Having floated the maiden launch of its decentralized market platform for twelve weeks, Augur has begun plans for the deployment of a new version of its protocol.
In a blog post released on Friday, the company expatiated on contract changes that will give the upgraded protocol its new set of features.
The platform enjoyed massive patronage from users after it was officially launched in July. The spin-off in traffic of users churned the sum of $1.5 million that was staked in the prediction market within two weeks. Commending the success story at the time, CNBC’s long-term Fast Money contributor and CEO of BKCM Brian Kelly had said:
“What’s interesting about this [is that] this will probably be one of the biggest decentralized apps on top of ethereum.”
What Prompted the Upgrade?
The volume of active daily users on the Augur platform gradually waned, and this led to questions being raised among blockchain and cryptocurrency enthusiasts.
The major complaint gathered from a cross-section of its users was that the prediction market is not user-friendly. Co-founder of Augur, Joey Krug described it as “the most complicated decentralized app on the blockchain of Ethereum.”
For a proper feedback mechanism, Augur opened a wish list thread and promised upgrades in the new version following a litany of complaints received about the platform’s poor user interface.
Read: Blockchain Forecasting: Using the Wisdom of the Crowd to Predict the Future
Alluding to the hitches experienced as a result of the poor user interface and bug fixes, a Venture-capital investor pointed out in a recent interview that “the biggest pain point is user experience.”
“All the UI feedback gathered in the wish list thread has been reviewed and prioritized, and is being worked on in parallel. Augur App and the UI are receiving continuous updates,” the Augur team assured.
The foundation looks forward to a more efficient platform which users will appreciate for its speed and comparative cost advantage. “The end goal is always a better, faster, cheaper Augur.” Operation’s Lead Tom Kysar said.
Expatiating further, the Foundation’s post clarified that the changes “will be tentative up until all code is written and audited.” Holders of Augur’s REP token willing to upgrade will need to migrate to a new smart contract. Augur’s co-founder Joey Krug noted that the two versions would be “separate universes.”
Plans to upgrade the app’s user interface may be deemed as aesthetics, but from a technical standpoint, it is a necessary upgrade. The clamor for such changes has been on a high after a few weeks when the platform was launched in July.
The community of users has generated a great deal of attention with a “wish list of version two on Reddit. The foundation according to Kysar is, in turn, exploiting the feedback from the thread on its work.
V2 Blueprint
The developers of Augur will be ringing out a range of changes all poised to improve user experience regarding creating and trading on the platform. A good number of these changes will address the challenge of simplifying clunky processes.
The upgrade in v2 will obliterate certain functions which are present in the current universe. For example, two versions of each trading function are currently supported by Augur. The “normal” one according to Forecast Foundation lead developer Alex Chapman “doesn’t work.” The other one allows the user to set the “gas” limit sequel to which the function stops trading. Upgrades in v2 will only include this second version.
Accessing a smart contract on the ethereum network requires users to pay in gas (unit). Users are sometimes prompted to spend more than necessary per transaction, and this occurs in periods of network congestion.
Risk Relief
Some of the anticipated changes will also reduce attendant risks associated with using Augur. An excellent example of such anticipated change is the planned integration of the DAI stablecoin aimed at protecting users from the major shifts in the value of ether–especially when their funds are stashed in the market for months or years.
There was a wave of frenzy in July following the emergence of assassination markets on Augur.
