Project summary

Manifold Sandbox is a 3rd party site for simulating arbitrary transactions on Manifold. Users can explore detailed annotations of the data flow that constitute transactions, learn about the formulae underpinning these transactions, and share scenarios with friends to explain their reasoning.

What are this project's goals and how will you achieve them?

Allow users to:

• Trace through function calls made when a user creates a market, bets, places a limit order, subsidizes, and more.

• See a formula-oriented cost-curve view of those same transactions.

• Run a series of transactions, with any number of users and markets; go back and alter any event in the timeline.

• Share your galaxy-brained exploit with a link instead of a 5 paragraph essay.

• (For devs) Show novel mechanisms transparently without having to build a dev instance.

To accomplish these goals, we run a copy of Manifold's backend within the webpage, with logging and local storage mocks inserted. We design a frontend that communicates state effectively to the user. We prioritize simulation fidelity by minimizing hand edits to the wrapped backend code.

I’ve already put some time into the project, enough to establish the efficacy of simulating Manifold’s backend on a static webpage.

How will this funding be used?

To compensate in part of the development time.

Who is on your team and what's your track record on similar projects?

I'm one developer, and I'm consulting with other users to make this a broadly useful tool.

I was previously funded and worked on the browser extension ManiFans.

What are the most likely causes and outcomes if this project fails? (premortem)

Causes:

• Failure to create an intuitive/compelling UI

• Inaccuracies in the simulation

• The community just doesn't have a need for something in this vein

Failure outcomes:

• Lack of interest from community, and a site that remains static and publicly available.

What other funding are you or your project getting?

None.