PastPaper – Research Prediction Market

A play-money prediction market for paper acceptances and model benchmark results

Problem

The flood of AI-generated submissions is overwhelming peer review, burning out reviewers and drowning quality signals. A developer already built a prediction market for paper acceptance and attracted over 2,000 registered traders, proving community appetite—but the existing tool is a lone experiment, not a polished product.

Solution

A lightweight prediction market where researchers and enthusiasts use virtual credits to bet on paper acceptances at conferences like ICLR and NeurIPS, and on model benchmark outcomes. Odds aggregate crowd wisdom into a citable ‘market consensus score’ that helps reviewers and readers triage papers. No real money, no regulatory headaches.

Users

AI researchers, conference reviewers, engineers and grad students tracking frontier progress

MVP

Create prediction markets with settlement date and resolution source; virtual credits betting with automatic odds; paste an arXiv link to auto-fetch paper metadata; simple leaderboard and market heat ranking; manual review fallback for settlement disputes.

Revenue

Freemium: free basic markets; paid tier unlocks advanced analytics (field/institution-level consensus reports, API access, data export); institutional subscriptions for internal lab prediction pilots.

Why now

The surge in AI submissions is eroding traditional review signal, and the community needs alternative quality signals. An existing prototype with 2,000+ traders validates demand, yet it remains rough—an indie developer can ship a more complete, user-friendly version fast.