🔮How to make predictions on PlotX

Looking to make predictions on PlotX? This is just the place to learn how :)

Prerequisites

  • You should have a good understanding of the basics. If you don't, please click here. If you do, please read along...

  • Crypto Wallet - MetaMask works quite well with PlotX. But, if you have an existing crypto-wallet already, you can check its compatibility with Wallet Connect here.

Making Predictions

Let's start where we left off in the Overview guide - Applying Analysis using the Trading View chart.

Step 1 - Applying Analysis

Below the Market Stats, you can see a detailed price feed chart of the selected asset. You can refer to it for applying technical analysis before deciding on your prediction.

Step 2 - Choosing an Option

After you’re done applying analysis and have decided on your price prediction, you need to choose one of the three options that can be seen below the price chart, that best reflects your prediction.

In the screenshot above, we’re in the Live > 4 Hour > ETH-USD market and the options that we can choose from, are:

  • Bearish - Below or Equal to $574

  • Neutral - Between $574 to $580

  • Bullish - Above or Equal to $580

You can also see the participation stats for each option to analyse the market before making your choice. So, if we think that the price of ETH-USD will be somewhere around $600 when this market closes, then we’ll make our prediction in the Bullish option (Above or Equal to $595).

Now, if you’re familiar with traditional prediction markets, you might notice something odd at this point; and rightfully so. This is because, in traditional prediction markets, participants can only either be a Bull or a Bear (long or short, yes or no), there is no in-between.

However, PlotX provides you with three options on each trade. Along with two traditional Up and Down predictions, there is a third neutral option in every market, which is a range-bound option and sits between the bull and bear positions, thus providing you with more options on each trade.

Step 3 - Buying Prediction Positions

At this point, you might be wondering, “what is it that I am actually buying? What are positions and why am I buying them?”

Good question! The answer is, positions are a way of representing your share of the reward pool if the option you’re predicting, happens to be the correct one. This means that the more positions you have in the winning option, the bigger your share of the reward pool will be.

Now, the question arises, how do you buy prediction positions?

And the answer to that is - after you’ve chosen an option that best reflects your prediction, you can click the ‘Predict’ button of that option.

In the menu that's revealed upon clicking the 'Predict' button, you can select the currency you want to pay with to buy prediction positions, enter the amount of the selected currency (aka Playing Amount), and mess around with the Prediction Multiplier.

Step 4 - Asset Selection

The first step of making any prediction is selecting the asset with which you want to buy prediction positions. On PlotX, you can use ETH, PLOT or bPLOT to pay for prediction positions.

Note - PlotX charges a very small fee from the market participants whenever they make any prediction. This fee is taken as a percentage of participation amount (aka Playing Amount). For participations in ETH, the fee is 0.1% of the participation amount, while for participations in PLOT or bPLOT, the fee is 0.05% of the participation amount. To know more about why this fee is charged, and what is done with it, please read the Token Utility 1.

Step 5 - Entering the Participation Amount

After you’ve selected the asset you want to use to purchase prediction positions, you need to enter the amount of the selected asset you want to participate with. For example - 4000 PLOT.

Step 6 - Prediction Multiplier

To encourage play mining, players are incentivized to stake their PLOT within the PlotX staking smart contracts, and in exchange earn a multiplier on their positions during the staking period.

How it works - Users can stake (lock) their PLOT tokens within the PlotX staking smart contracts for a minimum 30 days period to boost the number of positions they’ll get while participating, subject to the following conditions: -

  • Minimum playing amount of 0.5 ETH or 0.5 ETH equivalent of PLOT tokens per prediction.

  • The staked amount being greater than the playing amount.

The multiplier is set at 1x by default, but let's say that you're getting a multiplier of 1.2x for your prediction, then, you'll get 20% more rewards than a user who is making an identical prediction as yours, but without a Prediction Multiplier (no multiplier means a Prediction Multiplier of 1x).

The Prediction Multiplier helps the player increase their positions and thus be better off than a user who hasn’t staked or staked less. What makes the Prediction Multiplier, also called the play mining feature, very useful is that it can be used multiple times in different markets during the course of the stake to gain extra positions and thus extra rewards. Also, even if their prediction turns out to be wrong, one doesn’t lose any of the PLOT tokens that are part of the staked amount.

