“People Becoming More And More Involved in Crypto” - Prometeus Labs Team

Without any doubt, the current price movement of Bitcoin showcases the earning power of cryptocurrency, especially for investors who were smart enough to buy the deep. Recall that Bitcoin had crashed along with the global financial market at the peak of the Coronavirus panic in March. However, as it has done countless times in the past, Bitcoin rebounded effortlessly from this low and is currently on track to match its all-time high price mark. Unlike a majority of traditional assets, Bitcoin has enjoyed a very successful year as data shows its year to date performance to be in the 140% range.

Following this impressive run, experts have begun to analyze the factors influencing the current bullish state crypto market, with many highlighting institutional involvements and the fear of missing out (FOMO) as the key contributors.

Some even have gone as far as to conclude, with the help of price indicators, that we are just in the early stages of the crypto bull run. If this projection is anything to go by, then expect the price of Bitcoin to surge above $20,000.

Like Bitcoin, altcoins have also managed to generate some sparks here and there. According to data from Coinmarketcap, Ethereum has recently surpassed its 2020 highs and is moving ever closer to break beyond the $500 price range. While this price trend is not as potent as Bitcoin’s performance and nothing near the $1,432 high set at the beginning of 2018, there are lots of positives to take away from Ethereum’s resilience. For one, this current market movement sets ETH up for an even more bullish run when Ethereum 2.0 eventually launches in the last weeks of 2020.

Remarkably, crypto trading is just one of the myriads of means of generating income for digital asset holders. Participants are increasingly betting on the prices of crypto assets on prediction platforms to double their yields.

To accurately document this emerging trend, I decided to Reach out to the Prometeus Labs team, creator of Prosper prediction market, which is one of such platforms that is providing a safe environment to predict and earn cryptocurrencies. Prosper provides pools where users can bet against or on the short-term price movements of several digital assets and distributes the pooled jackpot among winners.

Unlike a majority of the prediction pools currently operating, Prosper runs on Binance Smart Chain to establish a decentralized mode of operation where smart contract logic determines winners and automatically rewards them.

Also, it has a multi-chain infrastructure that makes its prediction services compatible with a diverse array of cryptocurrencies. Hence, it currently supports BNB, ETH, BTC, and TRX and plans to add a lot more coins in the coming months. More interesting is the fact that the platform is not just focusing on the crypto market but has also enabled fiat support for a more inclusive ecosystem.

Edward Moon: Tell us more about Prometeus Labs team professional background and how it has helped you in the highly competitive crypto industry?

Prometeus Labs was founded back in 2019 to produce decentralized data exchange solutions. For one and half years we were able to achieve our initial goals and developed a decentralized data exchange protocol as well as two unique products on top of it: Ignite - completely decentralized and unblockable social network and Stoa - decentralized data trading marketplace. The native token of Prometeus Protocol has become a widely traded asset which has been listed on various exchanges such as Binance, Bittrex, Bitmax and more.  

Edward Moon: When you joined the industry, did you think that the sort of price-performance we are witnessing today could become a mainstay, considering Bitcoin’s recent run to almost $20,000?

We think most people that jumped in this industry, especially before it became so hyped, didn't quite understand the scale it would become in the nearest future. When the majority of our team entered the industry back in 2015-2017 we were just interested in new technological and financial perspectives that this era brings into the world, but of course we couldn’t even think that everything will go so far away.

We consider the whole financial situation in the market as a positive dynamic of people becoming more and more involved in crypto, selling, buying, hedging, you name it. Look, 10 years ago nobody could talk about completely decentralized financial actors becoming the full-fledged players on the world's financial market, and now here we are - banks, governments and regular people are more and more into it, making their savings being holded in crypto, investing money in different ICO, playing on the market.

So, to return to your first question - of course, we couldn't imagine what this whole industry would become, and, to say even more - crypto right now is a Wild West of finance, so it is extremely highly unpredictable, where the current De-Fi era will take us in one year, for example. We can only guess and try to somehow prepare for what's coming, but there is no 100% certainty for sure.  

Edward Moon: Apart from buying the low and selling at the peak, are price prediction services, like Prosper, easier and faster routes to profitability?  

Actually, we are surprised that you didn't bring another word to complete this triangle: besides easiness and speed there are also risks. Of course, Prosper is not some kind of crypto casino, where you constantly bet on reds or blacks, waiting until you will be lucky enough to win, so if you are a high skilled market player, you will be able to win, lets say, 6 out of 10 pools, using your prediction and analysis skills.

But still, people are not some kind of machine that can calculate every single factor on predicting, for example, BNB price, so there are some chances to fail. Of course, you can profit from prediction markets pretty easy, but to actually get your profits - that will take some mental efforts. Going back to what you’ve asked, Prosper is actually a faster route to get profit as we are focusing on short-term predictions.

