As of April 3rd, 2024, the company running Manifold has about 1 year of runway left before it needs to raise more money or become profitable.
I will judge whether they have run out of money primarily by the occurrence of drastic cuts in the number or salaries of founder & non-founder employees and contractors.
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@Eliza Personally I think there was a very strong argument for the point where they went down to just Ian and SG as the only employees (based on the market description).
@skibidist but the way they reduced headcount was gradual rather than fast and panicky, so the "didn't happen" camp has a totally valid argument also.
given the description, it's reasonable enough to note that manifold is now much smaller, but the actual practical timing of the departures (e.g., David getting a very promising opportunity elsewhere) doesn't really support the idea that this was hasty downsizing forced by a desire to cut salaries.
at this point, manifold might be basically out of money for all i know, but that's separate from whether it was the primary cause for downsizing. my assumption is that in the counterfactual that david didn't find some more promising opportunity elsewhere, he would still be working at manifold (i.e., not laid off due to the site running out of money), and if you believe that's the counterfactual, i don't see an argument for anything but "Not before 2026". resolving to something else would require you believe instead that the new opportunity elsewhere is more like ~cover for the fact that they had to downsize at that time. that would be quite a coincidence, and i don't see any real reason to believe it.
@Ziddletwix To add to this, I read in mid-2025 that they claimed to be able to survive indefinitely.
@Bayesian Couple days ago Jskf told James his reclaim-mana script stole most of mirrorbot's balance. James clarified it's suppose to only take from inactive users. People asked why he was taking mana from anyone to begin with and James said he would explain in the Update channel soon.
@Bayesian Because it was set aggressively and taking mana from active accounts. Seems like if you had a bank/mule account and it did stuff like send mana or make markets but didn't make enough bets it might have gotten hit. I was memeing that if they keep taking mana from active accounts people will have to buy more from Manifold