Want to make money by predicting the outcome of sports games?
Want to get rewarded for betting on the winner of an election or for forecasting how many movie tickets will be sold in its opening weekend?
That is essentially the idea of Prediction Markets.
Prediction Markets are markets where people can trade based on outcomes of future events. These events can be elections, sales of a company, price of commodities, or most commonly - sports games.
But there are problems with centralized Prediction Markets. First, prices can be significantly biased. Second, there are major concerns about payouts. Third, there is a lack of trust between platforms and users. Fourth, there is the possibility of data manipulation (scraped by some third party).
Decentralized Prediction Markets pave the way for a better experience. No one can cheat because it is impossible for decentralized exchanges not only to know what you're betting on but also how much you have for them to take more of your money.
Bookie is a way to make predictions in a decentralized manner. The oracle is one of the many features HIVE can utilize, following their ++recent collaboration++ with Peerplays.
In this post, we'll go over how Bookie works, what problems it solves, and how to set it up.
What is Bookie?
++Bookie++ is an oracle developed by Peerplays for a Prediction Market that uses real-world data inserted by people directly into a portal or API that gets delivered to make predictions in a decentralized way.
Decentralized Prediction Markets like Bookie solve problems that traditional platforms can't, like providing verifiable transactions and ensuring transactions use onchain escrows.
When it comes to Prediction Markets, people are worried that there's no guarantee of getting paid if someone wins a bet. So, often, escrow services are used. But even they can be unreliable. That's where Peerplays' mission lies therein - offering an alternative that uses blockchain to provide a Prediction Market that's fair through secured community agreed contracts.
Peerplays' Bookie is decentralized, provably fair, and automatic. And has a 100% guarantee on settlements.
++BookiePro++ was designed to be the world's first decentralized sports betting exchange. It uses multiple data providers and Bookie subscribers (also referred to as Witnesses) to ensure fairness, unlike popular sports betting sites like Betfair, which are tied at one source for all their information on an event or player, respectively - this means you get real decentralization of data with Bookie!
How Bookie works
BookiePro is the first decentralized sports betting exchange for a clean and safe place to bet on your favorite teams. It uses multiple data providers to improve the quality of our predictions. It's been built for the Peerplays blockchain.
BookiePro requires real-time data feeds to create all the various sports, events, markets, etc., that are the basis of the sporting exchange. An ongoing challenge has been getting enough of these data feeds that are accurate and reliable. That's where Couch Potato comes to play.
++Couch Potato++ is a mechanism that allows people to input data directly into a portal or API that gets posted directly to Bookie. It helps improve the data feed and data proxy challenges facing Bookie (like data being scraped by third parties).
Bookie uses real-world data, which is pulled from Couch Potato, to make predictions in a decentralized way. This means that Bookie can't manipulate your data. Thus, you get better predictions than you ever could before.
The idea behind BookiePro is to create a seamless and hassle-free experience for people who are interested in sports betting. Thanks to Couch Potato, it was no longer an uphill battle to get enough accurate data feeds. Instead, they could obtain accurate and reliable data feeds.
Couch Potato uses Crowd-Sourced Data feeds, which are crowd-sourced, peer-reviewed data. This means better quality, speed, and provable fairness via the wisdom of the crowd, much like Wikipedia.
CouchPotato's mechanism for sports can be extended to other areas/markets too.
How to set up Bookie
We can tell that many people are excited about Bookie. We both know this is an amazing opportunity to boost the fun of sports betting exchanges. There won't be any shortage of eager participants in on the fun and excitement! And some won't be able to resist the allure of the fun!
We want to empower the community to be able to set up one or as many Bookies as they want using Peerplays’ tools and apply them as they see fit.
Here’s how you can set up Bookie:
- First, you’ll need to install everything you’ll need like Dependencies, MongoDB, Redis, and Bos-auto.
- Second, you’ll have to upgrade and configure Bos-auto.
- Third, you’ll have to spin Bos-auto.
- Fourth, you’ll have to integrate Bos-mint (to work with all sorts of manual interactions with the blockchain).
- Finally, you’ll have to ensure Bos-auto is monitored properly along with many other configurations properly set in place.
Setting up Bookie isn’t complex. You can get started with Bookie in this ++step-by-step guide++.
Decentralized Predictions Markets help improve the odds we get in everyday life
The power of decentralized Prediction Markets is high liquidity, huge network effect, and the fact that they use real-world data to make their bets. You get a more accurate prediction than any other method out there and with no third party involved that is scraping your data.
The decentralized, trustless nature of prediction markets creates a unique opportunity to make predictions that are uncorrupted by manipulation.
By creating a market for any event imaginable and allowing anyone in the world to participate, analysts can generate accurate forecasts with little risk of fraud. Moreover, the accuracy of these forecasts will only grow as more participants observe the outcome of events themselves.
We're excited to share this new way of making predictions with you. And we hope that it will change the world for the better.
Have any thoughts or questions? Let us know in the comments below!