PlotX (PLOT)

 Basics

• Founded in: 2-2020
• On Ethereum Kovan Testnet (5-2020)
• Mainnet release:
• Based in: India
• Prediction Market for crypto price pairs.

History

• From its Product Deck (8-8-2020)

"The name & the idea behind Plotus came during a 48-hour hackathon in March 2020. The first prototype of the idea was for the DJI-ETH pair and was developed by a team of 12 people - a mix of ethereum developers, researchers, analysts, economists and mentors."

• Changed their name from Plotus to PlotX due to similarities with Plutus, another DeFi project. Community members and investors suggested the name change.

Token

Utility

• Governance, staking to resolve dispute resolutions.
• Their FAQ (10-8-2020) says:

"The value proposition of the Plotus native token is as follows:

1. Token Utility 1: Peer-to-peer commissions
   • Plotus protocol follows an automated market making algo. Markets once initiated are automatically created in internals of 1h, 1d and 1w. To create such markets on the Plotus protocol gas fee in ETH is required since the protocol runs on the Ethereum blockchain.
   • For this purpose, the protocol requires a fee to run perpetually - this fee is taken either in ETH or in Plotus token and is either used for token buy back on DEXs or used for paying gas fee for creation of future markets.
   • The buy back on DEXs result in more rewards being distributed to the active participants of the Plotus markets.
2. Token Utility 2: Virality by Design
   • Prediction markets are a way to sum opinions of many and capture what is known as the “wisdom‌ ‌of‌ ‌the‌ ‌crowd‌‌”. To be able to achieve that, it is critical for Plotus to reach the masses. If the community is able to achieve that, a new version of information will be created that is driven by true market opinions.
   • To reach the masses, the Plotus token provides virality by design via the Referral Bonus program.
   • The referral program is going to be one of the best out there, designed by mathematicians and game theory experts.
   • The referral program tokens can only be used to participate in the prediction markets, and cannot be dumped on exchanges.
3. Token Utility 3: Wide Distribution
   • Another important factor for the protocol to succeed is to attract relevant communities that would benefit from predictions. For example, the community of LINK holders or the social impact projects like GoodDollar.
   • Plotus token shall be used to provide Airdrop incentives for communities to start using the protocol.
   • The Airdropped tokens can only be used to participate in the prediction markets, and cannot be dumped on exchanges.
4. Token Utility 4: Liquidity Mining with Staking
   • To bootstrap and encourage liquidity on the Plotus prediction markets, the users are incentivized to stake their Plotus tokens prior to participating in the prediction market.
   • If they stake and play, then they get 20% extra rewards. Instead if they simply play without staking, then the reward multiplier effect doesn’t kick in.
   • The good part being, even if the user loses in the prediction market, they will not lose the staked Plotus tokens.
5. Token Utility 5: Governance
   • The Plotus token also serves as a governance token. Token holders will have full ownership and decision making of the Plotus Dapp and protocol. This includes dispute resolution, creation of new markets, implementing emergency pause and any other such decisions which shall result in a change in the smart contracts of Plotus."

• An updated version of the above can be read here (12-2020). The main points have not changed since.

Tech

• Whitepaper can be found [insert here].
• Code can be viewed here (7-8-2020).
• Built on: Ethereum

How it works

• Their FAQ (10-8-2020) says:

"The entire protocol, and it’s functioning is completely on-chain and the Oracles used for odds calculation and market settlement is publicly declared with each market. Plotus protocol follows an Automated Market Making algorithm. There’s no manual / off-chain market making. The logic to determine the value of a particular market option is in the smart contracts."

Staking

• Total 6.7mil $PLOT (20% of the circ. supply) now staked (23-2-2021).

Liquidity Mining

• Will have (10-8-2020) "Liquidity Mining with Staking. The aim is to release this feature alongside the v1 release."

Interoperability

• From its Product Deck (8-8-2020)

"Evaluate launching on multiple blockchain infra beyond Ethereum."

• Is looking into launching a prediction market on Elrond (29-10-2020).

Other Details

• Will use ETH or the native token as collateral for users to bet with.

