[-] sigmanero_org@monero.town 1 points 11 hours ago

Cool idea, here is mine 0x24F246614398d3B0D24b73141E33A1e632dc486E

Cheers!

[-] sigmanero_org@monero.town 1 points 2 months ago

So far you can bet on European football leagues, NBA, NHL, NFL, Copa Monero in Argentina and we just added prediction markets, so you can also bet on the next US president for example.

If you have suggestions for more prediction markets just let us know.

You are betting against other users not "against the house"

7
submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by sigmanero_org@monero.town to c/monero@monero.town

Hello,

To recap Sigmanero.org is a website where you can make bets with other anonymous users with monero using multisig wallets to safeguard your funds.

Changes since August:

  • now you can place a bet and leave the website. If the bet is matched, both you and the counterparty login at a pre-agreed time to complete the multisig wallet.

  • the time to set up the multisig is set by whoever offers the bet and this set up time will be clear to who is accepting the bet.

  • Besides sports, we added new Prediction Markets. You can place bets on the next US president -- let us know what other prediction markets you would like to see!

  • for users that won bets but lost their seed keys, we added the option to request a bet refund. We ask the counterparty to sign a transfer with a refund of the original amounts to both parties -- no guarantee the counterparty will sign the transfer, but worth a try if you really lost your seed key!

Feedback always welcome!

[-] sigmanero_org@monero.town 1 points 6 months ago

Thank you!

-- "Doesn’t holding two keys in 3/4 multisig instead of one in 2/3 increases complexity?" Yes, however since we launched we changed the scheme from 3/4 to 2/3 multisig. This means that users can indeed have full control of funds and settle the bet in any way they agree. In Sigmanero you can't contact the opposite counterpart, however, we you can always create a "private bet" that can only be accepted with whomever you wish. If Sigmanero disappears and leaves funds in multisig wallets, it is also possible for users to coordinate to get the funds back since both users will know the main address of the multisig, so they could in theory ask around, "who also has this main address?" and agree between them where to transfer the funds. Hope this makes sense and its not too much detail.

-- "Would you consider sharing this work?" yes, especially the front end code which relies on the outstanding monerots library. There isn't much more to add to it besides getting coordination sequence steps right. On the back end the code is unsurprising to be honest. Again just a matter of handling the steps of the multisig generation.

10

Hello,

For background please check these posts: https://monero.town/post/2748829 https://monero.town/post/2818104 https://monero.town/post/2983582

Now we decided to remove fees in bets to see if it helps increasing adoption.

So far the biggest challenge has been for users to coordinate among themselves to create bets and the respective automatic multsig-wallet generation.

We changed the time window from 6 hours before event start to 1 hour. We saw some more bets taking place as a result, but because we have so few users right now, chances of bet offers being spotted and accepted by other users have been low.

On the bright side we see that the typical odds being offered tend to be 10 to 15% better that what you typically find in sports betting websites. That should not be a huge surprise since there is no "house" taking a huge spread in each bet, so all the bets tend to be fair bets. One more benefit of disintermediation.

We have also added a donation url for anyone that would like to support.

Costs so far are low but we are not Wikipedia, so any small tip helps :)

https://sigmanero.org/donation

43Gx7T673NsF7qEPvqqKeNdYF3ZQjb3HJhqcV85wfwxieJHCeB4aGyDEUHXWfqwDakfFZJya2KTwoXUqHKYpw7aASrwmx9k

Thanks!

[-] sigmanero_org@monero.town 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Could take us about a week to add AFL. Do you think there will be interest from people?

3
submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by sigmanero_org@monero.town to c/monero@monero.town

Hi all,

The video is a small tutorial how to accept a bet in Sigmanero.org with automatic 2/3 multisig wallet generation.

https://odysee.com/sigmanero_place_a_bet:0

Even if you are not interested in sports betting, this video might be interesting because it shows how we can make Monero multisig wallets easy and accessible to all users, without having to deal with CLIs.

Extension of the concept to general commerce should be easy to imagine.

Any feedback more than welcome!

