oh. I see. The buffer people are betting on a feeding frenzy!

And the no holders are betting the feeding frenzy won't cause a mistake (and no trolls will win)

So... it's never in anyone's interest to buy "no" down to 2%. So we can assume the market won't actually hit 2% (unless we hit a troll or someone who makes a mistake. Let's call that chance e%. Right now, with a troll/mistake needing to get through the 21K mana barrier of "yes" at 3%, e is pretty small, far less than 2%.)

But given that it's never gonna happen (e% chance of happening)... it's in your interest to buy "no" down to 3%, for sure! Since e < 3%! If you could, it would pay to buy it down to e%, but passing 2% would make it not e% any more, so it's just worth it to buy "no" as much as possible without passing the 3% threshold.

So it seems to me that the stable state is 3%, and everyone checks carefully to make sure they don't accidentally push it down to 2%.

But that e value can change. What if we lost our 21K buffer? What would e be if there were no buffer? Here on Manifold, with our user base?

Probably still lower than 2% I bet. But maybe those people bidding yes on 3% disagree, and think if the buffer goes away, there's more than a 2% chance someone messes up. So they're paying to keep the buffer up.

But the buffer is keeping e small, for sure.

It feels like (but I'm not sure) it's in everyone's best interests to be careful with that 21K buffer, so that we keep e small. So there's less chance of two people trying to buy "no" at the same time.

But an individual can come in and buy some of that 21K and expect to make money, but that erodes the buffer (raising e).

It seems to me, especially as the time gets closer to 0 days left, that you should be able to make money by eating the buffer. But if everyone tries to do that at once... whoops, the buffer will get eaten by a feeding frenzy and that'll shoot e through the roof.

So maybe the best bet for the buffer is to have people actually coordinate? Rather than just relying on the buffer, when it'll cause a mad rush at the end of the timeline?

There's no way to coordinate with some rando coming up and trying to eat all the buffer for profit. So really it's about coordinating between everyone providing the buffer, I think? And now that I've posted this, there will be more randos (sorry buffer providers!).

But at least among the people providing the buffer, maybe you should coordinate to tear it down at a point you all know, but inform everyone not-helping-with-the-buffer at the same time (maybe with 1hr notice) so that you don't have to worry about a sudden rush happening?

But shoot, if you coordinate like that, anyone listening could bet "no" right when you tear it down... Maybe you just hope there aren't many people watching at that time.

Idk, what does everyone else think?

@DannyqnOht The buffer seems rather obviously a trap. If someone eats a substantial chunk of it, the holder can cancel the remaining limit orders and dump howevermuch YES is needed to drop the probability down to the 2% target. After that they're still holding big pile of YES.
If someone just blows through it for some reason they also win.
So eating (much of) the buffer is a mistake. Really the best play is to build your own slightly higher wall of limit orders, so that if anyone does decide to buy no, you are in line to make this move rather than whoever has their limit orders set lower.

@BorisBartlog I sunk 100M into a YES position that I intend to use this way

but I also am quite forgetful! so we’ll see what happens :)

Bet on whether I will remember here:

https://manifold.markets/KJW_01294/will-kimmy-forget-to-dump-her-load?r=S0pXXzAxMjk0

(If @256 doesnt like this sort of market manipulation please say so and I’m happy to cut it our)

edit: I’m a dumbass for thinking 100M would be enough, my entire net worth isn’t enough to bring this market below 3%