PlotX co-founder Kartic Rakhra participated in a fun AMA session with Polygon (Previously MATIC) to talk about prediction markets, the future of DeFi and the road-ahead for PlotX. In case, you missed the exclusive session, we have put together an extensive transcript of the AMA session.
Here is the written transcription:
Polygon: Tell us a little bit about yourself and PlotX?
Kartic Rakhra, PlotX: Hey all! My name is Kartic and I’m one of the cofounders of PlotX.
I entered the crypto ecosystem in late 2016 and co-founded GovBlocks along with Ish & Nitika (who are also the co-founders at PlotX).
FYI, Ish served as the CTO of Nexus Mutual (>$300m TVL) for 2.5 years prior to founding PlotX 🙂
Prior to GovBlocks, I am proud to have set up one of India’s largest and earliest blockchain communities via the India Blockchain Week 2017 in partnership with Fintech Worldwide (a London based firm specialising in crypto evangelism globally).
PlotX is a powerful DeFi prediction market protocol that leverages the ‘wisdom of the crowd’ to provide investors with key insights for making investment decisions.
Our beta has been live on the Ethereum mainnet since Oct 2020 and now we’re gearing up to deploy on the Polygon Network!
Polygon: So there is a strong focus on creating a community-powered prediction market, how will you attract this initial community and liquidity providers for the markets?
Kartic Rakhra, PlotX: This is a chicken-egg problem that all prediction markets face. Every project has a different way of dealing with it
For PlotX, things are easier since our markets are short (4hr, 1day, 1week) and exciting as compared to the typical prediction markets that have month-long markets, or even longer.
Our unique AMM algorithm & incentive alignment goes some way in solving this issue (more on this will be revealed closer to launch). We will get more data on this & improve as we launch our new version on Polygon.
Polygon: Can you tell us a bit more about PlotX and its features?
Kartic Rakhra, PlotX: Dubbed as the Uniswap of Prediction Markets, PlotX uses an Automated Market Making algorithm to create, settle markets and distribute rewards without any counterparty risk.
Markets are focused on crypto-pairs like BTC/USD, ETH/USD, DOT/USD, MATIC/USD etc and are automatically created in intervals of 4h, 1d and 1w.
With our brand new version coming up on Polygon, we’re also adding some super exciting features that we’ll be revealing over the next few weeks.
Do join our Telegram group to stay updated with the latest on that front!
Polygon: Tell us a little bit about how your experience was building on Polygon and what are the advantages of PlotX working with a Layer 2 like Polygon?
Kartic Rakhra, PlotX: We are absolutely thrilled with the level of support that we’ve been given by the Polygon ecosystem. There are so many advantages of working with an L2 like Polygon:
- Ability to go cross-chains like Matic PoS, zkRollups, Optimism
- Make gasless transactions a reality for the end-user
- Improve the UX massively, by bringing PlotX closer to mainstream users
- Deploy Fiat-on ramping solutions that are negligible on gas costs
Polygon: Can you summarize the major milestones you guys have achieved so far?
Kartic Rakhra, PlotX: We’ve been heads down in build mode ever since we started working on PlotX in Feb 2020. Here are some of the big milestones we’ve hit so far:
- PlotX v1 is live on Ethereum mainnet since Oct 2020
- More than 3500 predictions have been made on PlotX v1
- $100k worth of rewards have been distributed to users on PlotX v1
Some of the upcoming milestones:
- PlotX v2 staking on Polygon, happening in March 2021 🙂
- PlotX v2 prediction markets launch on Polygon, also happening in March 2021
- Unlimited assets that can be predicted upon in PlotX v2
- Fiat on-ramping solution for buying PLOT
Polygon: What are the advantages of PlotX’s platform compared to other prediction market platforms?
Kartic Rakhra, PlotX: There are a number of prediction markets out there and we’re very excited to even see Vitalik tweeting about them recently. In fact, Vitalik’s post specifically covered the PlotX use case. We have a lot of respect for what other platforms have done and how they are evolving. We believe there’s still a lot of room for PlotX to innovate in the space and grow. Our use case, covering crypto traders is something that’s fairly unique in even prediction markets.
