Manifold’s $30k Community Fund
Create or invest in community projects, and win a share of the prize!
Are you ready to receive real USD for working on Manifold projects, on behalf of the community? Or perhaps use your mana to invest in someone’s project, funding them with real money?
Introducing: Manifold’s $30,000 Community Fund!
This fund will reward contributions from the community, sponsor new projects to legitimise prediction markets, test out impact certs, and maybe even identify future Manifold hires.
Check out the projects here: https://manifund.org/causes/manifold-community, or read on to learn more…
How It Works: Impact Certificates
Project owners, propose your project: Share your plan on Manifund. Set your funding goal and get ready to inspire investors.
Investors, take your pick: Browse through exciting proposals and offer funding in exchange for a slice of potential prize winnings. You can buy an initial stake in unfunded projects, or begin to speculatively trade on active projects.
You can fund your Manifund balance with cash (and take a 501c3 tax deduction); or with mana from Manifold!
Project Activation: Once funding goals are met, the project kicks off and Manifund will send project owners real $ cash based on how much of the project’s initial equity they sold.
Progress & Evaluation: Keep the community updated and let your hard work shine. Regular evaluations will take place, with prize distributions on Dec 15, Jan 15, & Feb 15.
Learn more about Impact Certs: Delve deeper into the mechanics of impact certificates here and check out past successes here.
What are the prizes?
If their funding goal is met, project owners will receive their cash funding upfront in exchange for whatever equity was sold. If the project goes well, Manifold will make an offer to buy shares at a new, higher valuation. This will increase the price floor, allowing both the project owner and investors to sell shares at a higher price point. For the project owner, this will be whatever remaining equity they didn’t sell as part of the initial funding goal. Project owners can withdraw this as USD, whereas investors may withdraw it to their Manifund balance to continue investing or donate to charity.
These prizes are decided once a month over 3 months by the Manifold team; we’re aiming to distribute $10k each month across Dec, Jan, and Feb. While we love clever ideas, we are most interested in the execution of the project and its concrete outcomes. Read more guidance on prizes, project ideas and a general FAQ here.
Some awesome projects
The Community Fund has already been running for a couple of weeks, so the first prize distribution is coming up on December 15. But it’s still the perfect time to join as an investor or project creator! I wanted to showcase some of my favourite projects already listed:
This bot by cc6 places bets to create notifications when there is a large swing in select markets. It’s especially awesome to see a Junior in highschool receive funding through Manifund!
Joshua has started hosting Twitch streams which have already been going well causing its valuation to increase from the initial funding round! Watch the video here.
I’m particularly excited to see what Wasabipesto will produce, but he still needs more funding!
Robert has been funded to host Manifold meetups in Seattle (first session running December 20th!)
Get involved!
If you want to learn more about the projects or the structure of the Manifold Community Fund, stop by our very first Demo Day — this Thursday, Dec 15 at 3pm PT!
If you have some spare mana or $, this is a great way to use it by funding your favourite projects. You might even earn yourself a sweet return, to send to your favorite charity!
Go to Manifund and login with any email.
Use your API key to send mana from your Manifold account! (you can find this at the bottom of /profile)
Make sure you are on the Community Fund page and start investing.
Submit your own project proposal! Here are some we’d still love to see:
Run a local Manifold game night/meetup/talk about forecasting (like this)
Create media (posts, videos, tweets, memes) which popularize Manifold or prediction markets
Publish a paper, article, or blog post that helps demonstrate prediction markets’ accuracy, reliability or track record.
I look forward to seeing what the community produces, and want to congratulate Austin for the awesome initiative which gives back to our users. A lot of these projects were already being carried out, so this is a great way to reward them for it and get others involved!
Thanks for reading,
David Chee