What is Augur?

Augur is a popular choice among investors looking to trade altcoins. However, before you Trade REP, it is essential that you know what you are investing in. Let's find out what's Augur and how it works.

The Augur token is a cryptocurrency used in the Augur prediction market. It may be utilized in prediction markets for wagering on everything from sporting events to political contests to economic forecasts. The online gambling market is about $52 billion each year, and Augur hopes to carve off a small portion of that market with the REP token.

Augur is an open-source, decentralized system that was launched in 2018 that allows users to construct prediction markets where they may speculate on the outcome of events. Because it verifies real-world events and stores the results in an immutable blockchain-based format, Augur also serves as a decentralized oracle.

To put it simply, Augur is a collection of solidity-based open-source smart contracts that users may deploy on the Ethereum network. Users can make bets on future occurrences and settle payments for prediction markets using ETH via interactions with these smart contracts.

The Forecast Foundation supports Augur, a collection of developers who contribute to the protocol's maintenance and development but do not own or control it. In addition to other limitations, the foundation is not compensated by the protocol and is not involved in the management of the resultant markets.

How does Augur work?

Augur contracts utilize both Ethereum and Augur's native coin, REP. As a staking token on the Augur network, Reputation (REP) is used by reporters to resolve conflicts and validate the results of the prediction market. Reporters stake their REP tokens on a potential market outcome by locking their tokens in escrow before publishing their results. Augur (REP) functions as a decentralized oracle since it relies on the consensus of the market's reporters as the source of truth.

A user sends a transaction to the Augur smart contracts when they want to bet on the outcome of a real-world event. Each event's market's guidelines are defined in real-time. Once a market opens for trading, participants have until the event's end to make their trades. Traders close their positions and earn payouts after the outcome has been established by Augur's oracle system. Augur (REP) has a complicated incentive structure that encourages proper outcome reporting, penalizes wrong outcome reporting, and penalizes passive holders who do not invest in disputes and forks.

How is Augur Different?

Augur stands apart from other prediction markets because it is based on decentralized, open-source contracts and a governance mechanism that enables all users to engage in honest speculation.

The Forecast Foundation is in charge of Augur; however, they do not have any say in how the platform is governed and just work to keep the open-source technology running smoothly.

How many REP coins are there?

There will never be more than 5,934,228 REP tokens issued for the Augur platform. At this time, every token has been distributed. There will be no further additions to this stockpile.

Augur's funding round was one of the very first initial coin offerings (ICO) on Ethereum in 2015, raising over $5 million through the sale of REP tokens. During its initial coin offering (ICO), Augur raised the necessary capital by selling 8.8 million REP (roughly 80% of the entire supply). There were four separate sales stages, with prices varying based on when tokens were bought and the ultimate token sale price.

The True Augur round, round one, took place from August 17 to 22, and participants received a 15% bonus. The Prophet round, round two, ran from August 22 to 28 and gave a 10% bonus. From August 28th to September 5th, a 5% bonus was available during the third Nate Silver round. The final round, known as Nostradamus, did not award any additional points.

The Forecast Foundation, founders, and advisers received the remaining 20% or 2.3 million REP.

Network Security

The Augur whitepaper states there is a strong relationship between the market cap of REP and the trustworthiness of Augur's forking protocol. If REP has a sizable market cap, and if attackers are acting economically rationally, the fork's winning conclusion should reflect reality. However, Augur might still fulfill its function even without assigned reporters and dispute rounds. The oracle would give accurate information if it relied solely on the forking process.

For REP holders participating in Augur markets, the process of a fork might be quite inconvenient and time-consuming. Only one market at a time may be settled after a fork, and that process can take up to 60 days. For the duration of the 60 days, it takes to complete the market, no additional markets are processed.

A market fork will only happen after all other options have been exhausted.

Augur's smart contracts have reached version 2 and have just been released. To find security flaws, they have a public bug bounty program.

Augur is free, public, open-source software, with sections released under the General Public License (GPL) and some under the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) license.

Founders

Augur was created by Jack Peterson and Joey Krug back in 2014. Jack and Joey hoped to bring about a change away from skewed decisions and organized prediction markets. The end result was supposed to be a market where people could bet on results with the help of a trusted and impartial judge.

Augur was developed to help them achieve their goal by decentralizing the prediction market using blockchain technology and reducing the likelihood of fraudulent activity, corruption, and theft.

Where Can You Buy REP?

REP is available on the licensed cryptocurrency exchange CryptoForce and several other national and international exchanges.

Disclaimer: Cryptocurrencies are highly volatile and subject to market, technical, and regulatory risks. Crypto trading requires one’s own diligence, and Cryptoforce will not be responsible for any losses incurred. Any information provided here should not be regarded as Cryptoforce’s technical or financial advice.