Will the FTX Future Fund decide to fund Manifold for Good?
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Ṁ4877resolved May 17
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Resolves YES iff Manifold receives any amount of non-profit funding from FTX FF for charity prediction markets, or a clear expression of intent to send funding, by the closing of this market.
Our application is here: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/mbBfFHKEDBTwTSSJX/predicting-for-good-charity-prediction-markets
Reasons they might fund this:
- It's a really good idea!
- Eventually, charity prediction markets could account for significant chunks of FTX FF's spending.
Reasons they might not fund this:
- They've already invested in our for-profit side
- The idea is kind of new and weird
- There isn't enough demand for this in the real world
- FTX FF wants to do more direct funding than regranting
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Thanks for your comment, Misha (and congrats on the FF grant)! I've been a huge fan of your work, especially your report on Prediction Markets in the Corporate Setting https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/dQhjwHA7LhfE8YpYF/prediction-markets-in-the-corporate-setting
1. Agreed that the marginal dollar moved between different weird altruistic donors is less impactful than winning a bet on Polymarket; but there are a host of usability issues in Polymarket (crypto onboarding, market availability, UX design) that we think we solve much better in Manifold. Over time, the long-term vision of this would be to draw in more charitable dollars from outside the EA community as well.
2. The externalities of demanding constant vigilance are a good point, and something we do take seriously; I'd like to work out an interface/design a mechanism that allows a trader to input a true probability and be rewarded, without needing to check in on their position constantly. Maybe this just is being a prediction pool!
3. I think prediction pools are quite promising, though I'm not sure if a good (easy-to-use, incentive-aligned) mechanism has been worked out; do you have any pointers to setups/implementations/designs of prediction pools that you think are good? I'm especially curious if these are framed in a way that allow a normal person (aka not superforecaster) to understand the system and meaningfully contribute.
Would love to chat more; happy to discuss in this thread, or feel free to find a time on https://calendly.com/austinchen/manifold !
I am fairly skeptical:
1. For weird altruistic donors upside is small, (upon winning bets) they will likely be reallocating money of other weird altruistic donors.
1a. Need to note that money going to people with better judgment might be generally a good thing. 1a1. But, returning to the main point, it's unclear if donors with good judgment wouldn't have higher returns/earnings from platforms like Polymarket, where winnings are contrafactual.
2. I think the externalities are quite big prediction markets (as opposed to prediction pools) that require constant vigilance, so likely most successful traders will waste a lot of attention on their trades.
3. I am fairly skeptical about low-volume prediction markets being competitive to similar (in the number of participants) prediction pools. See: https://bit.ly/arb-prediction-markets-vs-opinion-pools
(I have/had a CoI as I applied/received a FF grant for work on epistemic institutions.)
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