PreSaga — The culmination of Meridian’s dawn

It is with great satisfaction and pride we introduce the beta version of our first community-voted dapp, PreSaga.

Published in

Meridian Network

6 min readJan 10, 2021

As mentioned before, we decided to release a test version of PreSaga as a means of getting and applying worthy community feedback before deploying the final/mainnet version, as well as ensuring its integrity and security. This decision also came as a result of our community’s wish to anticipate PreSaga’s release date. PreSaga will be running on Rinkeby until mainnet release. We estimate mainnet release to happen late Q1/early Q2, although this is highly dependent on PreSaga’s beta adoption.

Where can I find PreSaga?

You can find PreSaga at http://presagabeta.meridian-network.co/ or by pressing the “PreSaga (beta)” button at the top of https://meridian-network.co. It is always a good idea to bookmark http://presagabeta.meridian-network.co/ and refrain from following links from untrusted sources. This will ensure you are entering the real PreSaga.

What is the Rinkeby Network?

Rinkeby is an Ethereum test network. Testnets are typically used in early-mid stages of the projects to later ensure a smooth launch on the mainnet. Rinkeby is a totally different blockchain than the Ethereum mainnet. As such, expect the addresses to be different and remember: transactions done on the Rinkeby network do not transpose to the mainnet and currency on testnets is valueless. The Meridian team will always provide you with test ETH and test LOCK (LOCKr) for you to test our products. Stats for the Rinkeby testnet can be viewed here.

I want to try it!

Great! All you need to do is reach out to one of our Telegram admins and provide them with your ETH address. Within the same day we will make sure to send over enough Rinkeby ETH and LOCKr for you to fully test out PreSaga’s capabilities.

Our admins are @SandyBees, @notmuchwbu and @Drjtotherescue.

Connecting to PreSaga on the Rinkeby Network

Wallet software gives you the option to choose which network you are connecting to. PreSaga will warn you if you are trying to connect before changing to the Rinkeby testnet on your wallet. Please refer to the video below for more details:

Always be aware which network you are connecting to. Your storage of addresses will be different according to which network you are connecting to. Always be aware and don’t forget to change back to the Mainnet when you’re done testing!

The LOCKr token

Rinkeby’s LOCK token, or LOCKr token, is a copy of the original token on the mainnet. Does this mean that you need to have LOCK tokens in order to receive LOCKr tokens? No. The contract on Rinkeby has a completely independent state. Our team will provide you with LOCKr.

The different symbol is there to remind you that you are spending fake tokens on the testnet and that these are not worth any real money. Every transaction on PreSaga uses the LOCKr testnet token.

Obtaining Rinkeby Ether and LOCKr

You will need Rinkeby Ether to cover gas costs and LOCKr to actually participate in PreSaga’s markets. The meridian team will always give them to you for free. There will be a faucet in the future, putting testnet currencies at the reach of a single click. For now, you can go to our official telegram or discord channel and our admins will be happy to help you get some testnet Ether and LOCKr.

From now onwards (including PreSaga itself), we will refer to the LOCKr token as just LOCK, for simplicity sake.

Entering markets

Ok, you are connected to the Rinkeby network and have some test Ether and LOCKr. This is how you go at buying your first shares in a market:

What makes the price go up and down?

The price of a share in a given market is determined by the Automated Market Maker who facilitates the trades. An Automated Market Maker is a contract on the blockchain that uses a mathematical model to adjust the prices to supply and demand. And that’s exactly what drives the price up and down: the more people buy an outcome in a market, the more its price will rise. Selling will make the price drop. Furthermore, the less liquidity there is, the more the price responds to buy/sell operations. This is undesirable because it results in bigger slippage and poorer user experience.

What do I want shares for?

Two reasons:

1. You can trade them back at a better price and make a profit.

2. You can redeem winning shares for 1 LOCK each. After a market closes, an outcome will be assigned as winner. If you have shares of the winning outcome, you can redeem them for exactly 1 LOCK each. That’s how you profit from accurate predictions. Share price is set between 0 LOCK and 1 LOCK. You redeem at 1 LOCK per share. For example: say you buy 100 shares at an average of 0.63LOCK each and you win. You will redeem these 100 shares for 100 LOCK in total, scoring a revenue of 0.37 LOCK per share.

What about liquidity?

Liquidity is yet another way you can profit with PreSaga. We recommend you explore trading first and carefully experiment with adding liquidity after. This is an advanced feature.

Because there is the risk of losing tokens when providing liquidity, users who provide liquidity to a market maker are entitled to a fee every subsequent buy/sell transaction in that market . You can lose tokens when the price starts to skew too much to one side so it is very important you remove liquidity if a prediction market starts being very one-sided. You will learn more about liquidity as you use the PreSaga Beta.

I removed all the liquidity I added, but only got a fraction.

This can happen when the price is very skewed to one side. You have incurred in impermanent loss. This means your liquidity was depleted by market users buying only one type of share. If you look closely at your share balances you will see that your shares increased, even though you only clicked to remove liquidity! This is because the market maker no longer has all the liquidity to give back to you, so it gives you the corresponding amount in what it has: shares of the outcome no one is buying, which you can still sell for LOCK or redeem at expiration should they end up as the winning ones.

I added an amount of liquidity, but it shows only a fraction.

When you add liquidity to a market maker, you are increasing the availability of the assets in it. This means the market maker takes your LOCK and converts it to shares to satisfy future trades. At PreSaga, we use a fixed product market maker, which means the mathematical equation of fixed product must be respected. Because of that, in some situations, the market maker won’t be able to take in all the liquidity you provide, and will give you the excess amount in shares. These shares are credited to your balance on that market. The only time a market maker will be able to take in all your liquidity is when the price balance is exactly fifty-fifty and the number of shares it owns are exactly the same. For example, right after a market is created.

A few updates/releases coming up within the next few months:

Meridian’s in-house faucet webpage for both Rinkeby ETH and LOCK
PreSaga’s mobile version release
Meridian Github update
Potential updates deriving from community feedback
PreSaga’s mainnet release

We thank you all for all the support provided, and we hope PreSaga meets your expectations. Please make sure to provide any and all feedback on bugs/improvements relating to PreSaga to our admin team on Telegram.

Talk to you guys soon!

The Meridian team