD/EGYES, ultimately leading to increased liquidity in each market.

More Zeitgeist Onramps

Furthermore, this integration helps Zeitgeist in their quest to open free-flowing gateways to their ecosystem. The Karura DEX will be a pivotal platform for users to allocate funds to their application in order to take part in the numerous markets, where users can access their KSM on the Karura application, swap their KSM for ZTG or aUSD, and send those assets directly from the Karura app to the Zeitgeist app.

What’s Next

The Karura and Zeitgeist teams will keep the community updated on the integration of Zeitgeist with aUSD, including more education on how to transfer aUSD to the Zeitgeist application, how to participate in prediction markets, along with a host of additional helpful content. You can follow along on the Karura or Zeitgeist Twitter accounts, or any of the social links below.

If you’re a team looking to build on Karura or looking for support from Acala Grants, please get in touch with our team to chat about how we can support you.

About Zeitgeist

Zeitgeist is an evolving blockchain for prediction markets and the futarchy form of governance.

Zeitgeist is building an ecosystem for prediction markets whereby participants will be able to access an abundance of prediction markets in an unstoppable, robust, and secure manner. All the while, the future of the chain is determined by the Zeitgeist community via futarchy.

Echoing the rapid pace, advanced tech, and open governance system of the Kusama network on which Zeitgeist is built, Zeitgeist’s ambition is to shake up the world of on-chain prediction markets by tearing down barriers, expanding options, and incorporating futarchy; a governance mechanism based on prediction markets.

You can read more about Zeitgeist and their vision here.

About Karura & Acala

Acala is an Ethereum-compatible smart contract platform optimized for DeFi and scaling DApps to Polkadot. The blockchain has built-in DeFi protocols for application developers to leverage, including a decentralized stablecoin (Acala Dollar — aUSD), a trustless staking derivative (liquid DOT — LDOT), and a decentralized exchange.