Using the Reality.eth dapp

Requirements

You will need the Metamask Chrome extension.

To post or answer questions you will need ETH.

If you prefer to try the app without using real money, you can switch Metamask to the Rinkeby or Kovan Testnet. You can get testnet coins at the Rinkeby Faucet and the Kovan Faucet.

Asking a question

Click the “post a question” button and fill in the form you see. Enter a clear, unambiguous question in English.

Opening Date

If you don’t want people to be able to answer the question immediately, enter the date you want it to open.

Reward

Enter the amount you are prepared to pay as an incentive to answer your question. You pay when you post the question, and the money is collected by the person who gave the final accepted answer.

If you intend to supply the answer yourself, and are hoping it will survive challenges so that you can use the question as evidence to send to a smart contract, you do not need to set a bounty, and can instead post a bond when you supply your answer. That way you will get the money back if your answer is accepted.

Question Type

  • Binary (Yes/No): A simple yes or no answer. Note that this has no value for “null” or “undecided”. If you want to be able to report these options, you may prefer a multi-choice question.
  • Number: A positive (unsigned) number. By default questions allow up to 13 decimals.
  • Single-choice: One answer can be selected from a list. The answer form will display this as a select box.
  • Multiple-choice: Multiple answers can be selected from a list. The answer form will display this as a group of checkboxes.
  • Datetime: A date or date and time. The answer form will display this as a date picker.

See Using Reality.eth from a contract for how these values will be reported to contracts.

Arbitrator

This is the address of a person, organization or DAO that will settle disputes in exchange for a fee. See Arbitrators for more details on how they work, and how you can create your own arbitrator.

Timeout

How long people will have to correct incorrect reponses after they are posted. We normally suggest 24 hours. You may prefer a longer setting if you think your question will need time to come to the attention of people qualified to answer it, or a shorter setting if you think many people will be paying attention within a short timespan.

Category

This is intended to help people find questions of the subject they are interested in.

Note

Posting a question will open a MetaMask window which will prompt you to confirm it. You will have to pay a fee to the network, called “gas”. If you are not in a hurry, you can usually set a much lower gas price than the default suggested by MetaMask.

Answering a question

Click on the question to open the display and entry window.

Your answer

Enter the answer.

Your bond

This is money that you will get back if your answer is accepted as the final answer, and lose if your answer is not accepted.

Posting a bond stakes a claim to the answer you are giving: Even if someone else later reposts the same answer, you will get your bond back, and also be paid, as a mimimum, an amount equal to the bond you have posted.

Note

When you send a transaction to the Ethereum network, it can takes seconds, minutes or even hours to confirm.

You can go ahead and supply your own answer to a question before it has confirmed. However, other users will not see either the question or your answer until they are confirmed.

Correcting an incorrect answer

If you see a question with an incorrect answer, you can correct it simply by adding a new answer.

Correcting an answer will entitle you to the bond of the previous user. However, you must submit your own bond, and it must be at least twice as high as the bond submitted by the previous answerer. If you are resubmitting an answer that someone has already given, part of that payment will be deducted and paid to them. See Fees and payments for details.

Note

Until your answer has been sent to the network and confirmed in a block, it is possible for someone else to submit a competing answer. This will cause your transaction to fail.

If the competing answer is also wrong, you may wish to resubmit your answer with an even higher bond.

Requesting arbitration

If you see a question with an incorrect answer and a high bond, you can request arbitration.

To request arbitration you must pay the arbitrator a fee. The fee may be quite high, and it will not be returned to you even if you are right. However, you will receive the bond posted with the incorrect answer. To make it profitable to request arbitration, you can increase your bond to the point where the person posting the incorrect answer will either give up, making your answer the winner, or post a bond that exceeds the amount you will have to pay the arbitrator.

Once the arbitration fee has been paid the question will be locked, and the participants have to wait for the arbitrator to send their final answer to the contract.

See Arbitrators for more details on how the arbitration process works.

Withdrawing funds

Once a question has been finalized, anyone who submitted the correct answer will be able to withdraw funds.

Once funds are available, a “Claim” button will show up on the “your” tab that appears when you click the user icon in the top-right corner. Clicking the “Claim” button will send the funds to your account.