Since we launched the public alpha of PlotX on Ethereum’s Kovan test network on August 4th 2020, we have been getting a lot of traction and immensely positive feedback.
We have also been receiving questions about PlotX and here we try to address some of the most frequently asked questions around PlotX. Below you will find answers to the questions we get asked most frequently, check if your questions are answered. Let us know if we missed anything.
How do I sign up on PlotX — metamask or email?
PlotX is a non-custodial prediction protocol. To participate in prediction markets created by the community, you may connect your Metamask wallet or any of the mobile wallets supported by WalletConnect (see the list here).
For users who wish to login via their emails, non-custodial wallets that offer CeFi Bridges like Portis may be integrated. Watch this space for more announcements.
The PlotX community upholds the DeFi ethos of autonomy, however, the community is also cognizant of the regulatory concerns around KYC / AML.
Watch this space for more announcements on how these challenges are solved.
What if I have an issue with the result of a market? Is there some way I can raise a dispute?
Dispute resolution is an important aspect of prediction markets but is also a complicated feature. There have been multiple attempts at creating decentralized judicial systems on Ethereum — and while the early contributors are cognizant of the importance of dispute resolution, the idea with PlotX was to stay away from markets that require subjective opinions at the time of market settlement, reducing the chances of a dispute.
PlotX, at the moment, provides the ability to create only those markets for which there can be a mathematical settlement. The rare chance of a dispute is when an Oracle fails to post the price of crypto assets at the time of market settlement.
In such a dispute scenario, the following workflow shall be followed by the protocol. This feature is still under development. Here’s the wireframe of the idea:
- Allow a dispute raising time (cooling period) after the market closes
- Any user raising a dispute needs to deposit a fee, in PlotX tokens
- There shall be a role called “Dispute Resolution Panel” in the PlotX on-chain governance with a majority of 70%.
- All Dispute Resolution Panel members will need to lock minimum stake in native tokens to act fair in the decision-making process and the panel shall be chosen by the community and can be changed via governance as well
- The decision of the panel shall be treated as final
- Disciplinary action can be taken on a Dispute Resolution Panel member via governance
PlotX leverages the Govblocks smart contracts that allow the PlotX community to follow a pragmatic approach to on-chain governance. The community can create multiple member roles and manage decision points pragmatically.
How is PlotX governed on-chain? Is there an advisory board? What are their powers?
PlotX is following a pragmatic on-chain governance approach.
Ideally, all potential actions can be defined by the code but the reality is much more complex and fall-back options are required in several circumstances. As such an Advisory Board will be set-up to facilitate decisions requiring interaction with the non-blockchain world as well as govern some of the more extreme scenarios.
Importantly, the Advisory Board has no custodial rights over the fund pool and cannot release funds to any particular person, with each Board member liable to be replaced at any time via the member voting process. On that path, at the time of launch on the mainnet, the community shall choose 5 advisory board members. These advisory board members shall have equal powers, to begin with.
As the community grows, the role of the advisory board shall diminish with a vision to provide full autonomy.
The 5 members can be replaced via on-chain governance at any time.
Which oracles are used in PlotX?
Chainlink & Provable are the two oracles being used in PlotX at the moment. Read along for details…
All prediction markets in PlotX are specifically related to the price of digital assets like BTC/USDT, ETH/USDT etc. This makes on-chain price discovery of assets a very important aspect of the PlotX protocol. PlotX needs price feeds for 2 reasons:
- To compute the odds of a prediction option — PlotX provides 3 prediction options for every prediction market in which odds are calculated. For example, in a market like “What will be the price of BTC/USDT in the next 1 hour?”, there are three prediction options as under:
- Option a) <$10500
- Option b) Between $10500-$10600
- Option c)>$10600
The odds of each of the above options are different. The calculation of the odds involves the Current Market Price of BTC (or any other crypto asset) as a factor.
Meaning, if the current market price is falling under Option c)(>$10600) then Option c)is relatively more expensive than others. This means BTC price is constantly needed on-chain.
Chainlink is used as a decentralized oracle for computing odds.
2. Settlement of market — Markets on PlotX are settled on-chain. At the moment, Provable feeds the asset price via Binance API, at the end of the market. However, this is susceptible to manipulation.
- A suggestion of the community has been to feed an average of multiple sources via Chainlink
- Watch this space for more announcements
How long has PlotX been in development? When’s the mainnet launch?
PlotX has been in development since Feb 2020 and was launched on the Kovan testnet in May 2020. The GitHub repo can be seen at: https://github.com/plotx/smart-contracts.
To ensure a seamless experience for the users, there was an extended test phase, where community feedback helped improve the product.
The announcements are now being made in different communities since the mainnet launch is nearing.
Given predictions can be made in ETH, what is the value proposition of the PlotX token?
PlotX is built by and for the Ethereum community. Ability to use all DeFi applications in ETH should be a right for the community. With this strong belief, the protocol has been designed in a way that people can predict using ETH and the PlotX native token.
The value proposition of the PlotX native token is as follows:
- Token Utility 1: Peer-to-peer commissions
— PlotX protocol follows an automated market making algo. Markets once initiated are automatically created in intervals of 1h, 1d and 1w. To create such markets on the PlotX protocol gas fee in ETH is required since the protocol runs on the Ethereum blockchain.
