Paying the oracle

[zack]

The oracle needs to be over-paid, or else they will steal.

Paying the oracle a trading fee wont work, because any altcoin can participate in gambling without paying the trading fee.

One way to solve this is to crowdfund a payment for the oracle before the oracle agrees to provide judgement over a decision.
That way oracles will only judge over things that pay a high enough fee.

[zack]

Ethereum already has bitcoin relay. If hivemind was very popular, they would participate without paying fees.

[psztorc]

Yes, Ethereum and Hivemind (and Augur) cannot co-exist. Only one can exist.

Fortunately for me, Ethereum and Augur are badly designed, and live in a toxic no-criticism environment.

[zack]

There is a whole class of altcoins that Hivemind can't coexist with.
That is the same thing as saying: "There is a whole class of attacks that Hivemind is vulnerable to".

If you used dominant assurance contracts instead of trading fees, then you could coexist with any other blockchain.
You would welcome and encourage the existence of "parasite contracts". It allows your blockchain to specialize on judgement, and someone else can specialize on trading.

One major way we could improve trading: We should have batch auctions with uniform pricing.

[zack]

Augur has a very simple solution to this problem.
The person who proposes a decision to the oracle needs to pay money to the oracle.
Even if there are zero trades and zero trading fees, the oracle still gets paid to judge on the outcome.

[zack]

It looks like augur is prepared to use dominant assurance contracts to gather the funds to pay oracle.
Their oracle can get paid both ways.

[psztorc]

> Even if there are zero trades and zero trading fees, the oracle still gets paid to judge on the outcome.

Not enough.

[zack]

> Even if there are zero trades and zero trading fees, the oracle still gets paid to judge on the outcome.

Not enough.

You can set the funding target of a dominant assurance contract arbitrarily high.

[MattGoldenberg]

Yes, this is the exact reply I had to Paul about the attack he mentioned, but I'll reply here instead.

I don't see this as needing to be solved by the oracle btw, outside of charging enough.  Industries will implement this as a fair trade contract - If everyone in their industry doesn't pay in to get the information, then all of the individual actors get paid back, and the information doesn't get into the blockchain. This stops any individual company an industry from getting an advantage over the others in that industry. 

[zack]

It sounds like Matt would prefer assurance contracts to dominant assurance contracts.
I am pretty sure that dominant assurance contracts will be easier to coordinate, and harder to censor.
Both types should be allowed.

I agree that the oracle doesn't need to participate in the assurance contract. It is for the purchasers to use.

The idea of everyone getting refunds for the price of their shares is interesting.
Augur is planning on doing this, so it is an idea we should explore. When the Augur oracle's result for a decision gets repeatedly challenged, the rep gets copied into 2 flavors. One flavor where the decision is true, and the other where it is false.
Is it actually safe to give everyone refunds at the current price? or can this be manipulated?