Manifold have announced some major changes to the way that we can earn Mana by trading in the name of creating a "sustainable Mana economy":
This includes having users pay fees to trade and paying market creator bonuses out of these trades.
Ultimately, the changes as laid out will mean an end to the current situation where every market effectively adds Mana into the system as the market creator gets bonuses out of thin air and market subsidies mean that traders on aggregate win more Mana than they lose.
Manifold have made it clear that these changes are needed because of their upcoming pivot.
Is this because the upcoming pivot will mean that Mana has real value to users over and above the current ability to donate it to charity?
The market will resolve to YES if following the pivot:
Mana can legitimately be converted to money (without needing to use a third party which is not sanctioned/recommended)
Mana can be used to purchase goods and services (eg. you can pay for physical goods or something which people generally pay for like a Spotify subscription)
Mana can be used to buy gift cards for reputable and widely used organisations (eg. Amazon gift cards)
Mana can be converted to equity in Manifold itself
Anything which is equivalent to the above
It will not be sufficient if:
Mana can be traded for digital products with non intrinsic value
Mana can be traded for special offers/discounts (eg. 20% off at x shop)
Related questions
🏅 Top traders
| # | Name | Total profit |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ṁ185 | |
| 2 | Ṁ80 | |
| 3 | Ṁ68 | |
| 4 | Ṁ65 | |
| 5 | Ṁ56 |
@traders Regardless of what happens next with the pivot, it is clear that the intention is not for Mana to be directly exchanged for money or any other goods or services.
As such, this resolves to NO.
The plan is for Manifold to pay out real money to both traders and creators. Will this come true?
Details of the pivot have been announced, and it's pointing to a NO resolution for this market:
https://manifoldmarkets.notion.site/A-New-Deal-for-Manifold-c6e9de8f08b549859c64afb3af1dd393
As far as I can tell, Prize Points will have a real value. You can bet Mana and win PP, but you can't trade them directly and you can't cash Mana out directly.
I'm still reading more of the details, but unless I'm missing anything, Mana won't have value in and of itself.
@SimonGrayson "Mana doesn't have a real value" is only being used as a legal argument by the staff here. By all conventional means, mana has value. All you have to do is create a market "Will the sun rise tomorrow" and then resolve it to convert Mana to PP. They can essentially be traded directly. It's possible staff will curate which markets give PP, which could change things, but converting from one to the other still wouldn't be that difficult.
There’s talk of an alternate currency called Spice being added to Manifold.
If Spice has real value and Mana can be directly converted to Spice, the market will resolve to YES.
It would have to be directly converted though. If you can bet Mana to win Spice somehow or if Mana can give you a better chance to get Spice, that wouldn’t count.
@SimonGrayson the current code seems to indicate a 1:1 conversion, and you can only convert spice to mana, but not the other way.
@marktwse Yeah, with the war/terrorism/death markets, it's unlikely they will mess around. It'd be interesting to ping them and get their thoughts.