Prediction Markets as a concept is not a new age phenomenon. They have been in practice for centuries. Despite hanging around for more than a century, it was in 2020 that Prediction Markets enjoyed their time in the sunshine when the world woke up to endless possibilities DeFi prediction markets have to offer. With the rising stocks of Prediction Markets, PlotX emerged as one of the cornerstones around which the DeFi prediction market drove back into the vogue.
Here is a brief run-down of the story so far…
What is PlotX?
PlotX is a skill-based game where crypto-enthusiasts can leverage their knowledge of relevant crypto markets and earn rewards by correctly predicting future prices of digital assets like BTC, ETH etc. It provides a fair, decentralized, and open-finance solution for prediction market creation, settlement, and reward distribution.
Dubbed as the Uniswap of Prediction Markets, PlotX uses an Automated Market Making algorithm to allow its users to create, settle markets, and distribute rewards on the Ethereum Blockchain automatically, without any counterparty risk. Markets are created in intervals of 4 hours, 1 day, and 1 week.
The Power of Prediction Markets
Prediction markets utilize the principle known as “wisdom of the crowd”, which states large groups of people are collectively much smarter than individual experts when it comes to problem-solving, decision making, innovating and most importantly predicting.
This principle holds utmost importance in prediction markets as it provides very accurate forecasts, and thus very valuable information. In such markets, the more predictions there are, the more accurate the final results.
What Can You Do With PlotX?
PlotX is Decentralized Finance (DeFi) Prediction Markets protocol that allows traders to earn rewards by correctly predicting the future prices of cryptocurrencies like BTC.
PlotX follows a zero-sum-game approach to distribute assets collected as a part of every participant’s prediction(s), to the market winners, thus incentivizing everyone to apply their best Technical Analysis (TA) before placing a prediction.
Furthermore, since it is in every participant’s interest to apply their best TA skills, the higher the participation gets in any given market, the more indicative its state becomes of what the price movement for that particular asset (for example, BTC) might be in the near future.
For example, let’s say that there is a daily ETH market with 10,000 predictions in it, that has the following options:
- Bearish: Below $1,400
- Neutral: Between $1,400 and $1,500
- Bullish: Above $1,500
Now, let’s say that there are 2,000 predictions in the neutral option, 1,000 predictions in the bearish option, and 7,000 predictions in the bullish option. Now, if the bullish option wins, then all the predictions in the bullish option will win a reward. But, does that mean that the bearish and neutral predictors were losers? Well, not exactly. Because while they may not have predicted correctly and won a reward, they still got a hint from the market in advance about what the price of ETH might look like at the time of this market’s settlement. How they use this information is up to them.
Why PlotX?
PlotX offers some key advantages over its competitors (in honesty, it doesn’t have any competitors as no other platform offers what PlotX does) that make it the best fit for crypto traders.
AMM Driven Prediction Markets
The PlotX AMM algo allows the users to create prediction markets themselves for any given asset on the platform. They just need to sign and mine the market creation transactions and the market is automatically created. From then on, the market accepts predictions, stops accepting predictions, finalizes the results (based on Chainlink price feeds), and distributes the rewards to the market winners, all automatically and on-chain.
Market creators get back all the gas costs incurred by them in the market creation transaction in the form of PLOT thus emulating a gas-less transaction. They can also get a % share of the reward pool of their created markets depending on a few conditions. These two factors incentivize users to not only create markets but also spread the word about their created markets, thus increasing the market liquidity.
Decentralized
When we say that PlotX is DeFi protocol, we mean it. Every transaction that takes place on the platform is recorded on the Ethereum blockchain (obviously), and the app also provides an intuitive UI to see every tiny detail about them. This means that participants know the details of not only their own predictions but also every other prediction placed on the platform. Complete transparency.
Mathematically Settled Markets
One of the reasons why PlotX hosts only crypto-focused markets is that they can be settled objectively and mathematically. The protocol leverages Chainlink’s price feeds for the cryptocurrencies available on the platform to settle the markets mathematically, without leaving any room for subjective opinions about the results.
Open-Source and Audited
Every line of code that handles the users’ money is available for everyone to see, and the protocol receives security audits from respectable names in the crypto space (like CertiK) for each update that’s pushed to the mainnet.
Community Governance
All the major decisions about the protocol are taken through community voting using the $PLOT token as the means of voting, on Govblocks. This means that the community is both the stakeholders and the decision-makers of the protocol, as it should be.
Getting Started With PlotX
To get started with PlotX, you just need one thing, a crypto wallet (Portis / MetaMask / WalletConnect) with some ETH and/or PLOT in it, and that’s it, no other complicated sign up required whatsoever. Just:
- Go on the Dapp at app.plotx.io and make the connection with your crypto wallet
- Select the cryptocurrency whose value you want to predict
- Select the time-frame of the market; example – 4 hours, 1 day, or 1 week
- Choose the option that coincides with you own prediction (you can choose more than one)
- Select the mode of payment – ETH or PLOT
- Review the details of your prediction like potential profit and make the transaction
And that’s it!
Though, don’t confuse this simplicity with the Dapp’s functionality. There are plenty of tools (such as the prediction multiplier) that help power users level up their prediction game. You can learn more about them on the PlotX Wiki.
PlotX Community Mining Program
PlotX Community Mining Program is our way to thank and reward those users who are following the 2ED Principle to spread the word about PlotX in various regions around the globe and the internet.
The 2ED Principle stands for — Educate, Engage & Drive adoption.
- Educate: Creating educational content around the project, the token utility, the product vision etc and sharing it on social media to help spread the awareness about the product & onboard new community members.
- Engage: Participate in ongoing discussions within the community to improve the product with a vision of increasing the TVL and the daily trading volume of the product.
- Drive adoption: Participate in different types of mining programs and invite peer networks to do so as well.
Once you’re fully up to speed with how everything works on PlotX, you can join us in this mission too by taking up responsibilities that are best suited to your talents and tastes. For more information on this, you can read this Medium post.
