Manifold Markets is designed to be as intuitive for new users as possible. We believe that we do a good job at achieving this from a trader’s pov. However, it is perhaps less intuitive for new market creators, particularly those who are trying to use our markets to achieve a unique use-case (in this case to make “permanent” stocks). It is important that these markets are set up correctly as they can dictate how the entire community interacts with the site.
It should be noted that markets made in the form of a normal prediction have worked great so far and have been very popular:
https://manifold.markets/Voidian/will-destiny-reach-600k-subscribers
This write-up is looking specifically at the use-case of turning our prediction markets into stocks that reflect the community’s sentiment towards an orbiter. We were initially taking a very hands-off approach and just letting the Destiny community experiment with different types of markets and seeing how they decided to use them. But now that we are in the process of partnering with Destiny, let’s really dive deep into their flaws and find solutions.
FYI, an orbiter is a term used to describe a person of significance who interacts with the Destiny community.
The aim of Orbiter Stocks is to mimic real stocks that have an absolute value tied to them (even if just play-money). However, instead of the value of a stock reflecting a real-life asset, it reflects the sentiment of the community towards an orbiter.
Therefore, for these markets to be successful the following should be true:
A few variations of orbiter markets that try to mimic stocks have already been experimented with. All of these have had problems. Our markets are simply not optimised to act as permanent stocks as they are tied to a probability. Because of this, there is a misalignment between trading on the sentiment of an orbiter vs trading for profit. This makes them less interesting to trade on and not at all actionable for any possible integrations with Destiny's stream.
Let’s quickly run through the different variations of orbiter stock markets that users have experimented with and created on our site thus far.
https://manifold.markets/memestiny/dan-stock-1-week
The first iteration was by far the worst. The market closed at a set time and then would simply resolve to Yes if the probability was >50%. This meant it could be manipulated by one last minute big bet. In the above market you can see how the sentiment towards Dan was very positive but it was pushed down by manipulators during the final hours.