Buterin praises the prediction market and community comments

Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, published a post on the will play an important role in social cognition. Buterin said: "Prediction markets and community annotation are gradually becoming two important social cognitive technologies in the 2020s. Both are truth-seeking and democratic, based on open public participation rather than pre-selected Elite. I want to see more of this."

Source: X Vitalik praises “Prediction Markets” and “Community Notes” as the most important inventions of the 2020s

Buterin further explained that prediction markets and community annotations are very complementary. The main criticism of community annotations is that they are too slow to respond, while prediction markets focus on incentivizing people to predict possible future signals and expose them as quickly as possible. He also mentioned that these technologies are created by public participation rather than pre-selected elites, which makes them more valuable in the pursuit of truth.

Image source: X Vitalik said that prediction markets and community annotations are very complementary.

The development of community annotation and prediction markets

The community annotation feature has gained significant attention since Platform X (formerly Twitter) was acquired by Musk in 2022. The technology, originally launched in January 2021 as "Birdwatch," aims to address misinformation by adding context and facts. Platform users are responsible for contributing and voting on these annotations to ensure the transparency and accuracy of information.

Prediction market technology has also achieved steady growth in recent years, with various platforms emerging one after another allowing users to buy shares in different event outcomes. For example, Foreon Network launched prediction market technology based on the Cardano blockchain in 2023. As more and more users flood into the market, the influence of prediction markets and community annotations will further expand and may become an important part of future social cognitive technologies.

It is worth mentioning that this is not the first time Buterin has praised community annotations. In his article "What do I think about Community Notes?" published last year, Buterin stated that the transparency provided by community notes is consistent with the principles of cryptocurrency, and emphasized that this method has important value by preventing centralized manipulation.

Musk rarely responds positively

What is rare is that Buterin's comments also attracted Musk's attention, and he responded to the post with a brief "Yeah" to express his affirmation and approval. The response sparked a heated discussion in the community, with many cryptocurrency enthusiasts and experts agreeing. One German political activist even stated in a post that community annotation is currently the most fair and effective form of fact-checking in any social media application.

Musk also recently announced a major update plan for the AI ​​startup xAI he founded in a post, and revealed that Grok 2 will be launched in August this year. Unlike ChatGPT, where Grok is trained to be truth-seeking and honest conversations, ChatGPT is trained to be socially acceptable, something Musk considers dangerous to humans in the long term.

Source: X Musk’s post revealed that Grok is expected to be launched in August this year

In summary, Buterin and Musk’s mutual recognition of prediction markets and community annotations has injected strong confidence in the future development of these technologies. As technology continues to advance, these tools are expected to play a greater role in promoting information transparency and truth-seeking, changing the way we understand information, and promoting the development of society in a more democratic and transparent direction.