Introducing Veil

Announcing our seed round led by Paradigm and upcoming Mainnet launch on January 15, 2019

Today we’re announcing Veil to the world. Veil is a peer-to-peer prediction market and derivatives platform built on top of Augur, 0x, and Ethereum.

We’re proud to say we’ve raised our seed round led by Paradigm with participation from Sequoia Capital and 1confirmation.

Veil will be launching on Mainnet on January 15, 2019. You can sign up for an early Mainnet account now.

Learn more about Veil by browsing our website, following @veil on Twitter, or joining our Discord community.

About Veil

Veil is built on top of Augur, the leading prediction market protocol on Ethereum. We think Augur is the most exciting and sophisticated set of smart contracts being used today. Augur lets anyone create, trade in, and report on prediction markets.

Veil is designed to bring Augur mainstream. All markets listed on Veil are represented as Augur markets on Ethereum, and we’ve augmented the Augur experience in two meaningful ways:

1. Veil makes trading faster and cheaper. Ethereum transactions are slow, so we’ve used the 0x protocol to speed up trading and minimize the number of transactions you need to send. Veil order creation and cancellation happens off-chain, and Veil pays gas to persist trades to Ethereum.
2. Veil helps you get paid faster. Augur’s decentralized oracle system ensures markets are resolved correctly, and it’s a necessary component of a trustless network. But the finalization process can take weeks to complete. Veil introduces a feature for supported markets we call instant settlement. That means you can redeem your Augur shares for ETH as soon as the market expires. Veil has high confidence that the markets will be reported on and settled correctly, so we let you sell your Augur shares to Veil immediately at the reported price rather than waiting for finalization in Augur. Instant settlement is optional, but the idea is to let you choose your own level of trustlessness.

There are three ways to use Veil—we recommend trying them all out:

1. Veil, a streamlined UI designed for easy and fast trading. This is the default UI and is designed for accessibility and sharing.
2. Veil Pro, an exchange-like UI meant for sophisticated and frequent traders.
3. Veil API, our REST API for algorithmic or programmatic traders.

Our goal is to make Augur easy to use and ubiquitous. We foresee a not-so-distant future where millions of people create and trade in millions of markets. And we can’t wait to help make that a reality.

Mainnet launch: January 15, 2019

Veil will be launching on Ethereum’s Mainnet on January 15, 2019. Our alpha release has been live on Ethereum’s Kovan test network since September 2018. Try out the alpha now to get a sense for what’s to come.

Due to legal and regulatory considerations, Veil will first be launching in limited jurisdictions. The Veil platform is operated by Veil International, Ltd, a company in the Cayman Islands. The platform will not be available to users in the United States, Cuba, Syria, North Korea, the Crimea region, any OFAC-embargoed nations, or any other jurisdiction where applicable law would prohibit the user from trading derivatives or cryptoassets using the Veil platform.

Early signup live now

While trading will not be live until January 15, 2019, signup on Veil is now available. Get ready for Veil’s Mainnet release by creating and funding your Veil account now. You’ll be asked to enter an email address, verify your Ethereum address, and pick a username.

If you signed up for an account on the Kovan version of Veil, you can migrate that account to Mainnet by going here: https://app.veil.co/migrate.

Veil is a non-custodial platform, and we have no control over your funds or assets. To simplify the process of approving assets for trading, Veil makes use of Veil Ether (a fork of Wrapped Ether) and Virtual Augur Shares (wrapped Augur shares that are pre-approved for trading), as outlined on our blog.

To use Veil you will need to use an Ethereum wallet like Metamask on desktop or Coinbase Wallet on mobile. We recommend getting set up with your wallet now so you’re ready to start trading as soon as Veil launches in a week.

Supported markets

While eventually we plan to list millions of markets on Veil, only a few categories of markets will be immediately available at launch:

• Cryptocurrency derivatives. Veil will support leveraged versions of BTC, ZRX, and REP structured as 7 day scalar markets. These products make it easy to buy leveraged long or short exposure to popular cryptoassets.
• Ethereum network hedging products. Markets on Veil don’t need to just track prices—the same framework can be used to trade on any time-series. Veil will offer derivatives to trade on Ethereum’s gas price and hash rate, which will be useful hedging products for relayers to hedge their gas exposure or miners to hedge their hash rate risk.
• Grin markets. We’re personally really excited about Grin, and both Grin and Veil are scheduled to launch on the same day. Veil will support markets that track Grin’s price, hash rate, and important network events. Gain long or short exposure to Grin with a few clicks.
• Academy Awards markets. The Veil team watches a lot of movies, so we’re going to let you trade on who will win the 91st Academy Awards (February 24, 2019).

Have a market category you’re interested in that’s not yet listed? We will have a feature at launch to nominate an existing Augur market for listing. And we’ll eventually launch market creation tools to help anyone create high-quality markets and list them on Veil.

Veil seed round

In the Fall of 2018, we raised our seed round led by Paradigm with participation from Sequoia Capital and 1confirmation. We’re thrilled to be working closely with some of the most thoughtful, focused investors around. Sincere thanks to Charlie, Fred, Matt, Alfred, Nick, Richard, and Alok for your support and confidence.

Contact and support

We’re always happy to answer questions, hear feedback, or share ideas. Don’t hesitate to get in touch with us via email, Twitter, or Discord. Or check out our Frequently Asked Questions to learn more.