Note: A player can benefit from the Stake Multiplier only once in one unique market. Which means that if the player has purchased positions inclusive of the Prediction Multiplier benefit in a daily market which is asking the value of a market pair at 1:00 PM, they will not be able to gain the benefit of the multiplier if they look to take another position in the same market.

To know more about the Prediction Multiplier, how it is calculated, and how it affects your rewards, check out this FAQ - How does staking for Play Mining work?

Step 7 - Potential Winnings and Current Pool Share

After you have entered the Participation Amount and reviewed your Prediction Multiplier, you'll see your Potential Winnings and your Current Pool Share below the Prediction Multiplier

Note - One thing to note here is that once you make a prediction, your potential losses will not change, however, depending on how the market develops with time, your potential winnings may change.

This is because PlotX is a zero-sum game. The people with correct predictions get what the people with wrong predictions put into the market. And as more users come into various options of the market, both your share of the reward pool and the reward pool itself may change.

To understand how exactly your rewards are calculated, you can refer to this FAQ - How are my rewards calculated?

Step 8 - Making the Transaction

Now here, you need to know about a feature of PlotX known as Deposit & Predict to move forward. Basically, the feature allows PlotX users to deposit large amounts of PLOT and ETH in one single deposit transaction and then use the deposited balance to make several predictions. This allows for a reduced gas for all the predictions coming out of the deposited balance.

That being said, once you’re done entering and reviewing the details on your prediction, you need to click on the ‘Predict with ___ ’ button and that'll show you a summary of your prediction as well as your PlotX deposits.

At the top you see the market question in which you're about to make you prediction. Below that you can see the summary of your prediction - the option that you selected, your prediction amount, and your potential winnings.

Now, depending on the status of you deposits, you will see two types of windows upon clicking the 'Predict with ___' button. In the screenshot above, you can see that since the available balance is 0 PLOT, we are getting the option to top up our balance, and then from that balance, use 4000 PLOT to make the prediction.

So, if we top up our balance with 15000 PLOT, that will mean that a total of 15000 PLOT will be deducted from our wallet and deposited in the PlotX smart contracts. And out of that 15000 PLOT, 4000 PLOT will be used to make the current prediction, leaving behind 11000 PLOT as Available Balance that can be used to make more predictions in the future.

One pro tip here is that you should always deposit more PLOT or ETH than you need to make the current prediction, so that you can use the left over balance for future transactions as well. This way you’ll save a lot on gas fees.

If we have enough balance (that is, >= 4000 PLOT) to cover this prediction, we won't see the option to top up our Available Balance, and instead see something like this:

As you can see in the screenshot above, since our Prediction Amount is less than our Available Balance, we are getting the option to straightaway predict using the Available Balance.

Now, whether you are depositing and predicting or just predicting with the Available Balance, once you click the Predict Now/Deposit & Predict Now button, a MetaMask transaction of the Prediction Amount (in case of predicting with Available Balance) or the Deposit Amount (in case of depositing and predicting) will be initiated.

Just click on ‘Confirm’ and viola! You have successfully purchased prediction positions on PlotX!

After your transaction is successful, you can see the amount of ETH/PLOT/bPLOT you have participated with and the no. of positions you got in the selected option in the ‘Your Participation’ and ‘Your Positions’ column respectively:

You may choose to predict more than once in the same option or in a different option.

Seeing your Prediction’s Status

After you’re done making predictions in any market, naturally, the next thing you’d wanna do is check the status of the market in which you just made your prediction. The ‘In Settlement’ page is where you can check out all the necessary information about the market which has just ended. Information like:

  • Total Participation in each option;

  • Your Participation in each option;

  • Total Positions in each option;

  • Your Positions in each option; and

  • Total Reward Pool for each option.

