On 15 February we held an AMA with Automatic Venture Group, hosted on their telegram channel. If you missed this telegram session, here’s another chance to get a full transcript of the AMA event.
Q : Let’s start with you, can you tell us briefly about yourself and your place in Venue One?
A: I am the founder & CEO of Venue One. My background is in trading & fintech. Venue One is a non custodial decentralized prediction protocol built on Algorand that allows participants to take positions on the outcome of real world events. The protocol operates on a set of smart contracts that govern various prediction mechanisms including binary outcomes, pari mutuel pools and index predictions. The focus is on short to medium duration events in sports, esports and finance.
Q: Could you please introduce the Venue One project and your vision to us?
A: Venue One aims to revolutionize the prediction markets space. The team feels that the user experience should abstract away as much of the complexity as possible so we believe we will definitely offer the most exciting & usable prediction market available currently on any chain. Our vision is to create a dynamic predictions protocol that can accommodate multiple ways of positioning and interaction. For this reason we will be deploying new market types on a regular basis, always listening to our community interests.
Q: Each project has interesting stories before it is created. So can you tell people about the story that gave you the motivation to build and develop such a great project like yours?
A: My interest in predictions markets as an efficient forecasting mechanism was sparked by reading about something that happened a long time ago: On the afternoon of May 27, 1968, the submarine USS Scorpion was declared missing with all 99 men aboard. It was known that she must be lost at some point below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean within a circle about 20 miles wide. This information was of some help, of course, but not enough to determine even five months later where she could actually be found. The investigators had all but given up hope of finding the submarine when John Craven, who was a top deep-water scientist, came up with a plan which actually predated prediction markets by decades. He simply turned to a group of submarine and salvage experts and asked them to bet on the probabilities of what could have happened. Taking an average of their responses, he was able to identify the location of the missing vessel within 220 yards of its actual location. The sub was found !
Market efficiency is really an indication of fair and wide information diffusion, something that a lot of times is lacking even in liquid assets, let alone non financial assets or time series in generalized prediction markets. Adding informed traders with skin in the game is the best way to reach efficient prediction equilibria, something which I always found very fascinating both as a trader and an engaged participant in these markets.
Q: Could you tell us about the Venue One team and their background?
A: I have over 20 years experience in trading and fintech ventures & our CTO Thanos has 15+ years of software development experience and we are surrounded by an amazing team of builders. I have worked in the City of London and Wall Street, trading systematic strategies and Thanos has built enterprise applications with millions of users. There are currently 9 team members and we are planning to be 15 by the end of the year.
Q: Tell us about your nearest plans for this year. What important events do you need to keep an eye on?
A: Testnet launch imminent then after main-net/TGE our Android app in the summer of 2022, iOS by year end — we are keen to have a mobile native version of the UI. As much as I have an itch to show you all we have in our roadmap… we will slowly show you cool stuff ;-) Stay tuned on our channels ! We will be allowing our participants to trade on most global events.
Q: Tell us about the project token, where users can see the tokenomics and what is the most important thing to know about it?
A: We will publish the detailed tokenomics before launchpad subscriptions which are coming up in March.
The token’s intrinsic value is anchored by :
1.Capped supply of 100,000,000 tokens during 5 years, followed by a 3% maximum yearly inflation.
2. Token buyback using up to 20% of the protocol profits (after 10 quarters of operation).
3. Staking rewards framework.
The most important thing to note about the token is that it allows participation in the upside of the protocol as part of the profits will be used to buy back tokens regularly.
Q: Your project will be in the Algorand ecosystem, but it is still quite young. Do you plan to expand the capabilities of the protocol with other blockchains?
A: The token will be an ASA (Algorand Standard Asset) on the Algorand blockchain. As bridges get built for the ecosystem there will be future opportunities to have an ERC-20 wrapped version.In terms of the platform we are able to accept stablecoin collateral, starting with USDC, from any chain and so the participants do not actually need to be onboard the Algorand ecosystem. Our technology is based on Algorand but from the point of view of the participants we are already a multi chain product !
Q: Will you have an Ambassador program or bounty events? How can our users participate in protocol development?
A: Yes definitely! Venue One team is very keen to invite ambassadors from all around the world to join our side. Also, we are planning a lot of bounty events shortly. If your audience is interested and wants to learn more, they can join our telegram group and find out about different opportunities within the project.
Q: For the project development, first of all, the main priority is the availability of sufficient funding. Does your team have the financial capacity to launch this project? Do you have enough funds to develop it? Can you tell us how your project is making a profit?
A: We have recently announced our funding of 3.4 million USD (see : https://venueone.medium.com/venue-one-closes-3-4m-financing-2091e9b32e49). The funds are sufficient to develop further the product and may even take it to profitability. Any further financing will be either of a strategic nature or community focused. The protocol fees are 3% on winning trades in binary markets and 3–6% speedy pari mutuel fees. These fees will be reduced by up to 50% for token holders.
Q: On your website, I found information that you are using the Venue Custom Prediction Index (VCPI) technology. Can you please tell us more about this technology? What are its main functions?
A: The custom index technology is under development. It allows the positioning of traders long or short in custom indices that have a numerical value of time that is objectively published. The positions may be levered like perpetuals. For example the value of other tokens or baskets of tokens, value of points of a team over a season, spread points between assets, value of NFTs and so on. We hope to deploy this by Q4 this year and we see this as a major innovation in our space which can power very interesting markets.
Q: How secure is the Venue One platform? Have you implemented a security audit for smart contracts? Does any audit checklist apply to your platform?
A: We take security very carefully and we have built a multisig process and secure 2FA even for our internal team processes. That way even team members that have access to back end infrastructure cannot access user information. In terms of funds and assets, we are a fully non-custodial protocol. We never touch the user’s funds or have any access to them and all interactions are via the autonomous smart contracts.
We have successfully finished a smart contract audit by Coinspect and we have another one in the pipeline. We are in discussion with an ongoing code review company to continuously look at all our pull requests and ensure code robustness.
Q: Regulation is very important; several projects in many countries have been closed due to the lack of the necessary licensing. How do you deal with this issue ?
A : The regulatory landscape is complex and we are taking advice like any other DeFi project on how to address this over time. There is no clear cut solution globally as there are multiple regulators globally trying to figure out how to best address this space without stopping innovation. The protocol trading UI won’t be available initially in the US and other prohibited jurisdictions.
Q: I read that social/ecological activity will be in the first place. Could you please provide information about your goal? Will the community be effective in this process?
A: We have decided to offer a certain amount of tokens yearly for the first 5 years to social and environmental impact projects as voted by our community. Every December we will have a vote and allocate free tokens to organizations we all believe promote the best for our planet. They can be existing charities or upcoming projects that make the world a better and more inclusive place for all. The community will not only suggest the best recipients of these grants but also vote on the allocations of the tokens to up to 10 recipients. By building on Algorand we are already operating in a very small environmental footprint blockchain and our initiative will further show the community’s focus on such issues.
Join our global community Telegram : https://t.me/venuemarkets
Follow us on Twitter : @VenueMarkets
For more information and the $VENO whitelist go to : venue.one
