[KICKSTART] Will the Manifold community pay M$250k to have Dark Mode?
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@NcyRocks has a proposed change to add Dark Mode to Manifold: https://github.com/manifoldmarkets/manifold/pull/488
You can play with it here: https://prod-git-fork-ncyrocks-dark-mode-mantic.vercel.app/ It's pretty cool!
I'm tentatively in favor of shipping this. The main blocker is, members of the Manifold core team are hesitant about the additional maintenance burden of managing a dark mode. Based on past experiences of supporting Dark Mode, and the thought that it's really not that important compared to other stuff we could be working on to grow our userbase.
So here's my proposal: if the Manifold community collectively decides that Dark Mode actually _is_ really important, they can contribute their M$ to make it happen. If we get $2500 USD = $250k of M$ commitments, I'll take that as a signal that Dark Mode is important enough, and personally work to make it happen.
Here's how I plan on distributing the M$, should we hit the threshold:
M$ 50k to @NcyRocks for kicking off this initiative
M$ 10k to me (@Austin) for organizing all of this
M$ 50k to whoever does the remainder of the work to get Dark Mode in the initial PR
M$ 140k+ set aside as bounties for whoever else continues to help maintain Dark Mode (probably the core team; but maybe not!)
To commit M$ to support Dark Mode, write a comment in this market that starts with "[COMMIT M$1000]" or however much you want to commit. The market itself resolves to YES iff we've hit a total of M$250k in commitments by market close.
Notes
- I'll periodically be deducting the commitments from user balances; if you don't have enough in your balance, I'll make a note.
- Minimum commitment size is M$ 100. You can continue to increase your commitment, but not decrease it. Max total commitment per user is M$ 100k, to keep whales from influencing this too much
- If Dark Mode does not exist by market close, all M$ will be returned, with a 10% bonus for your troubles. So yes, this is a Dominance Assurance Contract: https://www.cato-unbound.org/2017/06/07/alex-tabarrok/making-markets-work-better-dominant-assurance-contracts-some-other-helpful/
- If we do ship Dark Mode, and it turns out to be a clearly good idea in retrospect such that the benefits far outweighs the maintenance costs, the Bank of Manifold may refund some % of your commitments. If we end up thinking Dark Mode is a _really_ good idea, this refund could exceed 100%; so committing here is also similar to buying up an impact certificate for Dark Mode. Note this isn't especially likely; a priori Austin would guess <25% chance that this happens at all, so don't index too heavily on this.
- Austin reserves the right to make any changes to this scheme, including: changing any of the numbers (including the threshold), having final decisions over all M$ allocated, etc.
Jun 13, 5:16pm: Realized this system incentivizes buying in at the last minute for a free 10% gain. To combat this, I'll inelegantly say that only commitments made before Aug 1st, 2 weeks before market close, will count for the 10% bonus. (or let me know if you have a better solution)
Jun 13, 5:16pm: In case we don't reach the M$250K threshold but we decide to add Dark Mode anyways, I'm thinking of keeping the commitments and distributing them proportionally to the scheme above. (This is equivalent to me deciding the threshold should be lower than M$250k). This market will still resolve to YES iff M$250k is reached.
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>Jun 13, 5:16pm: In case we don't reach the M$250K threshold but we decide to add Dark Mode anyways, I'm thinking of keeping the commitments and distributing them proportionally to the scheme above. (This is equivalent to me deciding the threshold should be lower than M$250k). This market will still resolve to YES iff M$250k is reached.
I'm fine with this, because I think it is not your intention to exploit us.
In general I think this breaks (dominance) assurance contracts.
It incentivizes the issuer to state a price above his honest price because anything above his honest price is free profit.
@JoyVoid At the moment most of the elements that make up Manifold's interface are hard-coded to be some shade of gray and don't change when the theme changes, but if they're made to reference a shade of some colour from a theme then switching to dark mode will be pretty much effortless.
@JoyVoid Pretty much zero, if I'm understanding it correctly. I've started trying to do this but it doesn't give you as many kinds of gray to work with, the interface may have to be reworked a bit
With a general dark reader extension ( https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/dark-reader/eimadpbcbfnmbkopoojfekhnkhdbieeh?hl=fr ), having a dark mode is not worth that much to me
I do think it would have a high impact (> 33%), but not enough that this is an attractive market to bet on
As with any market you bet in, you're always accepting some amount of market resolution risk! I'm obviously not going to change this scheme just to milk some extra profits, mostly this clause is to allow me to make changes in case there are emergent bad dynamics in this new system I just thought up.
@Austin Yeah, I think there might be some bad dynamics, or at least weird ones. The market has about a 10% floor, since less than that allows a m100 commitment to be arbitraged with a m10 yes bet. So betting NO makes it more likely that dark mode gets funded. If there's currently a 1% chance it gets funded, then I should rationally bet NO, raising the chance, until there is a 10% chance of it getting funded. So... I think you invented a way to make the community fund anything non-harmful with a minimum of 10% probability?
@MartinRandall Oh interesting - I hadn't realized the Dominance Assurance Contract mechanism combines with a binary prediction market such that the payback bonus becomes a floor on the probability!
This raises all kinds of interesting questions:
- Does that mean buying NO is a way to incentivize people to commit more money? (guess: yes, but you pay more in NO shares than you gain in commitments)
- What happens if the payout bonus is 100%? 200%? (guess: the market probabilities themself become meaningless, but the DAC still works)
@Austin The person making the Dominance Assurance Contract doesn't have to be the person who makes the prediction market. So this is a dynamic of DACs in general, given the existence of prediction markets.
- Buying NO is a little better than just Committing, because after buying NO and being arbitraged with YES+Commit, I can then sell my NO and Commit the mana from the sale.
- A 100% commitment bonus leads to a ~50% probability floor, because I can commit m100 and bet yes m100 and come out even both ways. It's a bit less because of fees and liquidity.
I admire the idea of this market, and the innovative mechanism. Seems like it could be useful to judge community need on future features.
But! Personally, I would stop all mention of dark mode, turn down any offers to implement dark mode, and never bring it up again until we reach product market fit. The opportunity cost is too high, i.e. many other more useful or uncertainty-reducing features.
@SirSalty sorry: "You can continue to increase your commitment, but not decrease it." Caveat Emptor!
@JamesGrugett - yeah, that's basically why I set the threshold fairly high, because of the opportunity cost. But also, if the community is willing to pay for it, who are we to say no? Everything has a price 😁
@JamesGrugett I agree with this, assuming there is a sufficiently high opportunity cost to supporting a native dark mode. I use the Dark Reader extension [1], and it's an adequate replacement for a native dark mode.
[1]: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/dark-reader/eimadpbcbfnmbkopoojfekhnkhdbieeh?hl=en-US