The cryptoeconomy’s most high-profile decentralized prediction marketplace, Augur (REP), has been identified as having a problematic design flaw according to the research arm of the space’s most high-profile crypto exchange, Binance.
In the report, Binance Research outlined some general and technical problems facing the platform and also offered an analysis on what they characterized as a so-called “design flaw attack” — a phenomena involving a malicious agent intentionally making vague Augur markets in order to manipulate them for financial gain.
The researchers noted that the lack of Augur user interfaces (UI) to date has led to a bottleneck effect where users are relying on one of two platforms, augur.casino or an IPFS-backed UI. This pigeonhole dynamic can facilitate manipulation since artificial trade volume can more readily raise the profile of attackers’ markets.
Binance Research noted that volume was low enough on the platform that, at least for now, an agent could use a relatively small amount of ether (ETH) to easily boost the exposure of attack markets. The team also highlighted that REP validity bonds, which are confiscated if markets resolve as “invalid,” are small enough that malicious agents can rather cheaply create many problematic markets.
.@BinanceResearch takes an in-depth look into irregularities discovered on @augurproject, the largest decentralized prediction market platform built on top of Ethereum. $REP
Read the findings in the report below ????https://t.co/dhOWbmv5F9
— Binance (@binance) April 1, 2019
As for the design flaw attack, Binance’s researchers said it involves an attacker creating a market that has a nearly impossible result and an extremely likely result.
The agent would then artificially boost awareness around the market with fake volume, drawing in organic bettors. The attacker, hoping for an eventual invalid market determination, then sells shares of the reasonable outcome at what appears to be a discount.
The problem? If the “invalid” ploy works, then all outcomes in that market will be “priced equally” and thus return equal shares of ether. That means the purchaser, having bought what they thought was a safe bet, would be guaranteed to lose money while the malicious agent makes off with a profit.
Where to Go From Here?
Binance’s researchers credited Augur’s builders with being aware of the aforementioned issues but argued that users may still be vulnerable in the interim:
“To their credit, the Augur team has already identified several of the considerations mentioned, as well as other potential improvements to consider for the 2nd version of the platform.
However, the improvements were released nearly 6 months ago, yet no official release of upgrades for a version 2 has been announced, while users have been potentially exposed to such concerns this entire duration.”
The authors put forth their own ideas regarding how the Augur team might go about addressing the design flaw attack. For one, they suggested a somewhat tedious “price-based funding mechanism” that would offer the advantage of paying users back in full when markets are invalidated.
The researchers also said enforcing clarity around “ambiguous terms” like “time-zones, currencies, denominations, and units” could be fruitful in stopping the kinds of markets that build the foundations for design flaw attacks:
“If the UI were designed to create default times, currencies, and denominations, the chance of accidentally making an invalid market would be much lower.”
To that end, Augur’s builders have taken a step in that direction in their recent Augur App version v1.11.0 release, which brings further clarity around timezones during the market creation process.
Augur App Release v1.11.0
New release is here with improvements to help aid market creators understand how timezones interact with market end time.https://t.co/tClHb3in9v
— Augur (@AugurProject) March 30, 2019
Another community-driven advancement is recent discussions around description templates for “common market topics,” per Richard Chen of 1confirmation. These templates would help standardize language and further rhetorical clarity where possible.
What's the takeaway from all of this? Because markets are immutable once published on the chain, one needs to address all possible edge cases in the description. Right now the community is discussing drafting templates for common market topics that will help eliminate ambiguity.
— Richard Chen (@richardchen39) March 21, 2019
It’s the reality of building in an industry whose lifeblood is game theory. Edge cases are worth heavily considering precisely because if a system’s gameable, there’s a good chance someone’s going to try to play it.
Undoubtedly, Augur’s makers will strive to make invalid markets less gameable going forward.
1 Comment
A fix for this design flaw attack was just released, you can read more about it here https://www.augur.net/blog/reliable-markets/