More info about sigmanero at https://sigmanero.org/info

[-] sigmanero_org@monero.town 1 points 7 months ago

Some financial alchemy would help. The borrower would need to buy some derivative that pays off if monero goes up, like a call option. Impossible to find today and possibly expensive for low amounts.

[-] sigmanero_org@monero.town 2 points 7 months ago

We are live again -- thanks for all your comments :)

[-] sigmanero_org@monero.town 2 points 7 months ago

Hello,

Yes we are adding some extra features, most importantly changing the set up from 3/4 multisgs to 2/3. We got feedback that the possibility of Sigmanero being able to "lock" funds was not good. This way users will always be able to get funds back if they can coordinate to find out who was their bet counterpart -- which should not be hard since they will have the main address info.

-- "Got a question. Is there a way to open requests for sigmanero to open up certain bets? Eg/ US election" Not at the start, but this sounds very easy to implement. We want to offer political markets soon as well, and we can always receive special request if they make sense by way of message. We get asked quite often about political bets so for sure will be made. How you offer bets for events far into the future will be a bit tricky because whoever if placing the bet offer needs to keep its browser window open, since the wallet is locally generated and they need their seed key. This is the rationale for having "bet windows" of 6 hours or less before events. But yes, if users can coordinate the timing, it can defiantly happen.Maybe in forums or users just end up typically checking the website at the end of the day to scout for interesting bets.

-- "bad SSL Cert " Thank you! we will fix it!

5

Hello!

First of all thank you for the great feedback in our previous post: https://monero.town/post/2748829 The level of thinking that went into each comment is priceless for us and we are sure other projects will also benefit from our discussions.

Second, we would like to announce that we are back live!

We changed the following conditions to the set up:

  • We removed the need to deposit a bounty to create an account or place and accept bets. This means that we will rely on good behaviour from users to follow though their bets and fund their respective sub-address in the multisig wallets. If users do not fund their bets prior the events, then we will suspend the user for 1 hour and refund users that have made their respective transfers.

  • (NEW) We added the possibility to create "private bets" which can only be seen and accepted by whomever the user decides to by sharing a link to the bet. This will allow users to make sure they are placing bets with whomever they want, and guaranteeing that Sigmanero is not the counterpart of their bets. Both users will be able to confirm that they share the same main address of the multising as soon as the multisig is generated. For larger bets this is ideal and removes one extra concern regarding possible rug-pulls or other exit scams.

We have also added volume metrics for funded bets per event to allow users to see where the action is and expanded the information section with more details and infographics.

At this point we are just waiting for brave people to go in and try out the website! If you know someone that is willing to place a bet with you, then we encourage to try out the private bet option. This will guarantee that we (Sigmanero) will not be the counterpart to your bet.

Thank you!

[-] sigmanero_org@monero.town 3 points 7 months ago

Yes that is a possible problem and you are exemplifying very good problems to deal with :)

The way we are going to disincentivize this type of behaviour is by limiting user bets in each event. That is, only after we verify that the user has funded the bet, will we allow a new bet in the same market. If the user does not fund a bet, then we will put a temporary suspension in place for new bets across all markets.

We are also moving from allowing users to delay funding the bets until the very start of the events. Instead, we will request users to fund bets within 1 hour of the bet creation with a hard stop at the event start. For example if the bet is created 3 hours before the event, both users need to fund the multisig within 1 hour. But if the bet is created 20min before the event start, then they will have 20min to fund wallets.

We are still experimenting. It can be very well that we reintroduce bounties for each bet and in cases where A does not fund its side of the bet, then we give 50% of the bounty to side B to compensate for his/her trouble. We understand that many users will want to place multiple legit bets in a single market and therefore bounties are a good compromise. However, at this point we recognise that asking for bounties places too many steps to adoption.

