Above the Fold - Challenge bets, SneakySly interview, Tournaments!

Aug 15, 2022

Hello! This week we talk about challenge bets, improvements to embeds, and share an interview we did with SneakySly. We also want to talk about 3 ongoing tournaments on Manifold you can participate in for real money prizes!

From now on, we are aiming to publish newsletters regularly every Monday. We will begin sticking to a format that we already loosely follow so that you can quickly read what is of interest to you.

List of updates to the site and some thoughts behind the major ones.
User interview/writeup (let me know if you want to be interviewed or write something for us!)
Any other announcements or cool things going on relating to Manifold Markets.

Challenge Bets

Our biggest update to the site - challenge someone in a 1v1 to bet against you on a question.

Find any market you and someone you know disagrees about.
Set the terms of the bet.
Generate a custom link to send them a challenge.
View the challenge pages containing the details of the bet.

Above you can see SneaklySly winning the first challenge bet ever resolved!

Manifold is currently focused on new user acquisition and retention. Our intention with challenge bets was to leverage them as a growth tool. Stephen’s market alongside low initial engagement suggests they have been unsuccessful thus far. If you’ve enjoyed challenge bets or have any thoughts on what changes would make you use them please let us know on Stephen’s market.

Other site updates

Improvements to embeds in market descriptions.
- Loads of embeds from sites now supported: Tweets, Youtube videos, Twitch streams, Metaculus markets and any other embed URL.
- iframe by URL - No longer need to copy and paste the iframe for an embed. Click the embed button at the bottom of the description/comment box and post the link!
QR codes for referral links.
Rich text editor, embeds, and images are now available for comments!

Featured user: Anthony Giovannetti (SneakySly)

About Anthony
Co-founded Mega Crit Games and created the game Slay the Spire.
Found out about Manifold from reading Scott Alexander’s blog and thought it was a novel and unique take on prediction markets.
Mostly approaches Manifold as a game, trying to climb the leaderboards, or just improve his “score”.
Q: What is the proudest moment you have had using Manifold? Perhaps a market you made that went well or a sick bet?
A: “I think my AI Box market led to lots of interesting commentary, even if the Manifold community never stood a chance against me. ;)”
Q: Could you see yourself using Manifold as a way to engage your gaming fans and have them predict what new games/features you will create?
A: “I am definitely interested in fleshing out this space more and finding creative ways to use prediction markets. I have done some initial exploring with this market that is still live.”
Q: Manifold Markets can be classed as fulfilling three core functionalities. A tool to produce information, a social network, and a game. You yourself suggested you primarily use it as a game, do you think this is where the platform’s strength lies?
As Manifold continues to develop, which of the three use-cases do you predict users will use Manifold for the most? Or do you think the current equilibrium of the site will remain fairly static?
A: “As a game designer I am biased, but currently Manifold's strength is the intersection of fun gaminess and information finder. Personally, the social network effects seem very minor and not super interesting right now, but that might change with more reputation based features. I suspect that the game aspect will be the strongest motivator, at least for the immediate future, for most people. As far as how the equilibrium changes over time however that is going to really depend on the path that the Manifold team decides to take. I am excited to see how it all develops!”
Q: What would you change to make YOU enjoy the site more?
A: “I can broadly think of 2 big additions for me personally:
1 - Date based markets where users predict a date an event will happen. I have several ideas that could utilize this type of framework, and I think it would parse a lot better than trying to hack it with a numeric market. A good example would be predicting release dates for games.
2 - More incentives for participating in long-term markets. I believe there are currently some plans for dealing with this issue, but currently participating in a market that resolves in a few years is pretty low EV. Improving this could allow a lot more market participation.”

Fantasy Football Stock Exchange

User David Glidden has decided to host a Fantasy Football tournament on Manifold. He will be managing the event, but Manifold is providing a $2500 prize pool to the top traders!

Trade shares throughout the season on numeric markets set up for each player predicting how many Fantasy Football points each will earn. The prizes will be spread amongst the group’s top leaderboard traders upon conclusion.

CSPI/Salem Tournament

The announcement.

It’s been just over a week since it launched and we have already had 536 accounts sign up with almost half having taken the survey to be eligible for prizes! The Salem Center is continuously adding new markets and necessary updates to the rules.

The number of daily trades taking place on tournament markets is comparable to the main site which speaks volumes about how successful it has been thus far!

Using Manifold to predict funding

Austin created a prediction market at Future Forum to predict which projects would win the Launchpad competition (a series of workshops and discussion sessions to kick off new projects). Judges chose 3 winners to receive $10,000 in funding with an additional 6 being nominated to be recommended for further funding.

Judges were unaware that Austin was running the prediction market that 16 attendees (mostly those who submitted projects) were participating in. Some attendants optimistically bet heavily on themselves, whilst others took a more balanced approach.

The top 3 winners chosen by the judges had the 1st, 2nd and 7th highest probabilities on Manifold. Additionally, there was a significant overlap between the judges’ top 9 and the market’s top 9. Overall, the market did a good job at predicting what judges would decide and bode well for using markets to decide future regrants. 👀

Above The Fold

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