Augur (REP)

Augur is a decentralized prediction market platform based upon the Ethereum network. US-based Forecast Foundation that stands behind the project was founded by Jack Peterson and Joey Krug in November 2014, and advised by Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin and Intrade founder Ron Bernstein. Having conducted a crowd sale in August 2015, the team has rolled out a fully functional platform by July 2018. The main idea of the project is to use the “wisdom of the crowd” to predict the outcomes of different events. Users use the “Reputation” token (REP) to bet on the outcomes of companies’ performance, results of sports matches, weather forecasts, election results or prices of specific cryptocurrencies. The main criteria for selecting an event is the possibility to obtain its result on the internet so that the so-called “oracles” could pass on this information to the platform automatically without having to rely on any human input. In order to place their bets, users create new events on the platform or participate in existing ones, buy shares to go long on the outcome and if eventually their side wins, they get a payout right to their Ethereum wallets. They lose their tokens if the result is the opposite of the one they put their bet upon. The payout is released by the Ethereum-ba...sed smart contracts. Casinos and various bookmakers make up the target audience of this project. The platform is fueled by an ERC-20 cryptocurrency named REP. It is available for purchase on many exchange platforms including UpBit, Binance, HitBTC, and many others. As it is based on the Proof-of-Work consensus algorithm, it can alternatively be obtained by mining on the same hardware that is used for Ethereum. It can be stored on all Ethereum-compatible wallets such as Metamask, MyEtherWallet or Exodus. For higher security, you may store REP coins on hardware wallets such as Trezor or Ledger Nano S. Augur’s ICO took place in 2015. It started on August 17th and finished on October 1st. The project managed to raise 5,2 million USD in ethers from 2,744 supporters. Augur has a total supply of 11 million coins. This number will never change and thus there is no inflation in the network. Jack Peterson, the project’s Founder and Lead Developer, has a technical research background. Prior to launching Augur, he has worked in the software research and development area in various companies since 2006 and has a number of scientific publications on reputable platforms. Jack’s fellow and the co-founder of the project Joey Krug is a co-chief Investment Officer at Pantera Capital, a venture fund famous for investing in many promising blockchain projects. He was an advisor of such blockchain projects as 0x, Origin, Numerai and some others. He writes for Forbes on cryptocurrency-related topics. In July 2018, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) opened a case against Augur for allegedly selling binary options without registering them which would be a violation of the US law. Also, the project was criticized for letting people bet on the deaths of politicians, celebrities and other public people such as Donald Trump and Betty White. In April 2018, there was a sensational scandal related to Augur as its former CEO Matthew Liston filed a lawsuit for 152 million USD against his four associates for alleged acts of fraud and trade theft that left him empty-handed without a stake in the ICO. The case was settled and dismissed only in October.