Normie-friendly prediction market interfaces

Description of proposed project

I want to continue my exploration of normie-friendly packaging for prediction market probabilities.

Most prediction market platform UI's are trader-centric. This makes sense because without traders, markets are no good. However, prediction markets have a second, much larger 'lurker' audience that I believe is underserved by the major platforms. As prediction markets become more useful, I believe the ways in which non-bettors consume them should keep up.

Some of what I am proposing are improvements and enhancements to my existing projects in this space. They include:

- WHEN (currently not working) — a live timeline of when everything's going to happen, according to Manifold date markets.

- @manifoldmaven — a Twitter bot that tweets big 24h moves on popular manifold markets.

I have broken my project proposal into three levels of ambition, each building on the last.

I. Ambition level 1 (funded by ACX!):
A. Improvements to "WHEN", my future timeline of everything that is going to happen, according to Manifold Markets Date markets.
i. Allow users to filter the timeline by Topic, Number of Traders, Liquidity
ii. Performance and design improvements
iii. Exploring integrations with non-Manifold providers
iv. Start adding information from non-date markets to the timeline:
a. ex: on known future Fed Meeting dates, add an event that says Fed Cuts Rates X%, where X is the current predicted rate cut
B. Improvements to @manifoldmaven, my Twitter bot that tweets every time a popular Manifold market moves by a large margin in 24 hours.
i. Polymarket and Kalshi support
ii. optimize Tweet format based on feedback from superfans/powerusers
iii. add email alerts or other types of digests.
iv. speed improvements and migration from Firebase to val.town for much faster iteration speeds
v. smarter market selection and collapsing multiple market updates into replies
C. New Projects:
i. Countdown: simply paste a manifold date market url to the end of this url and it will automatically generate a live countdown page for that market's estimated date.
ii. A semi-automated newsletter that packages important prediction probabilities into useful insights.
D. Marketing
i. Funny, slick social media/LinkedIn Posts/Videos about I'm working on.

II. Ambition Level 2 ($15K):
A. Everything from level 1 plus:
B. Enhancing 'The Rundown' (https://therundown.val.run/) (my prototype of a user-generated prediction market dashboard)
i. Making it so that users can easily create their own prediction market dashboards with this tool
C. A consistent, dedicated content strategy
i. A dedicated monthly newsletter for at least one year.
ii. Ongoing social media/Youtube video updates of projects and their progress
iii. Outreach to podcasts in order to discuss these projects
D. Additional WHEN Timeline work:
i. allow for the creation of markets on the timeline (via a link to Manifold)
ii. Start maintaining dedicated timelines for important events
iii. Branch into non-timeline pages for important events
iv. Make it possible for people to add things to the timeline (by creating a Manifold Market)

III. Ambition level 3 (~$45K):
A. everything from levels 1 and 2
B. incorporate prediction market tools into my social building site (build.moi/@dcm31 (beta))
i. build.moi is a project I made that is meant to be TikTok for your vibe-coded creations
ii. I will incorporate user-generated prediction markets and dashboards into the build.moi feed
iii. The big goal here is to make important prediction market content swipeable, snackable, and hackable, so that anyone can build on top of it.
iv. Mana economy
1. make it so that users of build.moi can spend and charge manifold mana for services created by other build.moi users.
2. mana will cycle in and out of both prediction markets and users' wallets, as they reward each other for software, services, funny comments, etc.
C. Updates to WHEN
i. Automated timeline management
1. auto-creation and management of important date markets
2. Agents that automatically bet on the date markets based on the latest news.
D. I haven't contacted them about this, but to the extent that it is logical, I would be open to building some of these things directly into Manifold as a sort of ACX-sponsored fellowship.

Why are you qualified to work on this?

I strongly believe that prediction markets could go much more mainstream as tools for truth-seeking. This belief has manifested itself in the form of numerous attempts to rearrange prediction markets in novel ways that better communicate the knowledge they contain. Since discovering prediction markets through ACX's evangelism of Manifold, I have created:

WHEN (currently waiting to be brought back online): a future timeline of everything that's going to happen, according to Manifold date markets.

@manifoldmaven: a twitter bot that tweets every time a popular Manifold market moves significantly

The Rundown: a prototype of an extremely easy-to-use prediction market dashboard creator (for Manifold and Polymarket)

USMNT 2026 World Cup Roster Projections: A custom page for my Manifold market about who will play for the USA in the 2026 World Cup.

Expected Work: A Fatebook.io-integrated tool that helps you calculate a daily work goal based on your self-rated probability of success at various pomodoro amounts.

I also believe I'm qualified to break prediction markets out of the nerd-bubble because I have a history of storytelling, and I straddle the normie/nerdy world more than most prediction-pilled enthusiasts:

My wife is a semi-famous Brazilian travel influencer, and we spent the last three years traveling the world creating Instagram content for various travel and hospitality brands. I have spent a lot of time in the comedy world, writing sketch comedy in college and performing stand-up and improv across three continents. I've recently been in discussions to create launch videos for startups, after making a funny one for the YC-backed Paloma:

In 2016 also co-founded Emile.chat, a chatbot for getting to bed early. It can be considered a commercial failure, but after almost 10 years, it still maintains a tiny cohort of dedicated users who check in with Emile every day.

Skills

I believe I possess the technical and design skills necessary to execute everything I'm proposing. I also believe I'm qualified to make fun videos about this content.

Weaknesses:

I am good at building, and I am good at making content. I have struggled in the past to make content about the things I have built. I believe a specific carve-out of my time on this project should be content creation and strategy.

What would you do if not funded?

Ambition Level 1 is funded!

I am not pursuing other sources of funding. Without this funding, Ambition Levels 2+ probably will not happen.

How much money do you need?

Ambition Level 1: $5K (funded); Levels 1+2: $15K total; Levels 1-3: $45K

@Austin Wow thank you for the generous donation! That puts me almost halfway to Ambition Level II!

Some thoughts and a question for you at the bottom:

Definitely open to hearing more about where you think I should take things! Ultimately, my goal for this project is to uncover how prediction markets can be most useful to normal people.

I agree that another dashboard collecting dust in the corner of the internet is NOT the outcome I want for this project. I think at least one better indicator of success, or at least learnings, would be me being able to say, "Hey we engaged X people on this topic. We found Y resonated a lot more than Z."

Anything that has any sort of continuity or retention beyond the grant is probably something to aim for.

Putting my "normie-whisperer" hat on, the reason I do feel like something might still need to be built is this:

I can picture myself making a snappy, interesting video about Polymarket moving X% upon news of Y, but I don't think I could enthusiastically point the average curious viewer to any of the existing prediction market platforms as their next step. It just wouldn't add that much value. I could see myself saying something like "if you want weekly roundups like these in your inbox..." or "If you want to be in the loop the minute Something HappensTM...," and pointing them to a recurring source of curated inbound information.

I would love to work with other forecasting pioneers, too! I'm not sure how that works in terms of morphing from the current scope of this grant though.

In fact, that's my question for you:

How much does ACX and Manifund expect me to hew to the original application? My guess is there's plenty of trust involved for me to use my best judgement. But can I keep adjusting this application as I go? Can someone say, "I want to donate $10K, but only for Project B, Section IV"?

Thanks!