Over the past decade a number of technological advances have seen the emergence of the use of the ‘wisdom of the crowd’. This involves the collection and sharing of the collective opinion of a group of individuals regarding a particular topic.Sites such as Wikipedia, Reddit, and Quora use aggregated answers to questions and utilize crowd knowledge in compiling their information. This type of information has been found to be as good as the answers available from individual experts. A number of crypto projects are intent on harnessing the wisdom of the crowds and creating platforms and services that take advantage of this readily available information. Here are five of the best.
Numeraire
Numeraire (NMR) is a cryptographic token used by the Numerai project to incentivize data scientists to contribute artificial intelligence to their hedge fund. Numerai operates a hedge fund that facilitates a massive global community of pseudonymous data scientists to make predictions about future prices.Numerai leverages the power of distributed intelligence and machine learning to create a modern alternative to traditional hedge fund management. Numerai incorporates a collaborative approach that involves the intellectual contributions of thousands of analysts with data scientists submitting their predictions and trading algorithms on a monthly basis in exchange for the NMR token.
Augur
Launched in 2015, Augur (REP) is a decentralized prediction market that utilizes crowd wisdom by rewarding users for correctly forecasting events. Users who can accurately predict outcomes will be remunerated in the form of REP with the platform focused on determining the outcomes of financial markets, sporting events and political elections. Despite releasing a beta in March 2016, the live release is still to be seen with a release scheduled for late 2017/early 2018. Augur harnesses such concepts as game theory and financial incentives and is regarded as being a crowd-sourced alternative to betting platforms.
Cindicator
Founded in 2015, Cindicator (CND) uses the wisdom of crowds to improve decision making related to investing. Via their platform and mobile app, the team pose questions about the financial and cryptocurrency markets and users whose predictions accurately reflect the outcomes of those questions are compensated with CND tokens.Cindicator provides an opportunity for users to monetize their intellectual assets without risking their own funds and for users to access the tools and data necessary for making accurate investment decisions regardless of market certainty.
Enigma
Enigma Catalyst (ENG) is an investment platform that enables developers to build and execute micro crypto-funds. By using the Catalyst platform, developers and traders can develop and back-test trading alternatives based upon sophisticated programmatic strategies.Enigma also operates a decentralized data marketplace protocol that traders can use to purchase crypto-data related to their strategies. The reliable and constantly updated information that algorithmic trading relies upon is currently drawn together by the Catalyst team, however, in the future; the majority of data will be generated by the community in return for a number of rewards.
Gnosis
Gnosis (GNO) is an Ethereum-based blockchain technology based around crowd-sourced wisdom. Gnosis allows token holders to speculate on future events and profit from accurate predictions. Gnosis famously held a token sale in April 2017, which raised $12.5 million. The sale took the form of a Dutch Auction and as investors flocked to purchase tokens at the beginning of the auction, the token shot up in value and the Gnosis team ended up with 90% of the tokens. Gnosis is primarily intended for insurance and financial markets and the team is continuing to develop the platform. Due partly to their extremely successful token sale, Gnosis is a project that is eagerly awaited.