Prediction Markets on Steroids, Digital Wallets Are the Crypto Google

Good morning defiers :) Because we all need a little help from out friends, it’s all about integration in the DeFi world today:

• Augur is integrating with bZx to offer margin lending
• MyEtherWallet is adding MakerDAO’s CDP portal to its platform
• Soon, anyone will be able to create their own Burner Wallet

Leveraged Prediction Markets

Prediction market platform Augur is adding leverage to the game. The project is integrating with margin lending protocol bZx so that users can take leveraged loans to double down (or 3x, or 4x…) on their bets. The new feature can be demoed now and will be live when Augur 2.0 (which is being audited by Zeppelin) is released.

Prediction markets use “wisdom of crowds” to forecast events, from the price of a stock to the outcome of an election. Research shows crowds are pretty good at forecasting things.

These markets were seen as a good use-case for blockchain technology from early on because, 1) cryptocurrencies can be used as an incentive to increase honest participation, 2) they’re often illegal so a decentralized network helps users skirt regulators. Augur held the first ever crowdsale/ICO on Ethereum in August 2015, which makes them veterans in this space.

Still, Augur and other platforms like it haven’t taken off mostly because of poor user interface and low liquidity. Margin lending is supposed to help with the latter. Traders will be able to increase their positions and not have to spread them across different markets. Before, if traders wanted to bet on the price for AAPL stock and also do a 3x leveraged bet on it, they’d have to go to different markets. Now, all bets relating to the same event will be unified.

Gambling and risk-taking gets people’s blood flowing, so maybe this is the right move to spur adoption. As of June 12, Augur had 444 open markets with $582,014 of open interest, according to the latest development update, and 145 users exchanging 490 ether in the past seven days, according to Dapp Radar. Something for defiers to note: One of the markets had the chance there will be a loss of funds in a DeFi app by July 23 at 50%.

Something else of note: This is another example of Ethereum-based projects leveraging other teams’ work instead of building everything from scratch to improve experience. Augur 2.0 will also integrate with MakerDAO and Uniswap Exchange. It’s the beauty of open source and also an example of Ethereum’s strong network effects. It’s better to build where everyone else is building.

Digital Wallets Turning Into Crypto-Banks

MyEtherWallet, adorably known as MEW, on Tuesday said it’s integrating with MakerDAO’s CDP portal. That means users will be able to take out collateralized loans right from their digital wallet, without having to go to the MakerDAO app.

Anything that can cut down the number of steps required to wade through decentralized apps is good news. From here, it’s not hard to see a future where all the different DeFi projects can be accessed through one simple interface, and it makes sense that it be the same place where you trade your tokens.

It will be like going into your regular banking app, with a few differences:

1. You’ll be in control of your funds
2. Transactions (loans, local money transfers, cross-border money transfers, trading) will be instant or near instant and 24/7
3. Transactions will be peer-to-peer. No third parties snooping at the data, charging extra fees, and slowing things down
4. Services offered won’t necessarily be developed by the wallet used to access them. Projects from teams all around the crypto-sphere will be available so the user can make the best financial decisions

So really more like a browser than a banking app. But Google won’t be spying on your every move to sell adds.

Burner Wallet Factory

Blockchain developers want to make a WordPress for digital wallets.

The Burner Wallet, created by Austin Griffith, is an easy to use, bare-bones digital wallet. It’s not the place where you go to open collateralized loans and trade on margin. It’s what you use to buy coffee with crypto for the first time.

It’s been tested out at Ethereum hackathons with good results. At EthDenver in February, everyone was given a QR code that contained crypto to upload to a Burner Wallet, which is just a website URL, so no need to download anything. You scanned the QR code with your phone camera, got crypto transferred to your waller, and with that were able to pay for food at the event (I tried it and it really was easy). There were 11 food trucks that sold 4,405 meals for $38,432.56. The transaction costs for all of that (not just per transaction) was only 20 cents.

Blockchain engineer David Mihal created a “Burner Factory,” or a website where people can build their own, customizable, digital wallet without having to write a line of code, he says in a blog post. –Still, the link immediately asks to connect to GitHub, so that will be a turn-off for non-programmers.

It’s still only a prototype so presumably those kinks will be sorted out. In the near future, just like Augur used bZx to incorporate leverage, other projects and events will be able to easily include a burner wallet and get non-technical people to use digital currencies for the first time.

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