Augur prediction market project raises $600,000 in crowdfunding

Today, the Augur project launched crowdfunding for REP tokens. As of the time of writing, 1,966 bitcoins (250 USD) and 100,337 ethers (1.4 USD) have been raised, totaling more than $600,000. Augur crowdfunding bitcoin address: 3N6S9PLVizPuf8nZkhVzp11PKhTiuTVE6R

What are prediction markets?

Prediction markets are similar to stock markets, where users can buy and sell stocks. However, unlike stock markets, which speculate on the future value of a company, prediction markets exist to determine the probability of the outcome of future events. For example, a prediction market might ask "Will Jeb Bush be elected president of the United States in 2016?" If the price of the "Yes" stock is $0.43, this can be interpreted as a 43% chance that Bush will be elected president. A large number of economic and academic studies have found that prediction markets are one of the most accurate prediction tools in the world, especially when conducted with real money and with sufficient liquidity and trading volume (which is the problem with traditional prediction markets).

What is Augur?

Augur is a decentralized prediction market platform built on the Ethereum platform. With Augur, anyone can create a prediction market for any topic of interest (such as who will win the US election) and provide initial liquidity, which is a decentralized process. In return, the creator of the market will receive half of the transaction fees from the market. Ordinary users can predict and buy and sell stocks of events on Augur based on their own information and judgment, such as the US presidential election. When the event occurs, if you predict correctly and hold stocks with the correct results, you will receive $1 per share, so your profit is $1 minus the original purchase cost. If you predict incorrectly and hold stocks with the wrong results, you will not receive a reward, so your loss is the original purchase cost.

Many factors make Augur different from traditional prediction markets, but the most important difference is that Augur is global and decentralized. Anyone around the world can use Augur, which will bring unprecedented liquidity, trading volume, and a variety of perspectives and topics that traditional exchanges have never had.

What is Reputation (REP)?

Reputation (REP) is the token of the Augur system. REP can be seen as a "point" associated with a person's public and private addresses, divisible and tradable like Bitcoin. However, this is the only property similar to cryptocurrencies. If Bitcoin simulates gold, then REP can be said to simulate reputation.

Augur's decentralization is also reflected in the event result reporting mechanism. In traditional centralized prediction markets, when an event occurs, the event result is determined by a centralized person or organization. In contrast, Augur adopts a decentralized event result reporting mechanism, thereby introducing the REP token. Whenever an event occurs, many REP holders report the event results. However, ordinary users do not need to hold REP to make predictions and transactions on Augur.

REP holders are expected to report every eight weeks on the results of randomly selected expiration events/predictions in the system. Holders only need to choose from three options: yes (the event happened), no (the event did not happen), and ambiguous/unethical (if the holder believes the result is ambiguous, the report can be postponed to the next period, before the event is closed without a resolution.) Reporters have two weeks to make a report. We expect this process to be very fast, but when Augur is popular, this process may be completed in an hour.

If a reputation holder does not report the outcome of an event assigned to them within the two-week voting period, or reports dishonestly, PCA will redistribute the reputation of lazy, dishonest holders to frequent and honest reporting holders. Only honest reputation holders will receive transaction fees from each voting process.

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