Augur v1 was deployed at a time when the Ethereum ecosystem was coming into its own. 2 years after that launch, Augur v2 is augmented by much of the infrastructure that has been built since that initial release.

In total Augur integrates:

• 0x
• Maker
• Uniswap
• Portis
• Torus
• Fortmatic

These integrations serve to provide valuable building blocks whereas the necessity to build them as bespoke features would have encumbered Augur's core development team with countless additional hours of development time.

The Augur core developers are grateful for the foundational products that have been developed within the Ethereum ecosystem over the past two years and cannot wait to see what kinds of integrations will be possible with Augur v3!

This post is the first in a series on these Augur integrations and will briefly outline them in totality. Look out for future posts where a deep dive into each integration will be performed!

0x Mesh for Off-Chain Ordering

One of the biggest changes to Augur in version 2 is the utilization of 0x Mesh to allow for off chain order books. What this allows for is no-fee 'maker' orders and the ability to transfer the onus of Ethereum transaction fees on to order 'takers'.

Using 0x serves as a boon for liquidity formation; allowing market makers, who are service providers in the Augur system, to operate with more attractive margins.

MakerDao's Dai for a Stable Betting Unit

Another wholesale change between Augur v1 and v2 is the introduction of a stablecoin, in this case DAI from MakerDao. In Augur v1, ETH was the unit with which users made bets.

The volatility associated with ETH introduced a host of user experience issues and substantially limited the total addressable market for Augur to serve. As opposed to other stablecoins, DAI was chosen for its properties of censorship resistance and the longevity with which the peg has been maintained.

Uniswap Price Feed Oracle

Uniswap's v2 upgrade introduces the ability to broadcast accurate and robust pricing signals. A huge consideration in favor of Uniswap is the point to which their oracles are decentralized and manipulation-resistant.

Prior to v2, Augur's only vector of central control was the reliance on a semi-centralized price feed oracle to inform the system of REP's market capitalization. This function is used to dynamically adjust reporting fees based on the target REP valuation peg of 5x open interest.

Portis, Formatic, and Torus Wallets for a More Seamless User Experience

Augur v2 was designed with the intention of having crossover appeal amongst those more familiar with Web2 concepts. To abstract away key management and provide a more familiar authentication flow, Augur natively supports signing up for a wallet from either Portis, Formatic, or Torus.

With Portis by Shapeshift, users have the ability to sign up with a familiar email and password login flow. Likewise, Fortmatic supports the ability to login with either a phone number or email address. Additionally, if a user would rather authenticate using their Google account, Torus provides the ability to do so.

Wrapping Up

In total, these integrations have been combined to allow for various user experience and decentralization upgrades within Augur v2. Augur's core developers cannot thank these teams enough for the support they have provided and continue to provide throughout the development process.

Look out for the forthcoming posts explaining these integrations in finer detail. As new relevant building blocks are introduced, such as layer 2 scaling solutions, Augur will continue to leverage the collective strength of the Ethereum ecosystem in future updates!