Odaily Frontline | Ethereum plays a big role in the US election

This article comes fromBeInCrypto, original author: Martin Young

Odaily translator |

Summary:

This article comes from

, original author: Martin Young

Odaily translator |

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Summary:

- Polymarket reached $5 million in transactions on the election market.

- The Associated Press is using Ethereum to publish presidential campaign calls.

The U.S. presidential election is in full swing, grabbing headlines around the world. Crypto users on Twitter are also agitating as they await the outcome of the election. But at the same time, what many people may not know is that Ethereum plays an important role in the US election.

From prediction markets to smart contracts to oracle-based presidential campaign calls, Ethereum has already been deeply involved in the 2020 US election.

Prediction markets reflect the likelihood of binary event outcomes based on popular economic bets. James Beck of ConsenSys conducted research on the accuracy of Ethereum prediction markets.

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Ethereum Prediction Market

In the latest Defiant newsletter, industry expert Camila Russo highlights analysis from ConsenSys ETH 2.0 Marketing Manager James Beck. Beck gave an example of predicting the outcome of something by breaking down each "guess" into two parts—information and error. Ideally, what is left after subtracting all errors is information.

Beck tested these new prediction markets, which involve placing bets in DAI or USDC to provide liquidity, and users who correctly predict the winner will earn a profit. At press time, liquidity across the markets was between $300,000 and $400,000, a testament to how popular these platforms are. The study concluded:

"Ethereum-based prediction markets can increasingly represent a simple and fast way to convert opinions into a single collective judgment, and may just improve the way we understand outcomes."

V God shared his experience on Twitter:

Polymarket is unique in that it exists directly on top of the Ethereum sidechain Matic. Polymarket’s UI is optimized to appeal to users from outside the crypto industry: it has a “buy USDC with credit card” interface, while also using the magic.link login service. The service relies heavily on trusted hardware from AWS, such that (assuming AWS hasn't been hacked), the "root of trust" for your account is your email. Additionally, Polymarket’s promotion to non-crypto users was successful with high volume.

My honest feedback is as follows: This is a challenging trade-off for convenience, and I can't say how I feel about it just yet. For new users (Polymarket's target audience) who are new to the crypto space, magic.link is probably less risky than losing your torrent…

But on a large scale, AWS+gmail is definitely problematic as a core point of failure. If I were them, I'd probably support both login paths (magic.link and traditional ethereum accounts). Anyway, good luck with the project, it's definitely worth checking out.

Odaily Note: In the morning news of November 4th, The Block released a research report on November 3rd, stating that the data shows that the 2020 US general election has promoted the use of decentralized prediction markets. On the Augur platform, open interest recently topped $4 million, largely driven by Catnip.exchange, the simple end-user interface for Augur's US election marketplace. According to The Block researcher Mika Honkasalo, Augur’s open interest has been growing steadily until Election Day, exceeding $1 million or 25% per day. Prediction market Polymarket also benefited from the US election, with its election-related markets trading over $3.5 million on Polymarket V2, accounting for approximately 91% of the platform’s total trading volume.

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