Only 2 weeks after DappCon ended I have some time to write about how I won Helena prediction challenge. Let's start with onboarding! All DappCon participants received the Helena card in the swag bag. There was a burner wallet private key on the back side of the card - scan it and you get access to your wallet.
Each participant had 1000 xP+ points on his Helena wallet by default. You could predict different crypto/DappCon outcomes to earn more xP+, for example, what ice cream would end first at DappCon. The person who has the most of xP+ at the end of DappCon wins the challenge. If you want to learn more about prediction markets, welcome to CoinTelegraph article.
At the very beginning of the DappCon, I bet all my xP+ for one type of ice cream. After that I noticed one very interesting feature - you can send your xP+ to other wallets. I've re-read all challenge rules - xP+ transfer wasn't forbidden by any of them. OK, let's try to transfer. It was very easy to find several friends at the conference, who didn't care about the challenge and transfer all their tokens to my wallet. After that, I'll put all my "mined" tokens to Helena (I put them into 2 main categories of ice cream based on seller inside info=)))).
I've lost a lot of my predictions, however, I could still have more xP+ than any other participant. GG!
I'm pretty sure that this mechanics was not intended by the challenge hosts, however, any of participants could play like this - what makes the game kind of fare.
Moreover, it perfectly demonstrates the power of inside information and how your power on prediction market depends on your stake!