We are also expecting order books to be very small at the beginning so, not that many opportunities that justify investment in HFT strategies. Also, at this point we only expect to have users using the web browser to create bets. This is important because Sigmanero will rely on each user's browser to do the work of creating the multisig wallets automatically. It is therefore somewhat different from a trader placing orders in a centralised broker that can be matched instantly. In our case, a new bet and multisig wallet generation should take ~30 seconds to be completed. The side that makes the bet "offer" will have to keep the browser open until someone "accepts" the offer. It might be that we find ways that reduce the need of such high level of synchronous actions by A and B. But multisig wallet creations do need a level of back and forward.

[-] sigmanero_org@monero.town 3 points 7 months ago

Hello!

"would Sigmanero ecosystem be easily adaptable to politcal events (eg/ elections) as well as sporting bets?" -- Yes we expect to add further options in the future such as election outcomes or other relevant events. Perhaps also making public the odds at which users are agreeing bets and therefore act as reference for prediction markets.

The trusted Oracle problem is always present. However Sigmanero should be 100% neutral regarding the outcomes since it will only have earn a commission after the result is known. Therefore there is no monetary incentive to decree false outcomes. If A or B wins should not matter for Sigmanero, so why ruin the reputation and future fee income just to benefit one party?

The problem that remains is indeed if Sigmanero decides to become a party in bets, including controlling 3/4 of the signing keys instead of just two. In this case if Sigmanero decides to scam users, it would not even need to change the outcome of bets in its favour, but rather just transfer funds out of multisigs. Or perhaps as you hint, a gray scenario would be if Sigmanero doe not simply run away with funds from its multisigs, but rather maintains a facade of trustworthy intermediary while decreeing an outcome in favour of the bets it placed.

One mitigation to the scenario above would be to announce from the start that for the relevant event (for example an election) it will decree the outcome as per a known non-related third party or public source. This way Sigmanero could not deviate from the declaring an outcome in line with the third-party without suspicion.

There might be a cleaver way to increase the level of assurance that users are placing bets with normal users instead of Sigmanero. Every time a new multisig is generated, both A and B will be able to see the main address of the new multisig wallet.This means that both A and B could in theory signal to each other that they are not Sigmanero. This could work in some third party forum where users could disclose this address to other users, and other users would know from reputation tracking or other sources that that user is not Sigmanero. A more simple example would be if two friends, Paul and John place a bet against each other in Sigmanero. They would be able to see that they what they share the same main multisig address, and therefore that Sigmanero cannot move funds without one of their keys. For very large bets users might want to get such a credible signal before funding their side of the bet into the multisig. However we only see this becoming a topic for larger events or bets as you mention, therefore we have not spent too much time trying to come up with solutions for these cases. We are open for suggestions though!

"Sidenote: Does Sigmanero take donations?" -- We are not taking donations at the moment. Sigmanero will charge a 1% commission on bets which we hope will be sufficient to keep the website running and provide the natural incentive for Sigmanero to actually work as intended.

Final note: We have received very good feedback so far including from other channels. The website is under maintenance to implement some of the suggestions and hopefully will be live again on Friday 12th April. One in particular, we have decided to drop the requirement for users to have to place a bounty with Sigmanero to initiate bets. This means that we will have to rely more on good behaviour from users. That is, if A agrees to make a bet with another user B, there is no monetary penalty for A not funding its side of the bet. If we see that a particular user is disruptive in this manner we will suspend the user from making new bets for a period of time. That is, if A sends the funds but B does not, we will refund back A and suspend B for a period of time. This means that there will be zero elements of custody of funds by Sigmanero and that the process whole will be much more simple for users.

Thanks!

[-] sigmanero_org@monero.town 4 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Great points, thank you!

We will work on a infographic right the way. Agree that deposit/bounty distinction is not clear. -"When funding a wager can the deposit be used as part of the funds? " -- this is an interesting suggestion, we will consider adding it at least as an option. One possible downside is that users would need to constantly "top up" their balances with Sigmanero to make additional bets and this can add extra time to the overall process. But if people prefer it, why not.

-"Rug-pull scenario: is there a way to verify the counterparty wallet signatures?" -- the only conceivable "rug-pull" scenario is if us "Sigmanero" decide to place bets as counterparty to users and therefore control 3/4 keys from the start. The incentive to rug-pull is very small because it would tank reputation instantly and the gains from the rug-pull would be limited to one bet at a time that gets stolen. We don't expect any "wales" to start placing very large bets on the website that would economically justify such an incentive.