Edward Moon: Do you mind explaining the modalities of Prosper and how crypto holders can start earning and hedging?

Sure. Our team realises that in the De-Fi era there are many financial instruments emerge to secure profits and improve the current hedging possibilities. One of our top priorities is to make Prosper one of such opportunities for crypto holders. Currently we are developing certain unique features, such as bet insurance or bet leverage, for example, to make hedging on the platform much more efficient and secure.

One of key instruments in this will be the future platform token $PROS, which will be soon introduced to the community, and our idea is to make it become a risk management instrument in itself, potentially capable of volatility reduction in a crypto assets portfolio. 

Edward Moon: It is a fact that there are risks that come into play in protocols such as this. How does Prosper mitigate these risks and protect users?

It seems to me that recently more and more attention has been paid to security issues. This is largely due to the increased hacking of defi products. We try to take the most responsible approach to development, spending most of our time on testing to minimize risks. Of course, it would be deceit if I say that Prosper is 100% secure, since there are no completely secure systems. We use and will continue to use the services of audit companies and will do everything to prevent this from happening.

More important thing is that a Prosper smart contract holds funds only in a limited period of time, and does not have an option for liquidity attacks as other DeFi protocols. 

Edward Moon: Is this insurance system the core selling point and utility backing of Prosper token? 

Not only. We would rather say that the first step in terms of utility includes: lower commission rates and burn model (as BNB has), custom pools creating and the insurance system.

Each pool has its own insurance fund calculated and distributed immediately at the pool settlement. Each time, when you make a bet, you have to lock tokens that have been used for insurance for 14 days.

The main motivation for implementing insurance was to create a utility value for our token. By owning it, the losing party can share some of the lost funds. This system opens up opportunities to increase the expected value of the bid as well as the hedging mechanism. Given the fact that in some cases, the loser who uses insurance can not only return part of the funds but also earn money, opens up great opportunities in the use of our token.

Despite the fact that insurance is an important part of the ecosystem, the team is not going to stop there, in the future more and more opportunities to use the token will appear such as custom bet leverage, liquidity incentives and more.

Edward Moon: Another feature that seems exciting is Prosper’s liquidity program. How does this work, and how will it improve the platform’s operations? 

Thanks for mentioning it. Of course you might have a lot of questions about it, since we mention it in passing. But the reason for that is that not everything has been developed yet. The idea is to provide more liquidity to our pools. We suppose that the main reason why prediction projects failed was lack of liquidity. However it is not that simple.

As Prosper is a short term prediction market the probability to win tends to 50%. So every liquidity provider has positive expected value. It’s kinda similar to the traditional mode, which is being used by binary options. Our AI system will split provided liquidity between pools with lowest value to prevent empty pools.To be mention that providers will have zero percent fees, maximum insurance and high APY income. Can’t share more details at the moment - the reason is that the project is still at an early stage and we did not take into account all the details. But as soon as everything is ready, we will release an update on it.

Edward Moon: I read from reliable documents that you and your team have opted to create a diverse ecosystem, which supports a plethora of assets, including fiat. How was this achievable, and what other integrations are we to expect?

Core point here is simple: the existing prediction markets are suffering from lack of liquidity, so we are actively seeking solutions here. At the moment we are trying to combine three different solutions: Binary Liquidity Program, Blockchain liquidity aggregation and Fiat Support.

At the initial launch, we won’t be supporting fiat, as we still need to finalize the legal stuff, however we will update it right after the confirmation from our lawyers.

Regarding the integrations which are on the way: we are launching with the BSC and ETH versions of Prosper, but will be adding more supported blockchains. The first one to be integrated are Avalanche, Near and Neo. We are also actively looking for cross-chain solutions to aggregate the liquidity from all chains in the same pools.

Edward Moon: In light of the features you mentioned thus far, how does Prosper compare to the several alternatives available to crypto participants? 

There are three key factors that make us different from others: functionality, cross chain integration and targeted markets.

We’ve recently published a detailed article on that, so if you are looking for deep details, you can check it here.

The existing prediction markets are targeting only the small crypto-orientated audience, our approach here is a bit different, we are trying to reach out to non-crypto users and take a part of the market from Binary Options. Another approach is the US market, as Prosper is decentralized and allows users to create their own pools, it can be used by US citizens as uniswap.

From the functionality standpoint, we are looking for tight integration with the token economy, unlike other prediction markets, who are utilizing an infilatory model to stimulate the predictions. 

Edward Moon: Do you agree with projections that we are just at the early stage of a bull run, even though Bitcoin is approaching its all-time high? 

We wish it is, but even though we are crypto enthusiasts and generally optimistic, we think there is still a significant risk of the market crash. So we wouldn't say that we are at the early stage of a bull run.