Augur is a trustless, decentralized platform for prediction markets. Augur is an Ethereum-based decentralized prediction market that leverages the wisdom of the crowds to create a search engine for the future that runs on its own token, REP. Augur allows users to create their markets for specific questions they may have and to profit from the trading buys while allowing users to buy positive or negative shares regarding the outcome of a future event. Prediction markets are markets created to trade the probability of an event happening. The market prices indicate what the crowd thinks the probability of an event happening. Predictive markets have shown to have been effective in accurately forecasting many results however it is still not widely used due to the many regulatory hurdles involved in setting up such a market. Augur aims to set up such a market in a decentralized manner. Augur is an Ethereum-based decentralized prediction market that leverages the wisdom of the crowds to create a search engine for the future that runs on its own token, REP. Augur allows users to create their markets for specific questions they may have and to profit from the trading buys while allowing users to buy positive or negative shares regarding the outcome of a future event. Augur REP is the gambling cryptocurrency. It’s the crypto token you can use to bet on sporting events, political outcomes, economies and just about everything else in the prediction markets. Online gambling is a $52 billion a year industry. At its founding the project included Intrade founder Ron Bernstein, Robin Hanson, and Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin among its advisers. In April 2015, Augur's first contract was uploaded to the Ethereum network.The first beta version was released in March 2016. In October 2016, all the reputation tokens that were for sale during the 2015 crowdfunding campaign were distributed to their owners on the live Ethereum network and the two largest cryptocurrency exchanges, Poloniex and Kraken, added support for these tokens on their trading platforms. The project was delayed until it was launched in July 2018.
Users can employ unused hard disk capacity to mine Bitcoins without the need for expensive mining rigs and other specialized hardware. Traditional mining hardware is energy intensive, noisy, produces a lot of heat, and is becoming increasingly specialized, moving beyond the means of ordinary people. With BHD, mining is simple and accessible. POW-based mining is all about raw computing power and energy output, whereas BHD's POC-based mining is far more energy efficient and returns to Satoshi Nakamoto’s original ideal that mining would be decentralized and performed by ordinary people. POC (Proof of Capacity) scans are only performed once every few minutes. For the rest of the time the hard disk is on stand-by with negligible power usage, greatly reducing energy costs. Based on capacity proof, it will support super-large blocks in the future and will add functions such as zero-knowledge proof. Solid-state drives are expensive, POC has no requirement for fast data processing, only capacity, so POC naturally eliminates ASIC chips. Currently, the amount of energy expended globally in POW mining is greater than the total energy output of 159 countries. The development of digital currencies shouldn’t have to be built on the wasting of resources. With BHD, POW calculations can be completed with a minimum of computing and energy resources.