Veil, the crypto-focused prediction market and derivatives platform, is closing its doors.
Launched in January, the Veil web interface allowed users to place
bets on Augur prediction markets, offering an instant settlement API to
pay out on clear outcomes.
The startup’s co-founder, Paul Fletcher-Hill, wrote in a Medium post:
“We believe that cryptocurrencies
and the decentralized web will have profound effects on our future. But
today the community of users is small, and we think there are higher
impact products and services we can build for the immediate future.”
The company announced that trading on the non-custodial platform will
be suspended on July 24. Additionally, the company will disable the
capability to build new predictions markets starting today. Conversely,
the firm’s code will continue to be available open-source on GitHub in the event that other developers want to pick up the torch.
This comes four months
after the firm announced at the New York Token Summit it would be
unveiling an AugurLite fork and a market to bet on the 2020 Presidential
elections.
At the time, reactions were mixed, with some calling AugurLite a
“centralized” version of the prediction-enabling Augur protocol.
Fletcher-Hill explained that Veil’s lack of success could be
attributed to a difficult onboarding experience, as well as its failure
to find a happy medium between decentralization and regulation. “It’s
hard to offer something in between that people find valuable.” He also
wrote:
“We tried to do too much.
Prediction markets are a generalized form of betting, derivatives,
insurance, and more. Focused versions of any of these verticals may be
better for users than the generalized form.”
Hill Street Labs, the investment studio behind the platform, is
retaining the development team, who plan to announce a forthcoming
project.
For now, Veil suggests users withdraw their open positions in expired
and active markets, and convert their “wrapped” Veil Ether into ETH.
To facilitate the transition the company has removed settlement fees
and will host 45 minute interviews with users over the course of the
next month.
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