LibraryData and agents2018Design paperCorpus record
Augur: a Decentralized Oracle and Prediction Market Platform
Augur. Jack Peterson, Joseph Krug, Micah Zoltu, Austin K. Williams, Stephanie Alexander.
The Augur paper: prediction markets whose outcomes are reported by token holders, with a dispute ladder that can escalate a contested result. It is both a market design and an oracle design. The historic library already holds Gnosis. Augur is the other canonical public prediction-market paper and was not in that set.
Augur's paper specifies a prediction market whose outcomes are reported by token holders, with a dispute ladder that can escalate a lie toward a fork of the market itself.
- Evidence
- Primary paper
- Re-measured
- No
- Assumptions
- 4
- Records linked
- 5
Code
Source, repository, and what is actually hosted
- Augur white paperhttps://augur.net/whitepaper.pdf
- The source URL is not a GitHub repository. No code remote is invented.
- Full text is not mirrored. Public availability is not a licence to copy the file onto this site.
- Add to a reading list
01 Claim ledger
What the paper is allowed to say
Each row is a sentence already in the study. The status is the same on every row: a model claim, not a live measurement.
Claim 01 · Paper model
A prediction market needs a referee
The contract can hold the stakes. It cannot watch the world and decide who won. Augur's referee is a reporting and dispute process, not a named person.
Claim 02 · Paper model
Reporting is a bonded claim
A reporter stakes on an outcome. If nobody disputes, that outcome stands and the market resolves. The bond is the cost of a casual lie.
Claim 03 · Paper model
Disputes escalate
A challenger posts a larger bond. Rounds continue until the stake at risk is large, up to a fork in the paper's full design. The ladder is how a cheap market and a high-stakes market share one system.
Claim 04 · Paper model
A fork is the nuclear step
Token holders split into universes, one per contested outcome. The market the paper believes in is the universe people choose to keep using. That is a social finality, and the paper says so.
Claim 05 · Paper model
Markets can be about anything reportable
The paper's neutrality about subject matter is a design choice with legal and ethical consequences. It is not a technical requirement of the dispute ladder.
02 Three cuts
Observation, model, falsifier
A desk does not stop at the summary. Each claim is cut three ways, using only this study's own assumptions and checks. Nothing here is a new figure.
01 A prediction market needs a referee
Observation
What the study says
The contract can hold the stakes. It cannot watch the world and decide who won. Augur's referee is a reporting and dispute process, not a named person.
Model
What has to hold
Some set of holders will dispute a false report before the window ends.
Falsifier
What would retire it
What is the dispute window relative to how long a lie would be profitable?
02 Reporting is a bonded claim
Observation
What the study says
A reporter stakes on an outcome. If nobody disputes, that outcome stands and the market resolves. The bond is the cost of a casual lie.
Model
What has to hold
The question is specified tightly enough that honest reporters agree. Ambiguity forks honest people.
Falsifier
What would retire it
Is the question unambiguous on the day it resolves, not only on the day it was written?
03 Disputes escalate
Observation
What the study says
A challenger posts a larger bond. Rounds continue until the stake at risk is large, up to a fork in the paper's full design. The ladder is how a cheap market and a high-stakes market share one system.
Model
What has to hold
The cost of a fork is real to the attacker and survivable for the system.
Falsifier
What would retire it
Who makes the first report, and how large is their bond?
04 A fork is the nuclear step
Observation
What the study says
Token holders split into universes, one per contested outcome. The market the paper believes in is the universe people choose to keep using. That is a social finality, and the paper says so.
Model
What has to hold
Some set of holders will dispute a false report before the window ends.
Falsifier
What would retire it
Does this market actually fork a valuable token, or does it stop at an admin?
05 Markets can be about anything reportable
Observation
What the study says
The paper's neutrality about subject matter is a design choice with legal and ethical consequences. It is not a technical requirement of the dispute ladder.
Model
What has to hold
Some set of holders will dispute a false report before the window ends.
Falsifier
What would retire it
What is the dispute window relative to how long a lie would be profitable?
03 Sequence
One action, as an operating tape
- 01A market is created with a question, an end time, and a designated reporter.
- 02Traders buy and sell shares in outcomes. The price is the market's probability only if the resolution process is trusted.
- 03After the end time, the reporter submits an outcome with a bond.
- 04During the dispute window, anyone can challenge with a higher bond. Further rounds raise the amount.
- 05If the dispute reaches a fork, token holders migrate to the universe they believe, and the market resolves in the universe that retains participation.
