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.
Ravencoin is a blockchain specifically dedicated to the creation and peer-to-peer transfer of assets. Just as Monero is solely focused on privacy, Ravencoin specializes in asset transfer – nothing more, nothing less. Although you can exchange assets over other blockchains, like Bitcoin and Ethereum, that’s not their intended purpose. And the lack of specialization leads to problems that are specific to transferring assets. Ravencoin enables you to create and trade any real-world (e.g., gold bars, land deeds) or digital (e.g., gaming items, software licenses) assets on a network with only that in mind. Ravencoin doesn’t have an established team. It’s an open-source project led by the core developers: RavoncoinDev, Tron, and Chatturga (discord usernames). Bruce Fenton, Board Member of The Bitcoin Foundation, advises the team. The core developers launched Ravencoin on January 3rd, 2018 and Fenton kicked off the launch with a Tweet announcing the start of mining. The project gained some notoriety when Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne announced that his company had made a multi-million dollar investment into the team. Since then, the team has been building out the core functionality of asset support and rewards capabilities. The release of the Ravencoin mainnet and increase in activity on the platform should help the price. Any news of notable companies or financial institutions utilizing the platform should also have a positive effect. Ravencoin offers just one thing: tokenized asset transfer. And that singular focus isn’t a bad thing. When projects attempt to solve a bunch of problems at once, they often create a bunch of half-baked solutions. Ravencoin is avoiding that. As a young project with seemingly endless competition, it’s difficult to predict how successful Ravencoin will be. An active community and backing from one of the most respected names in online retail are positive indicators, though. There’s a clear trend toward the tokenization of all types of assets. However, we have yet to see whether or not Ravencoin will be leading that change.