Very highly attended discord call! Nice that people care so much about the existing Manifold culture. The mood was pretty anxious though…

1. The feeling of “play money” was important

SneakySly advocated for this a bunch, “I wouldn’t want to tell people about it if it felt like gambling”. Chris also found this really important, the community exists and is fun because

So most people preferred a new currency (”marbles”) that is fake, instead of re-using the existing mana

Surprising to me (Austin) because I would have thought people would like to cash out their existing mana.

Proposal: no changes, but emphasizing the parts of the community spirit that we’re trying to keep: user created markets, high quality comments, great memes

(another proposal was to do marbles for the spice cashout, but unclear if this is worth it.)

2. The 10-to-1 devaluation sucks

• Ammon Lam: “I paid $2000 for mana over the last 3 months, even though I didn’t expect to cash out ever. But 10 to 1 is ridiculous”
  • Maybe a 2-to-1 devaluation would be palatable
  • [a] think this is pretty important, though surprised that more people didn’t voice feeling this way. Maybe it weighs more on people who have invested a lot more heavily in mana like Ammon and me.
    • Actually, Zvi, Nathan Young and a bunch of other EA folks are also mad at this.
    • Dreev also, used the word “betrayal” I think. Same with Zvi.

Proposal: doing a $100k/mo spice withdrawal cap instead of a devaluation; eventually getting rid of the cap if the pivot is working and we’ve raised enough to cover any shortfall.

3. Losing loans sucks

• SneakySly: The most valuable markets are some form of longterm. The one-day markets are super low value.
  • AmmonLam: More than half of my positions are in longterm markets
• Tumbles: And an 18 day runway for loans ending is really bad. Would have assumed a 2-3mo runway

Proposal: less sure about this one. Maybe support a Metaculus-style “put your estimate” polling thing?

4. One week is too short; banner announcement is too hidden