New Ethereum prediction market Gnosis enters beta testing phase

This week, a new prediction market platform will be launched on the Ethereum network.

The project, called Gnosis, will allow users to bet on future events, whether it’s a sporting event or an election outcome. However, the platform’s creators also envision Gnosis becoming a platform for predicting all kinds of events.

The current example the team is working on is a simple platform called Hunchgame, which uses Gnosis as the basis for a prediction market.

In the past, centralized prediction markets have often been shut down by governments or have been unable to reach critical mass due to regulatory restrictions.

And through a decentralized network and the idea of ​​uncensorable money, this experiment will be able to continue without interference from outsiders.

Prior to this, another project, Augur, was also conducting similar experiments. Augur has now launched a beta test version and has conducted a crowdfunding campaign. Some observers believe that the two companies have formed a competitive relationship.

However, there are also some technical differences between the two platforms. For example, Gnosis and Augur have many differences in the way they use oracles.

Augur uses many oracles to determine the outcome of an event, while the mechanism used by Gnosis only uses one or a few oracles to provide the results.

In Gnosis’ view, this feature will lead to faster verification, and if any oracle disagrees with the conclusion, a large number of oracles will be introduced as a “last resort”.

Gnosis founder Martin Köppelmann further stated that Gnosis has features that Augur does not have, such as a long-term plan to incorporate futarchy (an experimental form of prediction markets used by governments).

(Gnosis founder Martin Köppelmann)

Launch Details

It is reported that earlier this year, Gnosis began running on the Ethereum platform, but for testing of its new system, the Gnosis team will transfer the project to an internal test network.

This time, they will roll out a revised version of the software in which content will no longer be tightly controlled by administrators.

Matt Liston, head of decentralized autonomous strategy at Gnosis, told CoinDesk:

“Anyone can sign up and use this oracle marketplace. This is a very, very big thing. Now anyone can build a marketplace, whereas before, these were functions that only administrators had.”

For the beta software launch, Köppelmann said his team had prepared a number of questions, including topics that have been hot in the bitcoin community recently.

Questions raised were mainly focused on the Bitfinex incident (the bitcoin exchange was hacked earlier this month), but others mentioned when much-anticipated bitcoin features such as segregated witness would be launched.

Of course, users can also submit issues they care about.

Whether Gnosis can grow into the first widely used decentralized prediction market remains to be seen.

Prediction market pioneer Robin Hanson has said the reasons why these markets have not been widely adopted may be more complicated than industry innovators believe.