The Augur platform is building momentum

There are now over 700 prediction markets finalised on the Augur platform since its ramp-up in July 2018.

Augur is a cryptocurrency platform that provides a decentralized predictions market for asset speculation. This, of course, can include markets for a variety of predictions like sports and politics, all the way to ‘time of death’ markets (or assassination markets).

In simple terms, you use the Augur platform to make predictions, using Augur’s native token to power your guesses. If your forecast is correct, you are rewarded. What distinguishes Augur from a traditional betting market is that no centralised single party sits in the middle, meaning that users are likely to pay lower prices (on average).

REP acts as the utility token to give liquidity on the Ethereum decentralized prediction market Augur. It has a market cap of over $86 million at the time of writing.

A number of markets

We can currently see over 12,500 ETH (valued at $1.3 million) locked into around 900 active markets. This figure has been rising at a tremendous pace since launch, with a USD peak of close to $3 million in mid-November.

The current largest active market on Augur asks: “Which party will control the House after the 2018 US Midterm Election?” The market settles in 6 days and has an open interest of $625,000. Based on the current spread between the different outcomes (Democrats, Republicans, or tied), the platform currently gives a 96% chance that this market will settle for the Democrats.

When diving deeper into the markets, you can see that there are currently 23 active markets with over 10 ETH worth of liquidity. On the predictions.global website, you can filter markets by sports, cryptocurrency, or finance categories.

Market fees still low

Earnings on the platform are still low – we have only seen 17 ETH collected so far in market creation fees. The fees collected may be low, but the platform is still looking to incentivise users and market makers.

When you do the math to find out the average amount of fees for each market, you find that it costs under $3 on average in creation fees to open each decentralised market.

According to the latest data from curiousgiraffe.io, we have seen a recent drop-off in the contract volume, from 13,500 down to 12,500 ETH currently in the contract. However, the platform has come a long way from the 5,000 ETH contract volume average for September and October.

It seems like a positive start for the platform after nearly two years in development, time will tell – but let’s hope the bull market continues for speculation on the Augur platform.