Augur, a platform for predictive markets based on intelligent contracts, launched its main network recently and one of its first debates has jumped into the public opinion of the blockchain ecosystem. Being a space where you can place bets on the predictions proposed by your participants, Augur allows you to obtain profits by guessing in terms of events of different character. And although many are not surprised, now this has included murders and other crimes.
Given this possibility, the platform team established a type of ethical vote that works to denounce those predictions or proposals that violate good principles.
Technology journalist Jack Morse shared some of the curious bets that can already be found in Augur, highlighting the one that raises whether Donald Trump would be killed in 2018.
On the other hand, the user Matt Odell pointed out that already the markets of assassinations and terrorist attacks have begun to run in Augur, although the project had taken its forecasts counting on four types of votes: yes, no, indeterminate and unethical , to which users should use this last option to draw attention to the market that is made.
With those statements he continues to state that Augur is "the kind of project that should be launched without a centralized shutdown switch", meaning that this platform could be deactivated centrally by the company's bosses behind the network, Jeremy Gardner and Joey Krug , who is referred to in another tweet, saying that the US government should threaten them with spending time in jail for allowing the creation of these markets to occur.
However, this shutdown button was already deactivated, as WhalePanda points out, so this network is already much more decentralized.
In this regard, a few days ago, Odell referred to the case of Ross Ulbritch, who was running the centralized market for illegal goods from the Darknet known as Silk Road, and who was sentenced on seven counts to two life terms in prison.
It is worth mentioning that one of the browsers used to know the markets of Augur is predictions.global , which, according to Odell, is censoring the lists. Another alternative is to use the Augur client or visit augur.casino . For its part, the influential bitcoiner Jameson Lopp pointed out the possibility of a bifurcation of Augur that does not include the ethical vote , thus creating a new platform with illicit or unethical purposes.
The signaling of Lopp revolves around the open character of most blockchain platforms , which allows the base code of a project to be freely taken and adapted to the specific needs of another user base to create a new network ( bifurcation ), where the rules would be different.
The debate is open as to the ability of communities to decide what is ethical and what is not and how their decision may or may not precipitate the fulfillment of a prediction. There is a possibility that once the market and user base increase, the number of predictions will increase in such a way that it may not be so easy to detect those with despicable intentions. This would be a point to improve on the part of this project: the timely detection of illicit predictive markets.
In addition, there is a latent risk that predictions will be forced to be fulfilled by agents external to the market or the factors that legitimately must intervene in them. That is, someone, for example, murders another person or executes a crime to collect the tokens spread for winning the bet.
In theory, this should be possible if, for example, a person is challenged to perform a certain task and bets are placed around the realization of that fact. The problem arises when there is no ethics involved.
That's when the regulating entities could enter the game , although they have been in charge of regulating the various aspects of the ICO and the cryptocurrency trade, they still do not have scope on the ethical and moral aspects of the use of this technology, something that could begin to manifest in the coming months and years as they begin to put online those blockchain that propose different applications to payment methods and finance.
