Review on Augur by Robiul Islam
Augur was one of the first serious blockchain projects out there, and one of…
Augur was one of the first serious blockchain projects out there, and one of the first to use the ERC20 token and Ethereum network. Even so, it remains in beta form after nearly three years of development. Perhaps that’s a positive and the launch of the official Augur main net will come with enhancements and functionality not even rumored. Or perhaps it’s a negative and the team just can’t get this project finished.
If things do go as planned, the Augur team has said they expect the platform to eventually replace the need for centralized option and futures trading, and the decentralized marketplace could be used to trade everything from commodities to stocks.
With the recent price decline Augur could either be sinking to oblivion, or could be a huge bargain. If history is any guide the REP coin should see a huge spike when Augur releases the official main net later this year
Updated 5 years ago
Rating changed from 4 to 5
v2, better UI, smooth on ramps plus wallets. The v2 UI no longer contains any dependency on the legacy Augur Node. This means that the UI is now fully capable of running without a separate server, and the new middleware components for providing fast data indexing and querying wholly in-browser are working. The team has also implemented a host of new login methods for v2, including Portis.
Pros
- Augur is an interesting project, and while it isn’t new it is worth looking into for its unique use of blockchain technology. Essentially, it is a decentralized market platform for making predictions. As an ERC20 token it uses the Ethereum network to harness the “Wisdom of the Crowd” and make predictions on real world events It’s notable that this “crowdfunding” of predictive ability has actually produced many results that are more accurate than those of top experts in the fields being predicted. Predictions are nothing new, in fact in many circles it would be called gambling, while in others it goes under the guise of “analysis”. Augur actually goes further than this I think, and by utilizing blockchain technology, Augur aims to enable predictive communities that have greater accessibility, lower fees and greater accuracy than anything seen previously.
Cons
- The REP (or Reputation) tokens are what powers the Augur Decentralized Oracle System. You can think of it as the means to “score” events on the Augur platform. Holders of REP tokens can use them as a stake to report on the outcome of the events listed in the marketplace. REP tokens are not an investment, as they don’t pay passively. Instead they are a tool that helps Augur work. Most users of Augur will never own a REP token, and may not even understand its use. It is important to understand why it exists and what use it has though to fully understand how the Augur platform works. Augur has limited the supply of REP tokens to 11 million, 80% of which were sold in their ICO. The holders of REP tokens are considered to be “Reporters” and are expected to accurately report the outcome of the random events listed on the Augur marketplace at least every few weeks. If these “Reporters” fail to report, or report inaccurately, the Reputation of those individuals is redistributed evenly to all the Reporters who did report accurately during the same reporting cycle.
