psztorc / truthcoin

Trustless and Decentralized Bitcoin Prediction Marketplace

Truthcoin: Decentralized Bitcoin Prediction Markets

This is the theoretical work behind the actual C++ implementation here.

Summary

Truthcoin is my ambitious project to create a trustless P2P prediction-marketplace. This is possible because, unlike most marketplaces, the end product of a prediction market (PM) is information. Bitcoin adds the second piece of the puzzle: the exchange of value. The end result is the first of its kind: a market for actual prediction-commodities, which have a value based on their accuracy and not based on the behavior of any administrator, rival trader, or counterparty.

Traditional PMs have been persecuted much in the same way as e-cash systems, and current Bitcoin alternatives require the user to trust the operator to:

1. Keep funds safe.
2. Create desirable markets.
3. Accurately determine the outcome of markets.

Instead, Truthcoin's outcomes are determined by a vote weighted by present and past conformity, using in a new token-ownership-model. This theoretically produces a unique Nash Equilibrium of unanimous honesty. Moreover, incentives are to only create contracts which are useful (measured by trading volume), and unambiguous (measured by vote-similarity). Additionally, market liquidity is guaranteed to be permanently nonzero thanks to the LMSR. MSRs allow for simple, secure, realtime buying and selling.

What's going on!?

Look at some [Slide Shows](http://www.truthcoin.info/presentations/). [This written intro](https://github.com/psztorc/Truthcoin/raw/master/docs/1_Purpose.pdf) explains "what this is and why it is important". [The whitepaper](https://github.com/psztorc/Truthcoin/raw/master/docs/Truthcoin_Whitepaper.pdf) explains "how it works". Check out the [voting demo](https://lyoshenka.ocpu.io/truthcoindemo/www/). Read the [FAQ](http://www.truthcoin.info/faq/). Visit the [website](http://www.truthcoin.info/) and [forum](http://forum.truthcoin.info/).

You Can Help!

1. Read the documentation / code and ask questions to grow the FAQ! (Email me or pull into [the errata section](https://github.com/psztorc/Truthcoin/tree/master/docs#addendum--errata) or [the FAQ section](https://github.com/truthcoin/www.truthcoin.info/blob/gh-pages/faq/index.md) with any new questions). 2. Joining and posting to the forum. 3. Help test/improve the code. Or, work for money and use that money to hire someone who can test/improve the code!

Where is Everything?

Code: 'lib' folder Readings/Documentation/Purpose/Applications/Tech: 'docs' folder

The 'lib' folder also has html files which describe the outcome of function tests and demonstrations. These files were automatically generated from R code using R-markdown, and the .rmd files are included alongside the html files for reproducibility.

Contact

[email protected] https://twitter.com/Truthcoin

Donation Address: 1M5tVTtynuqiS7Goq8hbh5UBcxLaa5XQb8
I'm giving away all of this work for free. It was hard work!
Thanks to everyone who donated.

truthcoin's Issues

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What about groundhog's day?

"if it is sunny, the groundhog will supposedly see its shadow and retreat back into its burrow, and the winter weather will persist for six more weeks."

Well, I'm not referring to the sunny part, that does not exist in VR yet. Rather, the groundhog reveals its opinion six weeks prior to the event. Here, I would propose that the groundhog is the question "will winter weather persist for six more weeks?" but the results of the vote be known 6 weeks prior to the actual outcome and payouts. The voter results may be used to guide farmers in planting crops, families and vacations, etc...

Another example: what if we had a meteorite headed toward earth. Should we wait until a hit or miss to know the results of the vote?

VoteCoin Valuation

I would like to learn more about the Voting System and specifically I'm looking for an answer to the following 2 questions:

a) How the Votecoins are distributed?
b) How Votecoins' value could be measured?

Thank you,
Mordernschool

Testnet and Regtest not working

The regtest network does not seem to be available.
Moreover, in testnet mode the wallet address is still like '1*'.

Sugestion: Transcribe/convert everything into .md-format

I would like to have your text's in a more searchable, linkable and malleable format than pdf.
Will you accept a pull request with all the papers in .md-format?

truthcoin pow

I think it would be a bad idea to make truthcoin a POW currency...
POW vs POS vs DPOS vs any other blockchain method doesn't change how the prediction part works, so really, it shouldn't even be discussed in this project?

The cryptonote team has cryptographer specialists who make little pieces of code similar to the SVD code you made. The cryptonote team does not understand blockchains, and they are not trying to build blockchains.
Any blockchain that uses cryptonote software, they bring the blockchain to the cryptonote team, and the cryptonote team writes the new blockchain onto the approved list.

When investors consider investing in the new chain which uses cryptonote features, they check to see if cryptonote has approved it. If it is unapproved, then it might not be secure.

I think you should do truthcoin similarly. Multiple people will bring you blockchains, and you verify that the truthcoin aspects of it are good. Then you write the blockchain's name to a list in this project.