From https://help.manifold.markets/manifold-charitable-donation-program
Manifold for Good has received grants totaling $500k from the Center for Effective Altruism (via the FTX Future Fund) to support our charitable endeavors. As of the time of this writing, every unit of mana is fully backed by corresponding charitable funding—but this may not be true in the future.
When that grant runs out, will mana donations continue? For this question, it is not required that donations continue at the same ratio of 100 mana to $1 - for example if you can donate 110 mana for $1 that will stlil count for this question.
Resolves YES if the grant runs out and it remains possible to donate mana, whether directly or indirectly, as long as it is through officially supported means. For example, if you can exchange mana for dollars, and donate those dollars, that counts, even if you can't directly donate from Manifold. It could be funded by a new grant or by Manifold's other funds.
Resolves NO if the grant runs out and this causes Manifold to end the charitable donation program. It also counts as NO if Manifold ends the charitable donation program before the grant runs out, but the limited amount of funds in the grant were the direct cause of the end of the charitable donation program (e.g. if they had other funds in the grant already budgeted for some other program).
Resolves N/A if something else causes Manifold to end the charitable donation program (such as limitations imposed by Stripe, as almost happened here: https://manifoldmarkets.notion.site/Charity-program-ending-March-1st-ac5da2d66e9d4306a917e3dd653b9cea).
This market remains open until one of the above happens.
Resolution will be based on statements made by the Manifold team.
Related:
1,000
3.00Actually via @Austin the $500k grant was fully spent as of August and charity donations continued out of Manifold's bank account.
Since that already happened before the introduction of sweepcash, this definitely resolves YES.
@AlexbGoode yeah there's about $180k of mana transfers to Manifund not included in that figure. (A big chunk of that, roughly $165k, was myself, transferring my mana salary I took in lieu of cash into my Manifund donation budget.)
My original announcement:
Mana donations are no longer available, now donations are through sweepcash, a separate currency. Users were granted sweepcash equivalent to their mana holdings as a one-time event on sweepcash launch; there is no way to convert mana to sweepcash going forward.
I don't think it's super clearly specified whether the charitable donation program here is referring to mana only or sweepcash also should be included. In the former case, this rule would apply:
Resolves N/A if something else causes Manifold to end the charitable donation program
And in the latter case the market would continue.
Thoughts @traders ?
@jack since mana was converted to sweep cash (at least for some users) I'd argue the market should continue. It is equivalent to mana being renamed.
But the last sentence is critical
Resolution will be based on statements made by the Manifold team.
What does the manifold team say? Did sweepcash caused the charitable donation program to end?
@AlexbGoode True, pre-sweep-pivot mana is effectively still donatable, but not post-sweep-pivot mana. That's what makes it tricky I think.
"Resolution will be based on statements made by the Manifold team." doesn't mean they determine what rules of this market mean, just that their statements determine the facts that we resolve upon. The sweepcash pivot was clearly the cause of post-pivot mana no longer being donatable, but even if we weren't sure about that, the market resolves on whether the initial donation grant ended, and it hasn't ("Resolves NO if the grant runs out and this causes Manifold to end the charitable donation program", "Resolves N/A if something else causes Manifold to end the charitable donation program")
Starting May 1st, 2024, only prize points (not mana) will be redeemable for charity
Would this resolve No if they don't change it back before the grant runs out?
@ahalekelly Good question - mana can be easily converted to prize points so I consider that mana -> prize points -> charitable donations still counts even though it's a two-step conversion.
@jack oh I think Prize Points can be converted to Mana at 1:1 but you can't convert Mana to Prize Points because there's too much Mana out there
@ahalekelly Mana -> shares -> prize points on resolution -> charitable donations.
You can't click a button to convert it, but they are effectively equivalent for the purposes of how we will be able to spend them.
but you can't convert Mana to Prize Points because there's too much Mana out there
No, that's not the reason. It's just that it has to be done this way for sweepstakes.
@jack oh I see what you mean, if I'm reading it correctly it does seem quite easy to convert them. We'll have to see if those conversion methods are intended, or if they change how you get prize points to try and prevent it
@ahalekelly I expect it to be fairly obvious whether they are basically equivalent or not. If you are skeptical they are intended, and want to bet on it, I will take that bet.
@jack “a curated selection of markets will pay out sweepstakes Prize Points instead of Mana.“
So it looks like it is not quite as easy as say, making a “Will this resolve YES” market that resolves in five minutes to convert mana to prize points. You have to wait for the next curated market to close and you have to be on the right side of that market. So it should still be possible, but it takes both time and skill
@JimHays Yeah, they've made it significantly less trivial to freely convert at will. However, I think the overall intent is still to maintain enough convertability that mana is valuable - the manifold team is logically acting as if all mana could eventually be converted. Not really sure whether that should count or not, I think it probably does. But do note that the criteria are "Resolves NO if the grant runs out and this causes Manifold to end the charitable donation program... Resolves N/A if something else causes Manifold to end the charitable donation program" so if this did count as ending the charity program, it would be N/A and not NO.