Further, we have a summary that captures the differences that PlotX holds from some of the more established prediction markets out there. Check it out: https://docs.plotx.io/faqs#how-is-plotx-different-from-projects-like-augur-synthetix-binary-options-and-hxro
Polygon: What will the future of PlotX in the decentralized revolution look like? Can you talk to us about your roadmap?
Kartic Rakhra, PlotX: We have so much planned! The way things have moved on the L2 front over the last few months is extremely exciting. Our roadmap for 2021 resolves around solving 3 challenges that we’ve identified so far:
- High gas costs, which is being solved by moving to an L2 aggregation approach with Polygon
- Bootstrapping liquidity in prediction markets, which is being solved by the launch of PlotX participation mining, perpetuals, and also the ability to buy/sell the positions on PlotX
- Improving UX, being done with a ton of user feedback
Apart from these 3 challenges, we are also working behind-the-scenes to launch a new product in an attempt to further the PlotX vision of crowd-sourced intelligence for data-driven decision making.
It’s time to open up the floor for the community questions!
Polygon community: How does the algorithm that PlotX uses, calculates the forecast rates in the chain for each market?
Kartic Rakhra, PlotX: All calculations happen on-chain via smart contracts.
Our AMM calculates the price of each option in the prediction market taking into account multiple signals from the market like the current rate, RSI, Depth etc.
For the price of the asset, we have partnered with Chainlink to provide us price feeds at regular intervals.
Polygon Community: What exactly is instant reward reconciliation on the chain without middlemen and how does it work?
Kartic Rakhra, PlotX: The entire PlotX application is smart contract-driven. The moment a market is settled, rewards are allocated to the winners on-chain via the smart contract action. No third party can interrupt that transaction for any reason.
Polygon Community: Why was PlotX built on Ethereum? We know that the Ethereum network has been criticized for the high gas fee issue. How does PlotX solve the problem of high gas charges?
Kartic Rakhra, PlotX: Ethereum has the largest developer ecosystem in the world. It’s also the most decentralised chain out there. That is why we chose to build on Ethereum.
High gas fee is a challenge for the entire ecosystem – investors, projects, developers.
We are solving this for our users by deploying on the Polygon network & making gas costs negligible.
Polygon Community: How does the PlotX platform prevent a user from having a problem with market delays and overload problems during high volatility movement recently?
Kartic Rakhra, PlotX: In PlotX, there is a concept of settlement period that ensures there are no last-minute predictions. This period lasts for 4hrs, 1 day or 1 week based on the type of market you’re predicting in.
Further, our price feed is programmed to give us input just in time to make sure there’s a fair settlement of the market.
We’ve worked closely with our oracle providers, Chainlink, who have been very helpful in making sure this issue doesn’t occur on the platform.
Polygon Community: How does PlotX handle scalability and what is the role of Layer 1 and Layer 2 to scale the underlying layer itself?
Kartic Rakhra, PlotX: We’re scaling by deploying on the Polygon network! The L2 aggregation model is one that is very much in line with what we have been thinking about for PlotX as well.
Polygon Community: What guarantees in terms of security do you offer to your users? Would your platform be prepared to deal with that sort of hacking situation?
Kartic Rakhra, PlotX: This is a big vulnerability of any smart contract-based project and we take every measure to mitigate that risk. We invest heavily in the cyber security of the project via continuous code reviews and comprehensive smart contract audits.
Having said that, we are cognizant of the fact that there’s no such thing as 100% secure in the crypto space and continue to work towards securing the code.
Polygon Community: What are the incentives that you offer to keep the users committed to your mission and vision?
Kartic Rakhra, PlotX: There are so many benefits of holding $PLOT.
- You can provide liquidity in the PLOT/ETH pair on uniswap and earn more than 100% APY.
- You can stake PLOT on BitMax and earn 40% APY.
- You can stake PLOT on UniFarm and earn 40-250% APY in 6 different tokens!
Polygon Community: What output/contributions can the community make to the project? How do you want/need the community to aid the growth of the project?
Kartic Rakhra, PlotX: Our community is our greatest strength! We engage with the daily to get feedback on new features all the time.
Further, we have an ongoing ambassador program for PLOT Heads to contribute to the growth of the project 