You can also calculate your exact rewards if your prediction happens to be correct, using the information on this page. Simply plug in the information you see here into the following formula: -

Reward Pool * (Your Positions / Total Positions)

You can also click on the ‘View Market Leaderboard’ button to view every single detail about that particular market. This includes what amount of ETH, PLOT, and bPLOT each participant has participated with, the no. of positions they got against their participation, and their reward (if any).

Analysing the ‘LEADERBOARD’ Page

The ‘LEADERBOARD’ page is the place where you can see all the in-depth stats about each market that has ever gone live on PlotX. Simply come to the page, and enter the information about the market whose stats you want to see, in the given search fields.

For example - if you want to see the stats of the daily market that was asking the price of ETH-USD at 1:00 PM, 01 October 2020, then, you will select ETH-USD in the market selector menu, select dai;y as the market duration, and enter 1:00 PM, 01 October 2020 in the ‘Select date range’ field.

Each market has a unique leaderboard attached to it that shows every single detail about that market. You can see how many addresses participated in the market, their cumulative participation amount, the reward pool amount, which addresses participated with how much ETH/PLOT/bPLOT, how many positions they got for their participation amount, how much ETH/PLOT they got as a reward, and much more.

Checking the Results

If no disputes are raised while the market is cooling, then the market gets settled at the Market Settlement Time. The winners that were initially decided at the Market Closing Time get finalised, and the rewards are distributed to them.

Once the market is settled, you can toggle to the ‘Settled’ page within the ‘MARKETS’ page to see stuff like which address won how much ETH and/or PLOT.

However, if you happen to come back after some time, and you can’t see the ‘Settled’ page for the market in which you made your prediction, then, you can go to the ‘MY ACCOUNT’ page to see your predictions' history. Just click on the market name whose results you want to see, and that will open up the leaderboard of that market.

Withdrawing your Available Balance & Rewards- The 'MY ACCOUNT' Page

If you get any rewards as a result of your prediction being correct, then, you can claim those rewards in the ‘MY ACCOUNT’ page. Your rewards get automatically added to your Available Balance and hence, you can use the rewards you earn from some markets to make predictions in other markets.

You can withdraw your Available Balance any time you want from the 'Deposit & Withdraw' section in the 'MY ACCOUNT' page .

Clicking the 'Withdraw' button will prompt this window, where you can enter the amount of ETH and/or PLOT you want to withdraw from the PlotX smart contracts:

After entering the amount ETH and/or PLOT you want to withdraw, you can click the 'Withdraw' button and that'll initiate a transaction of the entered amount, through your connected wallet. Just confirm the initiated transaction and once it goes through, you’ll get the entered amount in your wallet!

You can also review other key stats about your PlotX account like how much ETH and PLOT you have participated with on different markets, the rewards you’ve received, reward claims you’ve made, and your overall profit percentage from the 'MY ACCOUNT' page.

In addition to all this, you can also see a list of all the markets you have ever made a prediction in, sorted by market characteristics like the Market Asset (eg - BTC, ETH etc), Market Duration (eg - 4 Hour, Daily, Weekly), and the Market Time (in ascending or descending order).

Moreover, the ‘MY ACCOUNT’ page is also your destination if you want to stake some PLOT to get the Prediction Multiplier or increase the amount or duration of the already staked PLOT.

Bonus Step - Market Creation on PlotX

Before a market goes live on PlotX, it has to be created on the Ethereum mainnet first. PlotX has a unique AMM mechanism that helps its users initiate market creation by letting them sign the Ethereum transaction that is required to create markets.

PlotX incentivises its users to perform this “Market Creation Transaction” in two ways:

  1. Users who perform the market creation transaction can claim a dynamically calculated amount of $PLOT that has potentially an equal value as the amount of ETH they spend in Gas fees.

  2. A chance to get up to 5% of the reward pool of the market that they create.

To learn how to create markets on PlotX, please read the 'Creating Markets on PlotX' guide.

That’s it!

That’s how you make predictions on PlotX! Now, what are you waiting for? Get on the PlotX Beta right now and start making predictions in your favourite markets to earn rewards.

Also, don’t forget to join our channels on Discord and Telegram to join other PLOT Heads, such as yourself, in conversations around PlotX and crypto-prediction in general.

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