Additionally, we expect each bet to be of modest size because whoever places a new bet also needs to consider that the counterparty needs to be able to match the opposite side. If there are two genuine counterparties in a bet plus Sigmanero, then a rug-pull is impossible.

Small note: If a user decides to be both parties of the bet (creating 2 accounts in Sigmanero), then he/she would still only have 2/3 necessary keys for the signature in the 3/4 multisig set up. If a user wants to verify that the new multisig wallet is indeed 3/4 set up, then he/she can always recover the wallet locally using Monero CLI and verify that it is indeed 3/4.

-"I don’t see where the active bets are listed on the website" -- at this point only open bets are shown, that is, bets waiting for a counterparty. We will add "total bet volumes" shortly.

Thanks!

8

Hello,

Announcing sigmanero.org, a new sports betting exchange website that uses Monero’s multi-sig wallets for each individual bet.

The use of multi-sig wallets should stop concerns about rug-pulls, exit-scams, or wallets becoming compromised by attackers.

In a betting exchange like Sigmanero, users bet against other users and the house earns a commission in each bet.

**The small innovation of sigmanero.org is that multi-sig wallets are auto-generated in the browser of each user, which hopefully significantly reduces the hassle of using multi-sigs. No need for command line interface (CLIs). **

The setup is as follows. User A places an offer for a bet in a particular event for example LA Lakers to win vs Boston Celtics. This offer will have the, side (Lakers or Celtics to win), the amount in XMR and odds that user A would like to bet.

User B can see user A’s offer and accept the offer. At this point, a new 3/4 multi-sig wallet will be created between A, B and Sigmanero.

This new multi-sig will have to funded before the start of the event by both A and B. Both A and B will also need to save their new multi-sig seed keys separately.

When the winner is known, the winning side can reclaim funds using his/her seed key to sign the transfer out of the multi-sig wallet. Important to stress that if they don’t save their seed keys, then they cannot reclaim funds, and there will be nothing Sigmanero can do about it.

At no point in time will Sigmanero have controls of funds or will any of the seed keys be shared with Sigmanero. Sigmanero will have 2 of the 3 necessary keys to sign transfers for extra security and to guarantee that it will always be a party to the transfers. Despite this, Sigmanero will always require one extra signature from one of the users.

For each bet both users will have to have at least 10% of the bet amount as a bounty deposit with Sigmanero. For example if the bet amount is 1 XMR, the user will have to have at least 0.1 XMR deposited with Sigmanero. This will be the only element of custody of funds that Sigmanero will have. However, as soon as the user funds the new bet, the 10% bounty is released which the user can withdraw back from Sigmanero.

The 10% bounty from each user will be used as an incentive for users to fund and commit to their bets with other users. If a user agrees to a new bet but does not fund the new multi-sig wallet with his/her bet amount, then that user will lose the 10% bounty, and 50% of this bounty will be given to the opposite side of the bet, provided that the opposite side has funded its side of the bet.

More details under https://sigmanero.org/info

Because the creation of multi-sig wallets needs synchronisation between users and Sigmanero, when a new bet offer is place by a user, this user cannot leave the page until the bet is accepted by another user or the user decides to cancel the new offer. This is not ideal, however the advantage for the user that makes an offer is that it can set an XMR amount and betting odd according to his/her like, as opposed to simply accepting the terms of existing offers.

To facilitate the coordination between users offering bets and users accepting bets, betting for each event starts only 6 hours before the event and closes 15min before the event start. This element of the user experience might not be ideal, but we hope that the 6 hour window is wide enough to provide flexibility for all, but also small enough to get users all in one place at the same time. The betting window closes 15min before scheduled event times to allow users to fund their multi-sigs.

Hopefully this is a good overview. Please let us know what you think. Feedback at this point is extremely appreciated.

sigmanero_org

joined 8 months ago