why can’t you post changes to the system to an RSS feed or notifications? Why do I have to troll through Discord history to find out something has changed? This seems so fundamental to me

@TallUntidyGothGF https://manifoldmarkets.notion.site/Changelog-da5b4fe95872484f8fa4ee5cc71806d8 I had to search the web for this. Post them to notifications I beg you!!!

Notion

@Nightsquared

Markets no longer displays the whole y-axis if no longer necessary. Personally, I find this confusing sometimes, especially on markets with low numbers of traders.

has manifold been really slow for anyone else the last week or so?

@whhatisachoice https://manifold.markets/ian/will-we-fix-our-database-problems-b yes

@Ziddletwix thank you!

Creators can now NA their mana markets again!

@strutheo Awesome!

@Nightsquared Wire transfer came through

@Nightsquared Although interestingly, it's still marked as having an error in my cashout history

We need automatic loans, I like forecasting, not gambling, and at this point long term forecasting markets are a great way to drain your balance and have no reason to check manifold for years.

Using Mana as a hybrid currency killed a lot of momentum, and the vibrancy of wild markets was mostly lost with the currency rebalance, with what was left being propped up by direct manifold subsidies.

@DanW they will probably add them back i think

@DanW The pivot makes less sense in the face of recent court rulings with all of these alternate real money markets gaining ground. I would loved to see Manifold lean in to all the absurd stuff that is possible with mana play money:

• derivative market structures (automated resolutions conditionally based on n upstream markets)

• Quick live markets with twitch integrations and a shadow play currency for guest users

@DanW lol they JUST pivoted to doing more real money because play money wasnt enough to keep the company going

FWIW the last statement i saw was that loans were expected to be reimplemented after the election (but not before)

I can't buy mana without giving up my deadname, and there's no incentive to create markets that are traded by people with lots of mana or at a high frequency due to the removal of creator fees. It's difficult to recover the cost of question creation, and at this rate I will not have enough mana to create markets like this one:

@ampdot I frankly don't understand what Manifold is trying to become– Polymarket for Americans? And I do not feel Manifold enables me to ask useful questions about technical AI timelines like the ones below.

@ampdot @JonasVollmer @OliverHabryka @NathanpmYoung any reason you're continuing to hold YES shares in this market? Manifold has been increasingly difficult for me to use to make useful predictions about technical AI timelines with, and instead seems to be focused on elections. I'm currently more optimistic that my mana is more useful tied up in this market than being used to place predictions on language models (which I usually profit from) or creating questions.

@ampdot theyre focusing on elections because its election season. also theyre thinking of reintroducing loans so that will help with long term markets soon

@strutheo What are they planning to focus on after elections? I'm not posting long-term markets - these markets resolve in a few months.

@ampdot Yes, we are focused on the election right now, as it's election season. But after the election, AI will be a bigger focus. We plan to commission and subsidize high-quality markets on AI benchmarks, product launches, regulatory changes, etc.

@ampdot do you expect focusing on elections now to help Manifold's success post-election? do you expect users who joined for the election to be interested in AI? do you have a specific market or strategy you're focused on?

idk why youd be upset at them advertising to more groups to grow the userbase, this site is full of people for many topics not just ai

@strutheo Manifold is actively making it more difficult to use this website for AI forecasting– the person who onboarded me to Manifold as an AI forecasting website is actively encouraging people to avoid using Manifold as a result of changes brought about as a result. Removal of creator fees and removal of ability to buy mana psuedonymously mean that I can't create sustainably markets– there aren't enough AI markets to bet on to win enough mana to create markets with.

they just said theyre working on features to improve ai / long term markets... the features existed but were turned off for real money. patience lol

you can have a friend buy on another account and transfer mana btw

@strutheo "Product-market fit" means creating a product that is good for a specific market. They are not achieving product-market fit; instead, they're spending lots of effort on user acquisition costs that will all be moot when those users leave after the election is over.

@strutheo That won't really matter, because user retention is a one-way trap. I've already begun to migrate towards Polymarket instead.

you might be new here but this is every week on manifold lol, lots of random feature change, lots of random marketing attempts. that is what startups must do. if you think ai markets alone will get them a sustainable business you're mistaken sadly , not until they reach scale

@strutheo I'm aware that this is what Manifold does. "This is what startups do" reflects that startups usually lack the leadership acumen of a more mature company to either focus on a specific strategy or test specific market hypotheses. Manifold has fundamentally failed to create new demand for prediction markets and has instead been relying continuously on latent, existing demand. If they were focused on one market, they could afford to do marketing– the creation of demand in new markets– and create demand for prediction markets by creating a culture around them. But Manifold does not create new markets, Manifold tries to find its place in a market for prediction market websites that is simply too small to support it.

