Prediction market Veil shuts down

Veil, a crypto-based prediction market and derivatives platform, is shutting shop after just six months.

Built atop the Ethereum-based predictions market, Augur, Veil was supposed to make the service more usable, permitting users to place bets on Augur markets, for things such as tennis matches, Oscar nominations, or the Academy Awards. It also promised faster and cheaper trading, with quicker payouts.

Yet, in a Medium post, Paul Fletcher-Hill, co-founder of Veil, explained that as of July 11, no new markets would be added to the platform. And trading will stop on July 24.

He recommended that users redeem their open positions in expired markets, withdraw any positions they have in active markets, and withdraw their Veil Ether and convert it to Ether.

Veil failed, according to Fletcher-Hill, because: it tried to do too much, didn’t offer a good onboarding experience, and existed in a netherworld between being decentralized and regulated. He said that the last was likely the most significant reason of the three, since Veil  was operating in a largely decentralized market:

“Some users want a fully decentralized, unstoppable product and others want a regulated product,” he said. “It’s hard to offer something in between that people find valuable.”

Over the coming weeks, the team is planning to publish an in-depth post-mortem, which it hopes will prevent others from making similar mistakes and enable others to pick up where Veil left off.