04 Load-bearing
The argument, and where a pitch drops it
The price is only as good as the referee
The cut
A clean automated market maker on top of a corruptible resolution is a clean market for a crooked question. Augur's contribution is to spend its design budget on resolution. A study that explains the trading curve and skips the fork has skipped the paper.
Why it carries weight
If this cut is skipped, the paper's name is being used without the mechanism that makes the name mean anything.
Where it is dropped
A prediction market can be illegal to offer in a given jurisdiction. The paper is not legal advice and this page is not an invitation to list markets.
Forks are credible only if the token matters
The cut
Migrating to a universe is a punishment if the token and the future fee stream have value. If they do not, a wealthy liar can outlast the ladder. The security is circular in the way many cryptoeconomic systems are, and it should be described as circular rather than as solved.
Why it carries weight
If this cut is skipped, the paper's name is being used without the mechanism that makes the name mean anything.
Where it is dropped
Thin dispute markets fail closed or fail captured. The ladder only helps if someone climbs it.
Designated reporters are a convenience and a target
The cut
They make ordinary markets resolve quickly. They also mean the first report is one party's job. The dispute window is what keeps that from being the whole trust model. A market with a reporter and no realistic disputers is a centralised call in a decentralised costume.
Why it carries weight
If this cut is skipped, the paper's name is being used without the mechanism that makes the name mean anything.
Where it is dropped
A prediction market can be illegal to offer in a given jurisdiction. The paper is not legal advice and this page is not an invitation to list markets.
05 Register
What has to be true
Model · Not re-measured
Some set of holders will dispute a false report before the window ends.
Adversary · Not re-measured
The question is specified tightly enough that honest reporters agree. Ambiguity forks honest people.
Model · Not re-measured
The cost of a fork is real to the attacker and survivable for the system.
Model · Not re-measured
Traders understand that a share pays out only after this process, not when the newspaper headline appears.
06 Divergence
What happened after the paper
Augur launched on Ethereum, saw thin liquidity, and later revised the token and the market design. The dispute ladder and the fork remain the idea worth teaching. A live prediction market that uses a committee or a single resolver is a different product and should not borrow Augur's security paragraph.
A later client, parameter set, or reward formula is a different object. Cite this paper for the mechanism. Cite a primary release for the network. This desk has not re-run the proof.
07 Pre-mortem
What to check before you use the idea
- 0 of 4 marked on this browser. A mark is a reading note, not a pass, a rating, or a recommendation.
08 Anatomy
The paper, in the order a builder needs
The problem it names
A prediction market is only as honest as the oracle that says what happened. If a single reporter can settle the market, the market prices the reporter. Augur's paper spreads reporting across holders and makes a false report contestable by people who post a bond.
What the design proposes
- Markets define an outcome space and a resolution time.
- Reporters stake on an outcome. Disputers can escalate by staking more, up a ladder the paper specifies.
- Forking the reporting universe is the final backstop the paper is willing to name.
How the mechanism is specified
- The economic claim is that a liar must outbid everyone who prefers a true resolution, at each rung.
- Market prices are then a public estimate conditional on that oracle actually working.
- A forked universe is a social and technical event. The paper treats it as part of security, not as an embarrassment.
What this page does not treat as proven
- A prediction market can be illegal to offer in a given jurisdiction. The paper is not legal advice and this page is not an invitation to list markets.
- Thin dispute markets fail closed or fail captured. The ladder only helps if someone climbs it.
- Later Augur versions changed mechanics. Cite the version.
Why the desk still reads it
The pattern we care about is escalatable truth: a reported fact that a named bond can challenge, with a last resort that is explicit. That pattern shows up in oracles, in governance, and in agent mandates. Augur writes it down.
09 Lexicon
Terms, opened into the record
- Designated reporter
- The party expected to submit the first bonded outcome after the market ends.
- Dispute round
- A challenge that raises the bond and reopens the outcome.
- Fork
- A split of the token into universes, one per contested outcome, used when the ladder reaches the top.
- Universe
- The branch of the system that holders choose to keep using after a fork. Resolution follows that choice.
10 Repository
Every linked record on this page
Underlined words open a page that already exists: a concept, a protocol profile, a failure record, or another paper. If a word is not underlined, this desk does not have a record for it.
This is Blockchain Lab's reading of a public design paper. It is not the paper, not a copy of it, and not an offer of tokens, equity, custody or a partnership. Later network behaviour can diverge from the text. Nothing here is investment, legal or technical advice.
Research status: Design paper. Last reviewed: 1 October 2026. This is a reading of a public paper, not investment, legal or security advice.