I made a doc & video about it:
It's the idea that market creators can pay USD so that manifold sets up "free shares giveaways" on markets they are interested in.
This would help solve the issue where there's no money-based market way to get more traders on markets which you want feedback on. Instead you have to build up lots of social capital via various means, then spend it in inconsistent ways to direct attention where you want information. I'd rather this just be a market (of mutually beneficial voluntary transactions)
The core new idea: once someone takes free shares, they can't SELL them, and only get paid once the market closes. BUT they can flip sides at any point, from YES to NO or vice versa.
Goal:
expand market creator ability to pay for traders,
allow new traders to get free stuff,
allow new traders to get more involved w/out stress.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3VbUrkaK7M
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YbqKv5fEbdz8CWAAzHU3G3_TB3GO2I3aqJLpfmkgHdk/edit?tab=t.0
1,000Interesting idea, a couple thoughts:
In the poll itself, the options seem to be in a slightly confusing order and with same sentiments duplicated, it might make more sense for them in be in order of ascending agreement e.g. didn't read not commenting, commenting without reading, no / wouldn't work, interesting / cool / yes, already thought of this.
Might make sense to have a one sentence summary of the idea in the poll description so people aren't put off by needing to click a link and read a long piece e.g. let people promote markets they like by offering free but unsellable trades.
I understand why there is a restriction on outright selling the shares, but why have a restriction on how many times you can switch sides? Many markets legitimately have their odds repeatedly swing between high and low due to new developments.
What if the current odds are close enough to the believed true odds that the full offered amount of free shares would over correct the odds? Ideally users should be able to choose to only accept a smaller portion of the free shares at first to prevent this.
A point I didn't explain well:
In a POSITIONS market, once you have taken the 50m of YES or NO (which may be any number of shares, depending on price), you will hold shares in this market until resolution. If you flip sides, you sell your holding then buy the other side, and no mana comes out.
So, yeah you could artificially manipulate the price with bots (making them all have negative balances, and yourself having a positive one) but at least you haven't got mana out (until resolution).
Re: overcorrection - good point. I think that in markets w/free shares:
there will be enough volume that the amount of slippage is low enough that at the limit, this never happens (since size of slippage per 50m bet will continuously decrease)
Also, since the shares are free, I don't think traders mind much.
Re: Polls: Good points on the ordering, etc. The main place I posted about it was in discord, but yeah. I just find polls to be a bit silly here so usually add lots of extraneous options. (Since they don't support changing position, seeing who voted on what, ordering, etc etc.)
@Ernie fair enough
Since they don't support changing position, seeing who voted on what, ordering, etc etc.
On mobile browser at least I can see who voted what after I have voted myself by tapping on the "x votes" of each option