Hello Destiny community!
Here is the Destiny group if you can’t find it: https://manifold.markets/group/destinygg. Make sure to follow it and markets will appear on your homepage.
I’m part of the core team working at Manifold Markets. I wanted to create this post to provide a little more context on what the hell is going on for people who feel out of the loop and want to play. I’ve written it in a way so people who aren’t existing members of the Destiny community can also understand what I’m referring to.
Part 1: Introduction to our site and some basics
Part 2: Types of markets and how they work
Part 3: How you can claim a free subscription to Destiny.gg using mana.
Part 4: Thoughts on using Manifold for Orbiter stocks and how to optimise them.
Introduction
What is Manifold Markets?
We are a prediction markets website that allows users to ask questions about anything they want and run a market. Instead of trading on an asset like you would with a traditional stock, you are trading on the probability of an event occurring.
Everything is play money (you may see this written as mana or Ṁ) and cannot be converted to real money. The partial exception is you may redeem your mana to donate to charity.
Every group has a leaderboard and you may also view each user’s portfolio by clicking their username in the bets/comments tabs.
How did the Destiny community start using it?
It all comes back to the sole user yaboi69. He shared the market in the Destiny subreddit prompting a couple of other users to try it including memestiny. From there it organically took off and after 1-2 weeks we had around 200-300 people from the Destiny community sign up to try trading.
The reason viewers engaged with it so readily was due to the existing memes about hypothetical “orbiter stocks”. Traders took our markets designed for making predictions and used them to make pseudo stocks which aim to reflect the community’s sentiment towards guests on Destiny’s stream, also known as orbiters.
Right now it is all memes and just a fun game to play on the side. It’s possible we make the markets actionable in the future and Destiny actually does something with the probabilities they generate, but no real plans regarding that yet. I have speaking with Destiny so you’ll hopefully see some cool integrations and experiments in the future.
FYI our code base is open source, here’s an example of something that has already been made by the Dgg community: https://www.reddit.com/r/Destiny/comments/yth1dq/i_created_a_real_time_orbiter_stock_chart/
Some basics to get started
Trading is quite intuitive after some practice. I would recommend betting small amounts (Ṁ10) on a couple of things to get the feel for how it works. You should receive an email after 1 week with some more mana and you can earn up to Ṁ25 from your daily trading streak. There are a few other ways to earn mana see: https://help.manifold.markets/manifold-101/how-can-i-earn-mana
Check out the help center for general advice on how things work on the site: https://help.manifold.markets/
Your first 5 markets are free to create. There are an infinite number of complex things you can do with our markets, but I recommend when creating your first markets to:
Try to think of a question that is tied to an event or definite outcome that can be easily resolved to.
Make sure the resolution criteria is clear.
Try to choose something that resolves within a few months.
Keep on eye on the comments for any feedback regarding the market.
Many of our users never bother creating a market and enjoy only trading so just see what is fun for you.
Types of markets
There are a few different types of markets, you can read the full guide on how they work here: Types of markets.
Here is an example of a YES / NO market which aligns with what the site and mechanism behind the markets is optimised for. You may buy shares of either YES or NO which vary in price based on the current probability.
Here is an example of a free-response market. Anyone can submit a new answer type which users can buy shares of.
There are also numeric markets and multi-choice markets. Although available to be created, it should be noted that the mechanism behind how these functions is still somewhat a work in progress.
Claiming a Destiny.gg sub
You can claim your free Destiny sub using Ṁ1000 on this page: https://manifold.markets/destinygg
Subs can be claimed until the 9th of January or until the cap of 1000 subs runs out. Each Manifold account may claim only 1 sub. You may gift a sub to any destiny.gg account, simply enter the username.
As a new user, you should be able to expect to reach a balance of Ṁ1000 within a week of casual use thanks to our bonuses. We will be looking out for fraudulent activity that breaches our community guidelines.
Orbiter Stocks
Within the Destiny community, a new type of market is being experimented with - Orbiter Stocks. These are YES/NO markets, that instead of having the intent to be resolved as our markets are designed for, attempt to emulate real stock markets by having no resolution. There are some flaws with using our markets in this way as they are limited to a range of 0 -100% and aren’t tied to anything tangible.
I have written a detailed post describing the orbiter stock markets that have already been experimented with and why some failed. The most recent iteration of permanent stocks which never resolve works much better and everyone has been enjoying them. However, I think they could still be improved and have some new ideas of what is the best way to make orbiter stocks moving forward: https://manifold.markets/post/how-to-make-orbiter-stocks-better
End
Hope that was helpful! If you have any questions (or bugs to report) be sure to ask in our Discord. I would greatly appreciate any feedback on your experience as a new user: david@manifold.markets