— For this purpose, the protocol requires a fee to run perpetually — this fee is taken either in ETH or in PLOT and is either used for paying gas fee for the creation of future markets or token buy back on DEXs. 50% of the ETH fees is used to buy back PLOT on DEXs. The remaining 50% of the ETH fees is used for paying the gas fees. PLOT fees, which is at 50% of the ETH fees, is burned and that puts a deflationary pressure.
— The buy back on DEXs result in more rewards being distributed to the active participants of the specific PlotX market, no matter they win or lose.
- Token Utility 2: Referral Mining- Building in virality by design
— Prediction markets are a way to sum opinions of many and capture what is known as the “wisdom of the crowd ”. To be able to achieve that, it is critical for PlotX to reach the masses. If the community is able to achieve that, a new version of information will be created that is driven by true market opinions.
— To reach the masses, the PlotX token provides virality by design via the Referral Bonus program.
— Users can refer other users, and mine referral rewards. Referral rewards are implemented by using a non-transferable $bPLOT token that is equal to $PLOT at all times, but only usable within the PlotX markets.
IMPORTANT: The referral program tokens, bPLOT, can only be used to participate in the prediction markets, and cannot be dumped on exchanges. By using bPLOT tokens, users can predict and mine more PLOT tokens for themselves.
- Token Utility 3: Community Mining: Wide distribution in communities
— Another important factor for the protocol to succeed is to attract relevant communities that would benefit from predictions. For example, the community of LINK holders.
— PlotX provides mineable Airdrop incentives for communities to start using the protocol
— Relevant communities, after passing through a governance vote, can mine airdrops on PlotX. Airdrop rewards are implemented by using a non-transferable $bPLOT token that is equal to $PLOT at all times, but only usable within the PlotX markets.
IMPORTANT: The mineable airdrop tokens, bPLOT, can only be used to participate in the prediction markets, and cannot be dumped on exchanges. By using bPLOT tokens, users can predict and mine more PLOT tokens for themselves.
- Token Utility 4: Play Mining: Stake & Play
— To bootstrap and encourage liquidity on the PlotX prediction markets, the users are incentivized to stake their PlotX tokens prior to participating in the prediction market.
— If they stake and play, then they get extra rewards in proportion to the amount staked wrt to the amount used to participate. If a player plays with 100 PLOT tokens and stakes 1000 PLOT tokens, separately, he/she gets 1.1x positions of a player who hasn’t staked. More positions lead to more rewards.
— The good part being, even if the user loses in the prediction market, they will not lose the staked PlotX tokens.
- Token Utility 5: Governance Mining
— The PlotX token also serves as a governance token. PLOT Token holders holding a certain minimum number of PLOTs will be eligible for voting on the whitelisted proposals. Mapping governance privileges viz. active participation of the user in the platform is under design.
— This includes dispute resolution, creation of new markets, implementing emergency pause and any other such decisions which shall result in a change in the smart contracts of PlotX
- Token Utility 6: Liquidity Mining
— The goal is to design the utility in a way that allows liquidity mining through staking. This is more of the generic staking viz. yield farming. This will enable players to stake their tokens and showcase sustainability to all stakeholders while also preventing dumping.
— This utility is in the design phase right now, with ongoing feedback from game theory experts, and the existing PlotX community. The plan is to release further details in due course.
Are there any liquidity mining/yield farming incentives?
Yes, this is explained in the Token Utility 4: Liquidity Mining with Staking (above). The aim is to release this feature alongside the v1 release. In case that deadline is missed, the feature will be put to a proposal via governance.
How do you integrate Ethereum? Is everything on-chain? Or are the order books off-chain?
The entire protocol, and it’s functioning is completely on-chain and the Oracles used for odds calculation and market settlement is publicly declared with each market.
PlotX protocol follows an Automated Market Making algorithm. There’s no manual / off-chain market making. The logic to determine the value of a particular market option is in the smart contracts.
This allows the smart contract to do the market making just like Uniswap, without any order book.
Are you using any L2 scaling solutions or planning to do so?
L2 scaling is kind of obvious for a project like PlotX. With the Automated Market Making algorithm, it becomes very easy to run perpetual prediction markets but that also means that the underlying infra needs to scale.
We’ve been looking at various L2 solutions and MATIC has been one of our preferred choices so far.
Being on L2, it will allow PlotX to run shorter time frame markets as well. For example 5 mins, 15 mins — which are interesting from a retail perspective. It will also solve the Gas issues that Eth faces at the moment.
Here’s the loose idea on how it will be implemented:
- Stake assets on Ethereum mainnet, then transfer assets to L2 side-chain
- All markets are opened and settled on the L2 side-chain.
- When a user wishes to exit, they convert L2 side-chain assets to mainnet assets.
Read more about it here: PlotX joins hands with MATIC for L2 scalability
How is PlotX different from projects like Augur, Synthetix (Binary Options) and HXRO?
We’re all in this together. Synthetix, Augur and others have done a great job at kick-starting the innovation behind prediction markets, but there’s a lot to innovate on.
PlotX follows a very different approach towards prediction markets. The ability for Automated Market Making, Risk Spread Mechanism, Liquidity Mining and Reward Schema are some areas that differentiate PlotX from both new and old incumbents in this space.
For a detailed comparative table, visit our Wiki page by:
👉👉 clicking here.👈👈
