Complete with notes from the Q&A session with the speakers.

The first Amoveo meetup, set up in collaboration with cryptoecon.ru, took place on the 17th of May. Dare we say it, the event was a smashing success! What was originally planned as a small local meetup became an event with over 70 people in attendance, many of which learned about Amoveo and prediction markets for the first time! More than that, the meetup was live streamed on Forklog, and the view count on the stream’s recording is already over 1,000!

Stepan Gershuni, CEO of credentia.me and the founder of Cryptoeconomics Research Group took to the mic first. He delivered a great in-depth breakdown of the concept of Prediction Markets, using Augur as an example.

Denis Voskvitsov, chief of exan.tech, was the second speaker. He went through a comprehensive presentation about Amoveo, talking virtually about everything there is to talk about. Starting with the project’s history and Zack Hess’ approach to it, Denis explained the idea behind the project, its capabilities, architecture, talked about its community. Finally, he talked about the work that exan.tech has done with Amoveo, i.e. MyVeoWallet and explained how the Moscow community is trying to crowdfund the event with a Dominant Assurance Contract. You can read more about it in our previous post.

Finally, we had Andrey Duhovniy, executive director of the liquidity risk modelling department of Sberbank. He talked about how Russia’s biggest bank is trialing a prediction market system, albeit a centralized one, to forecast their corporate metrics. The main outcome of their current trial is that such system can significantly lower the costs of marketing research for virtually any given company.

Moreover, Andrey shared some stats: forecasting with prediction markets is twice as effective as individual forecasts made by analysts; and the minimal threshold of active market participants to form a reliable forecast stands at 50.

Finally, the event concluded with a panel-like Q&A session. Here are some of the notes we’ve made:

On DACs:

Q: As a team leader, I will need the money to do the project, but ultimately the funds are frozen in the contract. Could you please elaborate on how this mechanism works?

A[Denis]: Yes, this is a peculiarity of that model. On one hand, you will indeed need some funds of your own to start working on your project, but on the other hand this approach is fully trustless and guarantees financial security for both participants. The Amoveo blockchain offers very flexible technologies, and the format that I’ve described with the oracle starting after the event happened or the product was made is not the only option. If we include an element of mutual trust into this system, the oracle can be resolved earlier. Another alternative is a step-by-step structure, where each new step of a product creation is funded with a separate DAC.

On Prediction Markets:

Q: In Prediction Markets, when bets are made, can I see the statistics of those bets?

A[Stepan]: Yes, prediction markets can be transparent. Augur doesn’t have that, but someone’s made a tool on top of Augur where you can see the history of how bets changed.

A[Denis]: Amoveo has a different structure. When it comes to Oracles, all the transactions are visible, they are just ordinary blockchain transactions. But when it comes to prediction markets, yes, there is an order book, but it’s not on the blockchain, it’s on a specific node. It’s actually similar to Augur, there is currently no tool to do this, but we’re working on it among other things.

On Amoveo payments:

Q: You mentioned instant payments. Could provide the actual number?

A[Denis]: There’s an important distinction. We have a Proof-of-Work blockchain with a block target time of 10 minutes, so sending an ordinary transaction shouldn’t take more than that. But there’s also a network of Lightning channels, similar to Bitcoin’s Lightning Network or Ethereum’s Plasma. This means we can open a channel with another user, fund it with a certain amount of VEO and any operation within that amount can be transferred immediately. It’s important to note that in Bitcoin, for instance, a Lightning Network is built on top of the blockchain, it’s basically a sidechain. In Amoveo, it’s a part of the blockchain, everything works within the blockchain’s transactions.

On Amoveo financial structure:

Q: How is Amoveo financed? Was there an ICO or a pre-mine?

A[Denis]: No, there purposefully was no ICO and no pre-mine. In the beginning, everything was done by one person [Zack Hess] on his own time with his own money. Now, there’s no financing either, everything is done by the community, everything’s open source. The project isn’t owned by anyone and it doesn’t obey anyone.

Q: So it’s all donation-based or is there a miners fee?

A[Denis]: Yes, there is a miners fee, and it’s actually one of the blockchain’s properties which can be changed and adjusted by the community. The fee’s structure is quite interesting actually: firstly, there’s a minimum transaction fee that is just burned by the network. Secondly, there’s a few that goes to the miners. Finally, there’s a developers fee, which is also adjustable by the community and if my memory serves me right, right now it stands at 12% of the miners fee. That amount is transferred to Zack Hess’ account, which was blocked for the first year of development to eliminate a possibility of a pump-and-dump. It was unlocked in March and the funds are currently available to him, but he isn’t moving them anywhere, he wants the project to be successful.