Spitballing another idea: The price of a boost starts at some set price, but drops by 1 mana every minute or hour. When purchased, the price of a Boost resets to the set value. Repeat the cycle.

This would help with price discovery; how much do people actually value Boost at?

I have an amorphous idea in my head where boosts have levels kinda like discord and people gradually contribute to the boost pool (which adds liquidity and gives a visibility bump) and when it reaches the top tier or whatever it activates the full 24h boost that pins it near the top

There is a good idea somewhere in it but I don’t know what it is or if it’s worth pursuing. I like the idea of contributing toward boosting a market, because I often want to boost something but rarely consider giving anyone a free $100 on their market, it’d make more sense to duplicate it and then boost my own lol

@Gen oh I forgot to add, I see the 1 button boost solution proposed here as a step towards making boost/liquidity more interchangeable and having a single easy solution to “market promotion”. 1 click $100 mega boost is a good idea, and it should solve all the problems by adding some liquidity too

@ian Former boost buyer chiming in here.

Before buying I actually debated whether a high liquidity market would be better. One reason I went for boost instead is because I noticed that many highly liquid markets take a long time to converge to "true odds". People don't want to make too large a bet to bring it to their estimated probability. This is especially true if there is substantial uncertainty in the estimation, as was probably the case in my boosted market.

I feel that if you made adding extra liquidity optional for an extra $N, and charge $100-N for a boost, I would be more likely to buy more. I did feel that the price for a boost (and for mana in general) is kinda high right now and only worth it for stuff I really care about getting an estimate for promptly.

I cant find the boost button but doesnt it cost something like 10,000 mana? This is halving the price of boosting if they were already planning on having >5000 liquidity

@MaxE Correct. If you were planning on putting 5000 mana in the market you will seriously consider boosting.

I’ll boost a market when this is added

@Jack1 me too

I think this is a good idea since it solves a common footgun but I don't think it'll double the sales figure.

The goal for many market creators is to increase the number of traders who:

1. Have or can find useful information, and

2. Are willing to reveal that information, and

3. Are aware of the market

Traders who want to maximize profit (and thus are willing to spend time on research/evaluation) will skip markets with little liquidity since there's no reward. They won't usually leave comments about a lack of liquidity since they just filter it out or ignore it, so the creator doesn't learn this. Bringing a market with little liquidity to more eyeballs will get additional traders but not additional profit maximizers. Increasing liquidity increases the number of users willing to reveal information in exchange for that liquidity.

Unfortunately when a creator wants to get more savvy eyeballs on their market they don't usually think about liquidity. They just hit the boost button to get more eyeballs. The profit maximizers willing to do research (or reveal info) skip it and the creator gets nothing more than a handful of M$10 bets.

By automatically injecting some liquidity when the market is boosted you increase groups 2 and 3 at the same time which potentially gets the creator more information.

I think the main reason this won't double sales is that most creators just don't think about this. Liquidity is not in the front of their mind - if they understood how important it was they would already be creating markets with more liquidity before resorting to boosts. This adjustment is to cover creators who don't understand market mechanics (and shouldn't have to!) to make the system work a little better.

I also think that the improvement from M$5000 of liquidity won't be immediately obvious to most creators. Market activity varies wildly based on a lot of factors, like how interesting the topic is and if the market gets shared on social media elsewhere. High variance on a rare event means most creators won't be able to see decisively if the new boosts are better, so there won't be much empirical evidence that boosts are now more powerful.

@wasabipesto I'm tentatively willing to bet significantly more at 50% once resolution criteria are set

Please fix liquidity being lost when added to set and multi choice markets

Will the liquidity be removed when the boost ends or will it stay there until market resolves?

@Jack1 it stays there

Be specific about the timeframe

@Eliza is it compared to the month before or the long term average of the last year etc.

@Eliza what terms would you like? We can change it to 3 month avg before vs 3 month avg after

@ian so if there are 100 boosts in the 3 months before it needs 200 boosts in the 3 months after? My main concern is 3 months is a long time to hold it steady after you make a change but otherwise seems fine.

@Eliza would you feel better about 2 months? I'd like to avoid the usage bump right when people try it

@ian I think 2 months is too short, idk

@Eliza oh, yes those are the right numbers, 200 to win

@ian The usage bump from first releasing is is real pent-up demand! You can't just ignore that.

@ian And the target figures for this market only count cash+mana boosts, not free boosts, right?

@Eliza Right, not free boosts. And okay I guess I'd do 2 months before vs after

@ian My wallet is waiting.