New hackathon project from James and Ian just dropped:
I think the idea is really cool and I like that it encourages people in leagues to talk to each other, as well as have a single person who's responsible for mentoring them. (I'd advise renaming "owner" to "mentor", as it clarifies their intended role -- to help out others in the league and give them advice on how to proceed)
That said, I think this payout structure is seriously bad for Manifold economics, subject to exploits and shenanigans, and as currently written the most likely thing is that we'll end up wanting to patch this. For reference, currently:
Different league users bid for ownership over the course of 1 day. The winning bid is burned by Manifold, and the winner becomes the "owner"
At the end of the league, the Manifold prints or deducts mana from the owner, equal to the total profits calculated by the league.
Things that bother me about this structure:
It represents an unbounded liability to Manifold and unknown inflationary effect. As a person who takes my salary in mana, you might imagine I care a lot about the sanctity of mana's value.
It gives league participants a lot of control over league owners; owners can get screwed over if one participant chooses to artificially tank profits
(more minor) the bidding time is short and relatively uninformed.
Will we end up changing this system, or wishing that we had changed this system? Resolves to some TBD metric -- definitely resolves YES if arguments lead to us changing the system before the final payout, and also resolves YES if some kind of poll or consensus among Manifold team and community finds that it was a bad setup.
Modifications I might suggest:
Impose some kind of scaling (eg logarithmic) or hard cap on how much the owner can win or lose. We can always switch to the full 1:1 match next month, if things look good
Changing it to be some kind of "league vs league warfare" similar to clans in games, where the most profitably league in each tier wins a fixed prize (eg owner gets 10k mana, and others get 2.5k)
1,000🏅 Top traders
| # | Name | Total profit |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ṁ30 | |
| 2 | Ṁ21 | |
| 3 | Ṁ14 | |
| 4 | Ṁ3 | |
| 5 | Ṁ3 |
People are also trading
@SneakySly I agree, that sounds fun. It makes things interesting within leagues, IMO - your incentive is to win within your group while making sure the rest of your group also does well. Probably good for teamwork/community-building, plus it wouldn't result in ridiculous mana inflation.
What are the requirements to bid for a league? I can't do it, assumably because I'm in a gold league myself?
Anyways, I like the idea, but at the very least the deadline for this month probably needs to be extended. A lot of leagues are going at a much lower price right now than they should (imo), and I think that's in part because the feature has barely been announced (besides in the Discord).
Either way, this will probably be a good bet for those who can afford the risk. Leagues aren't gonna trade at EV due to the unbounded risk associated with them, so I doubt it's gonna be profitable for Manifold.
What if league owners/mentors were rated by the league participants based on how "helpful" they've been (especially in the lower leagues), and then the top-rated league owners in each category get a fixed reward? Instead of betting on a league's profits, you'd bet on your own ability to help people.
@SG "fun stunts" is basically my middle name! But I think messing with mana like this is bad for user confidence in mana, and a statement "we won't pay out for exploits" shifts a lot of burden onto the House to moderate "what counts as an exploit", which is going to take up a bunch of our cycles. It's very unclear to me which of the things being discussed in chat rn around negotiating agreements, contracts, funds, swaps, etc are "exploits" vs "in the spirit of the game"
@SG +1 We can always make it temporary if there are bad effects. More likely, we'll come up with a better way for it to work through suggestions from users & real experience with this system.
I just want to say: This is going to be so much fun!
I might create an other version of this market with the question: will we regret launching this feature as is? I would be that we won't regret it!
@Austin Strongly agree about user confidence in the value of Mana. I was already fairly worried about that. Thought the announcement this morning was a joke for a few minutes, it seems like such a bad idea.
That it's relatively easy for someone in a league to tank league profits makes this seem significantly less likely to destroy the economy this month... but I'm very unsure of how the game theory will settle here.
Surprised there hasn't been more outcry about this so far, but I want to go on record saying I strongly oppose this. Estimate this increases the chance I "quit" Manifold this year from ~10% --> ~30%
@ArunJohnson Booo. Manifold didn't get this far by never trying anything new. Counterintuitively, people will have more confidence in mana if we try experiments, because that's how you succeed at making something real and useful in the first place.
@JamesGrugett In general, agreed! Manifold rolls out new features at an astonishing pace and I'm a big supporter of trying experimental out-there ideas. My expectation of Manifold's success is higher with this general mindset than without.
However, this specific idea strikes me as a particularly bad one.
@Joshua Would it make sense to just do a small % of total mana earnings? Some of the leagues in each tier might have vastly different payouts. (the league with NinthCause for instance)
I also like the league warfare idea, it should encourage some tips from the owner/mentor in league chats.
@parhizj Agreed, any form of league vs. league competition with preset or bounded payouts seems like a much better idea.