A competing prediction marketplace?

[dengorbachev]

Pardon my ignorance, but what prevents a clever marketing guy from copying Truthcoin code and setting up his own prediction marketplace?

If nothing prevents it, does that mean that winning prediction marketplace will be decided by marketing rather than technology?

[zack]

You can't maintain software without help from developers.
The person who wrote the code is the very best for maintaining the code.
Hiring other developers will probably be more expensive than hiring the author.

[dengorbachev]

Does anything else, besides ongoing investment in developers, prevent the marketing guy from setting up his own prediction marketplace?

[psztorc]

Pardon my ignorance, but what prevents a clever marketing guy from copying Truthcoin code and setting up his own prediction marketplace?

If nothing prevents it, does that mean that winning prediction marketplace will be decided by marketing rather than technology?

The VoteCoins must be digitally-scarce to maintain their function as reputation. Similar to Bitcoin, it will be in everyone's interest to maintain this network effect: if it cannot be maintained, there will be no prediction markets for anyone.

[dengorbachev]

Imagine two Bitcoin networks are started simultaneously. Which one wins?

[zack]

Nick Szabo wrote this essay about the history of competing currencies: http://szabo.best.vwh.net/shell.html

[psztorc]

Imagine two Bitcoin networks are started simultaneously. Which one wins?

If they are exactly the same, then the one with better marketing wins.

But, to zack's point, the people who wrote the original software will always understand it the best. If another version just mindlessly copies it, when problems inevitably arise, the original author has the option to destroy any network he doesn't like, while fixing his own version.