The odds are 63-37 against, according to recent trading levels on Polymarket.
A prediction market opened Thursday allowing participants to bet on whether the Cardano blockchain will release smart contract functionality by Oct. 1.
The market has had a trading volume as of this writing over $157,000. Shares were trading at $0.37 for “yes” and $0.63 for “no.” Whichever answer is correct will be redeemable for $1 in the USDC stablecoin.
More expensive bets are the ones seen as more likely to be correct, so this market currently leans to a prediction that smart contracts will not be live on Cardano when October begins.
Tech timelines are notoriously unreliable and hard to predict. However, the Alonzo testnet that is supporting key features of smart contract development for Cardano’s forthcoming Goguen era has been making steady progress with the launch on Wednesday of its second hard fork to the “White” phase.
Prediction markets allow people to bet on outcomes of real-world events, from elections to basketball games. Proponents tout them as a superior way to gauge sentiment among experts, since money is on the line, compared to pundits who have nothing to lose if their prognostications turn out wrong.
While the largest such markets are operated by centralized platforms like PredictIt, newer ones run on blockchain networks...
This article was first published on coindesk.com.
Written by CoinDesk.