Fairlay

[koeppelmann]

Hi,

I am the co-Founder of Fairlay.com a yet still centralized prediction market.
However, we started working on the site (little bit more then a year ago) because we are obsessed by PMs and blockchain tech. Our approach has been to set something up running and we will decentralize the underlying mechanics (money storage, order book, resolution) step by step.

Thus we follow everything what is happening in this space and will use services as soon they could replace a part of our site. (like realitykeys, multi-sigsolutions,...)

A presentation about the current state (from our view) of decentralized PMs is given here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZO1JQtMang
I don't think that it contains really new stuff for member of this board...

If truthcoin would exist we would not hesitate to build on it.


Our general status - we have around 1700 registered users (even if it is not necessary to register). We had the most prediction volume during the last 2 weeks of the FIFA World Cup even if we build our site with mainly predictions on politics and Bitcoin related events in mind. We all know that a betting exchange like betfair or a PM like intrade have the same underlying mechanism but they still attract different user. In the end user used to sport betting still found it easier.

That been said - from our experience so far our main obstacle is user not understanding the site and not being not decentralized.

[zack]

Do you use a market scoring rule like LMSR, or do you pair up people for bets like intrade?

A community like you have built is _vital_ for truthcoin's adoption. Thank you so much for your willingness to experiment.

[koeppelmann]

Thanks - we are absolute open to share our experience or build upon things as soon as they are ready. (Could be parts like a distribution of the orderbook or just a distributed database of the events (in theory we could alter them - and this would be avoided)

Regarding matching: we use the same mechanism like intrade or betfair. People can basically place orders with a quantity and a price - and we match them.
However, we have struggle with having enough liquidity for this model. At least we do not accept all new event suggestion since we don't want to end up with mostly illiquid markets.

Our next step to address that issue is to provide an API (shame on us, we did not have one from the beginning) for market makers. We are already in contact with a few. However, they will do it mainly on topics where they can fetch decent odds from another source (like sport bets (-> other bookmakers), future bitcoin price (-> current bitcoin price + simple mathematical model) , difficulty (-> current + model))

For other event where it is only about expert knowledge (https://www.fairlay.com/predict/registered/new/mark-karpeles-charged-criminal-offense/) it might be indeed a better solution to implement some market scoring rule.

[psztorc]

I enjoyed your talk a great deal. Thank you very much for mentioning my project.

I noticed that you couldn't really explain Truthcoin to an audience-member who asked. In my new whitepaper there are two figures in particular which greatly clarify the idea.

I would have finished the paper by now, but I unfortunately face many distractions (and a full time job and friends and family that I like).

More practically, I would be happy to join you for your next presentation, or as part of a "prediction market panel" or something.

[psztorc]

I enjoyed your talk a great deal. Thank you very much for mentioning my project.

I noticed that you couldn't really explain Truthcoin to an audience-member who asked. In my new whitepaper (released probably on Sunday, even though it is almost done, I have a busy weekend planned) there are two figures in particular which greatly clarify the idea.

I would have finished the paper by now, but I unfortunately face many distractions (and a full time job and friends and family that I like).

More practically, I would be happy to join you for your next presentation, or as part of a "prediction market panel" or something.

[koeppelmann]

Actually I need to apologize for the part about truthcoin.

I had a very vague idea of truthcoin at this point in time and thus I could not really answer any question or phrase the project in a accurate way. I promise I will present truthcoin way better if I should talk about it another time.

More practically, I would be happy to join you for your next presentation, or as part of a "prediction market panel" or something.

That would be very nice! I do not know yet about a concrete opportunity but you would be more then welcome to join a session of the New York Bitcoin developer meetup to give a talk about truthcoin: http://www.meetup.com/BitDevsNYC/ It is every two weeks on Tuesdays.

[psztorc]

Actually I need to apologize for the part about truthcoin.

I had a very vague idea of truthcoin at this point in time and thus I could not really answer any question or phrase the project in a accurate way. I promise I will present truthcoin way better if I should talk about it another time.

More practically, I would be happy to join you for your next presentation, or as part of a "prediction market panel" or something.

That would be very nice! I do not know yet about a concrete opportunity but you would be more then welcome to join a session of the New York Bitcoin developer meetup to give a talk about truthcoin: http://www.meetup.com/BitDevsNYC/ It is every two weeks on Tuesdays.

That sounds fun. Perhaps I can make the one Sept 9th?

Page 31 of the latest whitepaper (1.3), has "Figure 4", which may help you explain Truthcoin under duress.