Aggeus Market: permissionless prediction markets on bitcoin

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Aggeus Market: permissionless prediction markets on bitcoin - SuperTestnet github.com/supertestnet/aggeus_market

909 sats \ 12 comments \ @Scoresby 13h bitcoin

@supertestnet has been at work again on interesting things. This time he came up with a different way to do permissionless prediction markets on Bitcoin.

Currently, one could permissionlessly set up a bet about an outcome of a certain event using a DLC, but this is clunky as both sides of the bet need to do a lot of coordination to make sure it didn't expose either side to getting cheated (and they both have to trust the oracle to be honest).

Super proposes a way to introduce a non-custodial* coordinator who would facilitate such bets in a way that looks more like the prediction markets we are familiar with.

Here's a diagram of how the protocol works: https://supertestnet.github.io/aggeus_market/diagram.html

Here's a very long explainer: https://gist.github.com/supertestnet/7456c01f0333581794eb153f990a153d

And here below are a few of the trade-offs this protocol makes (and the reason I put a little star next to "non-custodial" up above):

The role of the Coordinator is non-custodial by most definitions, but each smart contract in Aggeus trusts an Oracle to be honest, and many (including me) think that means it is effectively custodial: the Oracle can collude with your counterparty to unfairly steal your money.

Also, in this protocol, the Coordinator can exploit the "free option problem" by design, and I think there are some who would consider that massively problematic, and effectively the same as giving him custody of user funds. (I would disagree with such an opinion, but I don't think it is ideal either.)

As for "full privacy," I don't think such a thing is possible. I believe he is saying he won't log user info, but that is a different thing than having "full privacy." Address balances are visible in my protocol, and ip addresses will probably leak to the server, and the protocol inherits all of the traceability of bitcoin's L1.

I think it is rather a long road from here to a working implementation, and that implementation will have serious tradeoffs when it is ready, and trust assumptions that users should carefully consider before use.

source

Here is a great video explainer of the concept:

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102 sats \ 9 replies \ @DarthCoin 13h

https://i.postimg.cc/1znc6wgH/here-we-go-again-gta.gif

yet another crap betting... people will never learn the lesson

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0 sats \ 6 replies \ @Scoresby OP 13h

Do you hold that all betting is a waste of time (immoral, bad -- what term would you use here?)

0 sats \ 5 replies \ @DarthCoin 13h

Yes, spend your sats only on important things in your life. REMINDER: sats are limited ! Why people always forget this important thing?

This is not anymore about being moral or not, that is another story.

Each sat represent a portion of your OWN energy you put to earn it. Spend it wisely on things that matter and help you gain back more energy to be able to earn again sats. Otherwise you are wasting yourself spending sats on totally useless crap.

When you spend a sat think about this: what will produce back this spending? Would this spending will help me in the future in some way? Betting does not produce anything, just scams and moving sats from one to another without any exchange of energy or even value.

When I buy an apple or a beer with my sats, I get in exchange some form of energy. A bet will give you back only lust, greed, pride, envy...

I though bitcoiners will be better men for this fucked up world... but seems that is not.

0 sats \ 4 replies \ @Scoresby OP 12h

Would you spend sats on insurance of some kind? eg home insurance, car insurance, health insurance

Insurance is not so far from a bet in my mind. And if I'm honest, I have always felt a little weird about insurance. Yet, it does serve a purpose.

I agree with you that sats are limited. But I also believe what a person does with their sats is up to them. So I welcome your criticism of betting and I'm open to being convinced that it's not worth my time. But the sats have nothing to do with it.

0 sats \ 3 replies \ @DarthCoin 12h

Nope. I closed all my insurances long time ago and I bought BTC. If something happen with me, I am totally responsible for my own actions. If I dei, I die, that's it, this is life. And that is what many people do not want to hear about: RESPONSIBILITY.

The only case where an insurance could be useful is in a contract. To be a clause in case of not fulfilling the duties of a party and the other party must pay for damages.

And I see some movements into this direction using Bitcoin too: https://privatelawsociety.net

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @Scoresby OP 12h

Well, for instance, what about this: I hire a contractor to come help me redo the siding on my chimney. I check to make sure they are bonded because if one of their workers falls off my roof, I don't want to have to pay for their hospital bills (I would only be willing to do that if I knew the person and had a sense of how careful they will be. But it's not reasonable for me to know every worker a contractor might hire).

This isn't quite like insurance, but it kinda is.

Here's another example: a fidelity bond on join market. Posting a fidelity bond is putting sats on the line despite the fact that you don't necessarily get sats in return for bonding them. You demonstrate that you are willing to risk the sats so that other people can trust you a little bit.

102 sats \ 1 reply \ @DarthCoin 12h

You make contracts with specific clauses. Any work done for you, you must have a contract, where you stipulate who is responsible for what. Contracting an insurance is nothing else than throwing the dead cat into another yard. If you say to the worker, ok we will not contract any 3rd party insurance but I will pay you a bit more, are you agree with that? If they say yes, is THEIR responsibility not yours. But stipulate that in a contract.

Read UCC - Universal Commercial Code. The whole world function based on UCC.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Solomonsatoshi 12h

Prediction markets have an obvious utility in measuring peoples perceptions and expectations. This is valuable information in any market it is applied to. It is not gambling in the pure sense but instead a process of understanding better how people understand the world around them and the changes that are occurring in it. While gambling is for the most part a losers game with the house generally profiting from peoples weaknesses, prediction markets are potentially useful mechanisms in creating more informed and open free markets.

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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @d01abcb3eb 13h

Yes, I understand this critique.

Although I for one do not gamble, I do find prediction markets quite interesting for gauging the development of current events. Of course, having skin in a game and benefiting from a specific outcome may yield some problems (c.f. e.g. Obituary tv series ;) ), but in a society where it gets increasingly difficult to gather data using surveys etc. (for different reasons), prediction markets may serve multiple purposes, of which not all are necessarily bad.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin 13h

You are just feeding the data brokers... and then you wonder why your meaningless life is controlled by some lizards.

GIVE THEM NOTHING!

115 sats \ 1 reply \ @Undisciplined 12h

Incentivizing honest oracles is the biggest problem, not the technology.

That's why I think this will always be coordinated through a centralized party that has a reputation to maintain and charges a small coordination fee.

42 sats \ 0 replies \ @Scoresby OP 12h

It does seem like reputation of a central market, spread across a large number of different individual predictions would help to make it so the oracle has no incentive other than veracity (or possibly lack of controversy).