Cubist Prediction Game — Litepaper

The prediction games are the most popular feature of the Cubist Collective. ~5 days per week, we let members guess whether a project will do well in the first hour or the day after mint. On average, we have 600 daily and 1100 monthly active users in these games. The accuracy of these games in predicting mint outcomes is very impressive: The community has so far been correct in 80% of the rounds. Perhaps more importantly, less than 1% of individual users beat this aggregate result.

How it works

The Cubist prediction games are like taking an over/under bet with a friend. Every player puts SOL into a pot and selects one of the options. The players that bet on the winning option then share the pot. This means odds aren’t fixed, but are based on players’ total bets once the game closes (this is called parimutuel betting, no we didn’t misspell paramutual we promise).

Example strategies: (read more in discord!)

1. Convinced project x will moon but don’t have WL, or want even more exposure? Place a bet on it
2. Bet against projects you don’t believe will do well
3. Hedge your mint: Place a bet on Under and mint. If the floor does not take off, your mint could be free (depending on odds)
4. Research upcoming mints by looking at the bets placed

$CUBIST integration

Holders of $CUBIST will be able to use their tokens to boost their bets by 5%. This means that a 1 SOL bet would count as 1.05 SOL. The initial rate will be 20 $CUBIST per SOL. E.g. a 1 SOL bet can be boosted with 20 $CUBIST, and a 0.1 SOL bet with 2 $CUBIST. The rate isn’t completely finalized and may change over time as we see how it’s used. This feature will also be added upon full launch.
We will also run pools with exclusively $CUBIST bets and value-added, such as a SOL pool to split among winners, or NFTs raffled to those selecting the winning option.

Revenue Model

The current beta is operating with a 6.25% fee from the pot. With the v1 full release, we plan to increase this to 8.5% in order to develop and maintain the games and other Cubist services, as well as stay in line with what other services charge. The profit will be split 50/50 between the Cubist project development and the community wallet (the treasury that holders benefit from). The community funds will be used to reward Cubist contributors, run activities like raffles for NFTs, and the above-mentioned value-added $CUBIST pools, as well as other uses coming soon.

Partners

We will be able to offer integration with partner tokens, or white-label solutions for the prediction games. In the white-label case, we will share the revenue with the partner. We have had quite a bit of interest from some big names already — if you are a project lead and interested in applying please contact @ryutras on the Cubist discord.

Rules

Our rules for the game are outlined in the terms and conditions that all players must accept before placing their bets. Depending on the type of game, rules may differ slightly, but most restrictions are common sense. Please read these before playing!

Addressing Manipulation Concerns

The popularity of floor price predictions grew substantially faster than we expected. As pots grow, the risk of manipulation increases. To combat this, we already focus on collections and times with a very high expected volume. The next step will soon be implemented: Calculate the floor as the median value over a period of time (typically 10 min before and after the target time, but this may vary). This greatly reduces our sensitivity to very short-term price changes from mispriced items or manipulation.

We will continuously review the data for signs of abuse and adjust accordingly. Though as we have answered many times in Discord, manipulating our system would be extremely difficult on the high volume mints we choose. You would need pinpoint timing (difficult on SOL) and immunity to snipe bots. You would also end up paying a ton in royalties since your listings will likely be auto-bought. In our testing, it isn’t worth it.

Future Plans

Our number one focus right now is developing use cases for the CUBIST token that play into the games as well as “holder advantages” for our community members. If you are a holder, you of course likely already enjoy the benefits, whether its the 5k USDC per week we pay out, our unique discord sorting system, our top tier WL ops (Great Goats, Communi3, Stoned Frogs, …), or our best-in-class portfolio manager and wallet tracker. Whether or not you decide to purchase a Cubist and reap the benefits that come with it, welcome to our games! Have fun!