REP Price Update
The price of Augur (REP) today is $0.00000000 USD, which has increased by 0.00000000 (0.00%) over the last 24 hours. The total number of REP coins in circulation stands at nan and $0.00000000 USD has been traded for the REP/USD pair across exchanges over the last 24 hours.
About Augur
Augur (REP) is a trustless, permissionless and decentralized prediction market platform built on Ethereum. The outcomes of these prediction markets are chosen by Augur’s REP token holders, who stake their tokens based on the observed outcome and earn a fee for doing so.
These permissionless prediction markets enable users to create a market forecasting any specific future event, like “who will win the next presidential election” or “which team will win the Premier League this season”. Augur’s permissionless markets allows anyone to buy shares in a specific outcome, where the party who correctly predicts the event earn a monetary reward.
Augur’s reputation token (REP) is a “work token” and gives the right for individuals to report and weigh-in on the outcomes of specific events. The platform’s incentive structure is designed to ensure honest, accurate reporting of the outcomes as the most profitable option for REP token holders.
Augur v2
Augur v2 is a comprehensive suite of improvements and the first major upgrade to the platform. The biggest update with Augur v2 is the integration of Dai, a trustless and permissionless stablecoin. While v1 leveraged ETH as collateral for prediction markets, it is highly volatile and required an extension to use “wrapped” ETH. In v2, users will be able to participate in prediction markets with Dai, making trading less volatile and more accessible to the broader community.
In addition to integrating Dai, Augur v2 will also feature a small amount of inflation in the REP token that is used to pay for decentralized price feeds (oracles). This is largely due to the fact that in v1, a major bug was found with Augur’s single price feed and rendered the platform useless.
Token Economics
Demand
Permissionless prediction markets have always been one of the more talked-about use cases for decentralized, public blockchains. While Augur has had its fair share of road bumps since its inception in 2014, the upcoming release of Augur v2 should enable the platform to come into full fruition new improvements are integrated and multiple existing bugs are ironed out.
As the appetite for prediction markets continues to increase, REP token holders will be more greatly rewarded for accurately reporting the outcomes of specific events. As such, the more prediction markets on the platform with honest and secure outcomes, the higher the rewards and the higher annualized ROI on REP token holders. This is ultimately the primary demand-side driver behind the need for REP tokens as arbitrators within the plethora of prediction markets that exist on the platform.
Supply
Total REP Supply: 11,000,000
Liquid REP Supply: 11,000,000
Augur’s v1 REP token is a fixed-supply asset with no emission. However, with the introduction of Augur v2 in 2020, we’ll see the platform implement a small issuance rate in order to secure its decentralized oracle solution. Exact issuance rates are currently unknown.
On top of this, there are currently plans to burn a portion of the profit made from disputes. In v1, disputers would earn a 50%+ commission when they staked on the winning outcome (“putting their money where they mouth is”). In Augur v2, the dispute winnings are reduced to 40% in order to prevent disputers from being able to arbitrarily draw out the disputing process without incurring a loss. The remaining 10% will be burned.
REP ICO Issuance
The Augur team launched its ICO back in 2015, “pre-mining” the entirety of the REP supply and raising a total of $5.3M. With that, the token distribution for the sale was as follows:
- 80% to ICO participants (8.8M REP)
- 16% to Augur Founders (1.76M REP)
- 4% to the Forecast Foundation (440K REP)
REP Value Proposition
The limited supply of REP tokens and a low expected inflation rate in combination with the staking mechanisms for earning rewards creates a fairly enticing token model. As the demand for prediction markets increases, the amount of fees generated for arbitrators will increase in tandem. With that, REP token holders are the only users who can earn those fees, ultimately driving value directly in the token.
The launch of Augur v2 will create new dynamics with the token model that are largely untested in a live environment. As such, it will be interesting to see how these new improvements to the platform will drive value to the token, but also adoption by the Ethereum community at large.
