Six months old article https://steemit.com/steem/@help-yourself/prediction-markets-on-steem written by @help-yourself refers about prediction market proposal for Steem. Maybe you noticed platforms like Augur but regardless to it Steemit seems to be much more natural place where such a feature would be suitable. Why? First and foremost because there are many users expecting social interactions where predictions, betting and voting is expected. Let's take a look at current situation.

Current situation

Right now there is no specific feature for these kind of operations. However it's cool to see some users who don't want to wait for these features and are trying to use existing Steemit features for this area. People like @steemsports and some others who are providing betting for others. It only demonstrates how natural these features would be in the existing Steem environment.

Wisdom of crowd

Prediction market is based on wisdom of crowd. Wisdom of crowd can be right but it's also often wrong but it can also influence outcome at some level. Nevertheless there is certain information in it. That is one of its values. When you bet on outcome against someone else expecting the opposite outcome, it can also give you additional profit if your prediction is right. That is another benefit. Next benefit can be achieved if we bring paid prediction and reward voters. Imagine that someone wants some independent survey with many participants.

• outcome prediction information
• potential profit on market
• paid surveys or predictions

Prediction market

Market with predictions is place where you can "bet" on any future outcome. Place your bid for the outcome and see if you find opposite side of your offer. Instead of setting price of something you're setting price for some event. The most simplified version is that you bet for a winning of Florida vs Ottawa and if you bet is right, you get a reward. If not you loose your bet. But this is very limited and therefore you will put your money only if market conditions look right. To compare it with buying STEEMs this corresponds with buying on current price but you cannot add your own order for custom price. Proper market should give you ability to put an custom order. There are many options how it could work and more options attracts various participants and market grows. Someone appreciates "one-click bet" and someone wish to put advanced orders. Steem should provide features for both.

Implementation

Actually I'm quite surprised that support for these features is not already here, on the other hand it's probably given by the insufficient capacity of current Steem dev team as I pointed out in one of my recent articles. However I believe Steem blockchain has already good underlying architecture for these features. There is market UI that can be used from built-in STEEM/STD market as you can see on the picture above. Sure there will be lot of additional work around but basic building blocks are already available and hopefully the question is not if but when.

All right guys, if you like to see Steem prediction market features, please comment and upvote to make it visible to push devs a bit this direction. Thank you. (This article is 100% paid in SP)