Gambling for science: Ideosphere wants to fund research with prediction markets

The co-founders of the decentralized science startup Ideosphere told Cointelegraph they aim to redirect the speculative energy of crypto prediction markets toward financing early-stage scientific research.

Speaking to Cointelegraph at the Blockchain for Good Awards event in Copenhagen, , Ideosphere co-founder and head of technology Rei Jarram said that some research is considered too risky to invest in through traditional channels.

She said that seeing the volume of money flowing to crypto gambling platforms prompted the project’s founders to wonder “if you could kind of siphon some of that speculation away from gambling toward early-stage research.”

Jarram saw as a perfect fit since “gamblers have a high risk appetite and early stage research and development is pretty risky.”

Jarram said that while talent and innovation exist in abundance, funding remains scarce because traditional channels consider such projects too risky. “The money is there” she said, “but if they can’t get the money, it’s probably because of an incentive issue,” which is what Ideosphere hopes to solve.

“If you can kind of create prediction markets around early stage research, you can make those markets a marketplace of ideas that will actually bring the money in. […] Researchers can put forward hypotheses that they are working on and traders can speculate on it, and the spread goes to the researcher.”

The project is still in the early stages of development, with only front-end mockups available so far. Still, they have been 10,000 USDt () of funding by the Blockchain for Good Alliance during the event.

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It’s not that simple

As with most projects, Ideosphere is more complex than it may appear at first. Without further countermeasures, a setup like the one described above is vulnerable to corruption and errors, leading to erroneously closed markets.

Researchers can make mistakes and come to the wrong conclusion, and with a prediction market resolving to their results, they have an incentive to close the market in the least anticipated way and engage in insider trading. The co-founders have some countermeasures in mind that should alleviate this issue.

Rei explained that the platform will feature a dispute system — possibly the UMA Protocol — where if a user initiates a dispute and they are found to be correct, they are financially rewarded, and they lose money otherwise. This would be expected to lead to a sort of crowdfunded peer review, a scientific process in which experts in the same field evaluate research.

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Decentralized vetting

To access funding, researchers would also need to secure a deposit and undergo a vetting process that includes user voting. They would also have to provide estimates of the commercial viability of practical applications and the time-to-market.

In addition to prediction markets, Ideosphere plans to introduce what it calls “discovery markets.” Rei explained that their purpose will be sorting through potential research projects “to identify the most high-impact, feasible projects that could be funded with […] the smallest amount of funding.”

She also said that research projects will be able to access crowdfunding on the platform, as well as funding from prediction market trading spreads. Rei added that “you need a lot of volume to generate substantial funding,” and it could be insufficient, which is why they want to offer additional funding avenues.

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