• Their FAQ (10-8-2020) says:

"MATIC & FUSE networks are being explored as potential L2 scaling solutions for Plotus. Here’s the loose idea on how it will be implemented:

1. Stake assets on mainnet, and then transfer assets to L2 side-chain.
2. All markets are opened and settled on the L2 side-chain.
3. When a user wishes to exit, they convert L2 side-chain assets to mainnet assets."

Privacy Method being used

Compliance

• Their FAQ (10-8-2020) says:

"The Plotus community upholds the DeFi ethos of autonomy, however the community is also cognizant of the regulatory concerns around KYC / AML. Watch this space for more announcements on how these challenges are solved."

Oracle Method being used

• Their FAQ (10-8-2020) says:

"Chainlink & Provable are the two oracles being used in Plotus at the moment."

Read the link for more details.

• Their FAQ (10-8-2020) says:

"Plotus, at the moment, provides the ability to create only those markets for which there can be a mathematical settlement. The rare chance of a dispute is when an Oracle fails to post the price of crypto assets at the time of market settlement. In such a dispute scenario, the following workflow shall be followed by the protocol. This feature is still under development. Here’s the wireframe of the idea:

1. Allow a dispute raising time (cooling period) after the market closes
2. Any user raising a dispute needs to deposit a fee, in Plotus tokens
3. There shall be a role called "Dispute Resolution Panel" in the Plotus on-chain governance with a majority of 70%.
4. All Dispute Resolution Panel members will need to lock minimum stake in native tokens to act fair in the decision making process and the panel shall be chosen by the community and can be changed via governance as well
5. The decision of the panel shall be treated as final
6. Disciplinary action can be taken on a Dispute Resolution Panel member via governance

Plotus leverages the Govblocks smart contracts that allows the Plotus community to follow a pragmatic approach to on-chain governance. The community can create multiple member roles and manage decision points pragmatically."

• From their Discord (8-8-2020):

"We’ve initiated conversations with Chainlink to get an on-chain oracle rather than rely on the Binance API.

The issue is that Plotus needs a high frequency price feed at the time of market settlement, however ChainLink by default only updates the price feed with some lags. And hence we are talking to the team to reach a conclusion. FWIW, we are already using ChainLink for the prediction odds calculation but want to extend it to the prediction settlement also."

Governance

DAO

• From the Messari telegram chat, where the founder said (7-8-2020):

"I was the Founder at GovBlocks.io which is an on-chain governance toolkit that also powers Nexus Mutual’s governance. We are integrating GovBlocks along with a native token of Plotus that will also incentive participation via Pool Mining and also governance."

• Their FAQ (10-8-2020) says:

"Plotus is following a pragmatic on-chain governance approach. As such an Advisory Board will be set-up to facilitate decisions requiring interaction with the non-blockchain world as well as govern some of the more extreme scenarios.

Importantly, the Advisory Board has no custodial rights over the fund pool and cannot release funds to any particular person, with each Board member liable to be replaced at any time via the member voting process. On that path, at the time of launch on the mainnet, the community shall choose 5 advisory board members. These advisory board members shall have equal powers to begin with.

As the community grows, the role of the advisory board shall diminish with a vision to provide full autonomy. The 5 members can be replaced via on-chain governance at any time. 

Roadmap

• Can be found here (8-8-2020).

Audits

• Bug bounty program can be found [insert here].
• Yet to be audited (7-8-2020).
• PlotX has chosen (10-9-2020) ZK Labs as its lead security auditor ahead of the mainnet launch.
• Scored a 88% on DeFi Safety (17-11-2020); "2 Audits have been preformed. CertiK audit preformed Oct 9 2020. Mudit Gupta audit preformed Sept 20 2020." With the comment: "​Their software docs are weak but strong otherwise."

Competition

• Synthetix and its Binary Options
• Augur, Omen, Polymarket
• For a comparison check out their FAQ (10-8-2020).

Team, Funding, Partnerships, etc.

Team

• Full team can be found here (8-8-2020). The team says they have "Active participation in developer community of DeFi projects: Nexus Mutual, Maker DAO, Uniswap, 0x, Bancor, Compound, dydx. Launched 3 projects on Ethereum Mainnet: Nexus Mutual, GovBlocks & Certy" There is especially a link with Nexus Mutual, since both Goel's worked there and GovBlocks, which Ish Goel is the founder of, is used in Nexus Mutual its governance.
• Ish Goel
• Nikitak Goel
• Kartic Rakhra