TL;DR This is a vote of no-confidence in Manifold's ability to figure out a viable long-term strategy, because they're not doing that at all, just flitting between different audiences, none of which are big enough to support it, and hoping they somehow have a product that can serve all their various needs.

i think most ppl would agree their best strategy is to grow the userbase as much as they can. but id argue the best way is getting as many new interested groups as possible and seeing who sticks around, not focusing on ai specifically. honestly ai was the most boring part of this website when i first joined and all my initial question making was for anything other than ai or crypto markets lol. in the end manifold's product market fit is around user generated markets, so they have to allow for massive experimentation and topic generation.

@SG @strutheo Is there a strategy for encouraging election users to stick around after the elections is over?

maybe it swung the other way and now ai is too low on the platform, but it was definitely overbearing for a while

@ampdot yes - gamblers love to gamble lol

in the end they just need volume across the board, if a single topic gave them 10k users they'd focus on whatever that is. so following news trends is probably a safe bet until they find that group. i am sure when bitcoin starts climbing toward 100k again, or gpt5 releases, we'll have nothing but those markets for another month or two

@strutheo I'm not arguing for them to focus on AI markets, though– you're confusing me expressing my own preferences as a user, with me discussing what I think is good strategy. I think they should choose a specific focus or strategy– like you mentioned, "user generated markets," perhaps. But it currently seems like it's going to be easier for me to propose markets on Polymarket discord than it is for me to create markets on Manifold.

I think the best way to grow the userbase is to help a specific community develop a culture of expressing their opinions via betting and making Manifold have better features for sharing bets on other platforms. I frankly don't believe that Manifold is "getting as many new interested groups as possible and seeing who sticks around"– occam's razor says they're merely chasing short-term volume

@ampdot ah interesting so you'd want more official / sweeps markets around ai perhaps?

i havent tried proposing in poly discord. i think they are toying with the idea of allowing user submissions in the future

@strutheo Polymarket seems to very quickly approve almost all reasonable user submitted questions from Discord, I've thought about writing a script that automates most of the process so I can submit more easily.

@strutheo If Manifold approved many more sweepcash markets or paid enough attention to subsidize short-term objective hard forks, yes, otherwise, I'd rather that when Manifold is chasing $CURRENT_THING for short-term volume, they don't interfere with user-created markets. Again, I don't think their focus should be on AI specifically, just that they should focus on a specific topic, strategy, or community specifically.

@ampdot As it stands, it costs $10 to propose a question on Manifold, but it's free to do so on Polymarket, and the Polymarket will end up with more liquidity.

@ampdot Kalshi is a better Polymarket for Americans post-court decision

@ampdot

Removal of creator fees and removal of ability to buy mana psuedonymously mean that I can't create sustainably markets

Find this point a bit strange—for "sustainable market creation", it's much easier now than it was anytime since ~May. For most markets, unique trader bonuses are much higher than fees.

As it stands, it costs $10 to propose a question on Manifold

Converted to $, the minimum question creation fee is $1? ($2.50 this morning but then reverted). $10 gets you a higher tier, but there's nothing unique about that (you could also go up to $100, or $1000). I mean all of that seems somewhat besides the point—Manifold gives you mana each day, so it's pretty easy to make/write questions.

As it stands, it costs $10 to propose a question on Manifold, but it's free to do so on Polymarket, and the Polymarket will end up with more liquidity.

I don't entirely buy this? Like anyone can "propose" a question on Manifold as well, for free (and there's tons of mana lying around for people to make questions that sound interesting). If I go to Polymarket with my idea for an AI forecasting question and propose it, I do not think it would have a very high chance of being used (they don't have that many ongoing AI markets right now?). Polymarket has a very high chance to use certain narrow types of proposed questions (quickly resolving, objective, etc), and they will ignore others. The pitch for Manifold is I can make ~any question I want. If you're interested in forecasting, I'd be very surprised if Polymarket offered what you care about? (For many other topics, Polymarket is excellent and has great coverage and you can easily suggest other questions to fill in the gaps! But their interests are narrow.)

FWIW, I have no actual disagreement with your big picture takeaways—I can't answer about manifold's long term business viability and I don't think their current pitch works for most people (it's a start-up, they're taking a swing, fair enough, but of course the very established polymarket is better for people who want to place serious bets, no one can dispute that). Just clearing up some minor points that seemed inaccurate above.

also, this thread started with questioning why the approval rating doesn't accurately reflect the reality of manifold's business prospects/decisions, and i dunno what to say, it's a meaningless stonk for signaling that will never resolve, the biggest NO holder is an account that does literally nothing else but login and bet NO on this market each day (lol legend), other holders are banned accounts/staff, the activity in this market cannot be translated to anything meaningful it's just a comment section where people can chat about the endless product changes