Blockchain Prediction Platform Augur to Launch Stablecoin DAI-Denominated Markets

Blockchain-powered event betting platform Augur has launched a token denominated in MakerDAO’s Dai (DAI) stablecoin as part of a major upgrade to its platform. The news was announced in an official blog post tweeted on April 8.

Augur argues that introducing DAI-denominated markets will make trading less volatile as compared with Ethereum (ETH), which has been used for trading on the platform thus far.

DAI support comes as part of wide-ranging improvements to Augur’s protocol, with the company today stating that its version two (V2) protocol contracts are “now ready for the first round of audits with integration work in progress with the rest of the Augur platform.” In terms of DAI support, that blog post outlines that:

“For V1, the usage of ETH was accomplished by using a contract (‘Cash’) that wrapped ETH and was given additional trust by the Augur contracts to take privileged transfers. The V2 contracts will still reference ‘Cash,’ which will instead point to an ERC20 Token with no extensions. At release time, this will be set to the Multi-Collateral DAI token.”

Other protocol improvements notably include tackling a recent weak point on the platform that had allowed bad actors to create deliberately invalid markets, as Cointelegraph previously reported. To address this issue, Augur is introducing a V2 upgrade that will allow for “Invalid” to be a tradeable outcome.

Among a host of other new features for V2 is what Augur dubs “Use it or Lose It Forking,” which introduces a time limit, in addition to the existing token percentage bonus, in order to motivate users to migrate their tokens and participate in a fork, while ensuring security.

As reported, alongside the exploitation of invalid markets by bad actors, Augur had previously sparked controversy when so-called “assassination markets” surfaced on the platform, in which users placed bets on the deaths of a number of high-profile public figures.

To press time, Augur’s native token REP ranks 35th by market capitalization and is trading at $20.46, according to CoinMarketCap.