Prediction markets are seen as a gambling tool but Ethereum’s co-founder, Vitalik Buterin views them as an information platform that can be helpful in fields other than voting processes.
Prediction market can decide the best policies for society in Futarchy an alternative governance system.
Prediction markets have something unpredictable on stake, which sets them apart from regular news and opinion polls and make the resulting market odds more credible.
Vitalik is interested in Polymarket, a platform that allowed people to bet on who would triumph and updated probabilities based on the election in real-time, providing less distorted images of the odds.
Prediction markets are just a small part of Vitalik’s vision of info finance, a model where prediction markets could be used as incentives to reveal helpful information for governing, scientific research, social media, and content moderation.
The use of artificial intelligence could create a larger market in which minor, niche questions could be predicted.
Info finance could be used to help decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) governance by allowing prediction markets to suggest likely outcomes.
Prediction markets could provide quick insight into credibility in scientific research.
The future of info finance could be instrumental in identifying projects that contribute to public goods funding.
Vitalik’s vision is that info finance can bring to science, governance, and public trust an opportunity to create a new way to source credible information and make decisions.