Augur, a blockchain-based predictions platform, has opened to the general public. The platform becomes the “world’s first” decentralized prediction-market platform.
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Augur was created by the Forecast Foundation[2], a not-for-profit corporation whose goal is to build “open-source, public forecasting tools.”
Prediction markets — which are a general type of financial market — have long been dominated by the likes of Paddy Power[3] and DraftKings, which are centrally owned, operated and regulated.
This centralization causes all kinds of problems, such as restrictions for users in certain regions, higher associated costs to use and limitations on the types of markets that users could create.
A key differentiator for Augur is its global and decentralized nature[4].
With the launch of the platform, anyone, anywhere, can launch their own events and bet on them. This also allows the platform to create a higher level of liquidity and volume, as well as a diversity of topics not typically covered by traditional prediction markets.
Beyond trading, Augur also solves a key problem by moving “real world information” onto Ethereum’s blockchain in a secure manner where results can’t be altered.
Vitalik Buterin, founder of Ethereum and advisor to the Forecast Foundation, while commenting on the launch of Augur’s decentralized platform said, “I have been excited about the possibility of prediction markets on Ethereum for a long time, and I’m pleased to see Augur being a leader in releasing such a sophisticated system into the wild.”
Furthermore, the platform ensures that events in the markets are accurately reported on. It does this by incentivizing users to report and correct “markets that have been incorrectly reported on” in exchange for “fees from the market” and a chance to earn more Reputation (REP[5]) tokens —
