Augur, a decentralized prediction market platform, captured attention from serious blockchain developers since its launch. Jeremy Gardner and Joey Krug built something with staying power across market
Augur, a decentralized prediction market platform, captured attention from serious blockchain developers since its launch. Jeremy Gardner and Joey Krug built something with staying power across market cycles.
That changed last month when assassination markets appeared on Augur, attracting mainstream coverage. Newsweek called the story "Cryptocurrency Death Market," though the actual article was more balanced. The publicity sent Augur's price and trading volume up—a temporary jump.
Gardner and Krug probably didn't anticipate their project's first mainstream moment would involve markets predicting violence against political figures.
BX.bet aims to build what Augur does without enabling assassination markets. Both platforms let users stake tokens to determine prediction market outcomes. Both preserve anonymity. They diverge on how they handle moderation.
In Augur, REP token holders can invalidate markets where outcomes can't be verified through objective means. A market on whether John Stamos wakes up on the left side of the bed tomorrow—impossible to confirm—qualifies. REP holders could use this power to block assassination markets. They haven't.
BX.bet implements a different system. Markets need community approval before going public. When communities reject a market, the creator's fee burns. Christian Lenz, one of BX's co-founders, explained the incentive structure: "The risk of losing the security deposit when a market is not approved will prevent market creators from creating assassination markets in the first place. Additionally, the superuser will have an intrinsic motivation to keep the ecosystem safe and legal because they use their reputation as a source of income."
The logic follows. Market creators avoid proposals that cost them their deposit. Superusers build standing by maintaining the platform's reputation, which could generate income. Token holders want a platform that stays out of legal trouble.
BX.bet's model has vulnerabilities. Early adopters might chase the attention spike Augur received, pushing for assassination markets to gain publicity. If few people adopt BX.bet, organized actors could swamp sparse moderators. Augur veterans might migrate to BX.bet, accumulate tokens, and coordinate to approve assassination markets.
You can't predict what online communities will do. This applies to crypto or anywhere. And even if BX.bet blocks assassination markets, the content question gets more complex.
Jeremy Gardner described a different use case during an earlier interview: "Augur is great for creating a decentralized whistleblowing incentive system. A market could be made for 'Evidence that senior officials at the SEC have received bribes from Goldman Sachs will be exposed and lead to top level resignations in the next ten months'—the market maker could bet a bunch of money that that won't happen and then someone at the SEC or Goldman Sachs now has a massive financial incentive to bet that it does happen and anonymously give the evidence to the DOJ, knowing they can be rewarded without compromising their identity."
Markets that pay whistleblowers fit naturally into Augur's design. How does BX.bet's moderation handle them? What will regulators do? Lenz mentioned keeping the platform "legal"—but rewarding whistleblowers hits legal gray areas depending on jurisdiction.
BX.bet hasn't launched yet. It might never. The concept is worth testing. Crypto platforms allow experimentation with governance at scale. BX.bet's approach, combining decentralization with community moderation, is as sound as other available alternatives without moving toward centralization.
Actual users will test these theories in ways creators can't predict. BX.bet needs liquidity and active traders first. Beyond that is the harder question: can communities moderate themselves without tilting between permissiveness and overreach? BX.bet's team believes reputation and financial incentive align participants. That hypothesis faces real testing once the platform launches.
