Prediction Markets
There are a ton of 'Prediction Market' platforms in crypto and I'm probably not even aware of all of them. These are some that are on my radar
- Augur
- Gnosis
- Omen
- Stox
- polymarket.com
- predix.network
- realitycards
- catnip1.netlify.app
- polkamarkets
- dublup.io
Vitalik Butering has been very vocal about being bullish on Predicton Markets (Read Prediction Markets: Tales from the Election. I, as a sports bettor, have honestly never seen much appeal in them so far as most of them are a complete mess, hard to actually use, extremely high fees, bad odds, no volume or liquidity, and overly complicated with often pointless things to predict centered around crypto.
Dublup.io
dublup.io is actually the first prediction market I gave a fair try given the fact that they run on the Hive Blockchain (which has excellent tech and just works properly for everyday users) and are trying to give the PAL token a proper use-case. It was released 3 weeks ago (See Announcing DublUp.io! The Prediction Market Platform You've Been Waiting For)
The main concept is that anyone can start a market (which costs a 100 PAL maker fee) where everyone who wants can pick a side on buying shares until a certain date. After that, shares can be traded until the expiration date. Those who have 10000 PAL staked can act as oracles receiving 4% of the total volume with the one making the market receiving 1% of the total value. 95% of the Hive on all sides combined get paid out to the winning shares.
From my experience, everything works properly as it is intended to work but there is a major flaw in the entire model witch just makes it completely useless for a Sports Bettor Like me...
Platform-Breaking Flaw
When you buy shares you basically have no idea what your odds will be which makes the prediction itself not so much a prediction on the event but a prediction on how many people will pick what side. Events during the period between when a market is created and when it closes also can have a major influence on the price. So unless you buy shares at the exact second before the market closes (assuming nobody else tries to do the same), you have no clue if some whale comes in crushing your odds or if some news will come leaving you with dead money or crushed odds compared to the time you took your bet.
Making proper predictions trying to earn from it outsmarting the market is all about knowing the odds you will get based on the information you have at the time you place your bet. Right now, the only way to do so on dublup.io is in the secondary market when no more extra shares can enter the pool. Since that secondary market is built upon the initial market which is broken, it will be hard to get there.
All of this of course unless I am completely wrong about it all. (Please convince me in the comments if that is the case!)
So as much as I like the fact that something as a prediction market is being built on Hive with a really well-chosen name and branding giving PAL a use case, right now it feels more like a gimmick that is fun to use as a toy to have some fun with at times. I'm sure there are things that can be done to overcome this major flaw and I look forward to the day it will be done so I can possibly use the platform to make predictions on events knowing the actual odds I'm betting at in advance regardless of where more money comes in.
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