Now that the community is wondering where did the Augur's go? it will be good to revisit what I wrote back in Nov '17 while crypto mania was booming.
"AlphaBots is any SSR process that is open to validation on the AlphaBlock. The process can be alpha agents like prediction markets or data scientists, or simply machines open to competing on the AlphaBlock. Competition is important for the accountability of an SSR process. Without the validation accountability any alpha process is simply a subjective claim of alpha without an objective proof.
For example, prediction markets may or may not be systematic processes and when there are a few of them out there, there needs to be an objective risk-weighted measurement of their performance. The alpha generating industry is not obliged to standardize and measure risk.
According to a 2009 publication by Harvard Law [46], Prediction Markets and Law, “Uncertainty is a painful part of reality and hence the performance of prediction markets is witnessed to be inversely correlated with how valuable their predictions would be.
Idiosyncratic action and predictability of prediction markets create systematic biases in all information markets. Prediction markets don’t tell more than what participants can figure out themselves considering the underlying materials.”
Surprisingly, this research was published much before prediction markets started hitting ICOs [47]. The core notion of the wisdom of crowds not being subsumed by the madness of masses is why prediction markets and every alpha process must go through a validation scrutiny. Human ability is overrated and both history of performance and behavioral finance has proved that humans are overconfident about our abilities [48]. Fund managers, investment clubs, and individual investors fail as a group to predict the markets. This is why prediction markets and their experiment with the wisdom of crowds is an experiment destined to fail."