In his most recent post, Marley Gray, Director of BizDev & Strategy of Cloud and Enterprise at Microsoft, announced the addition of five new cryptocurrencies/blockchains to the Microsoft Azure Blockchain-as-a-Service (BaaS) platform; Ethereum-based prediction market Augur; JavaScript private blockchain platform Lisk; open-source digital asset platform BitShares; decentralized marketplace cryptocurrency Syscoin; smart contract platform Slock.it.

The Azure BaaS platform has become so diverse in the past several months that Marley Gray now refers to it as a “distributed ledger ecosystem”.

The Augur addition will give Azure developers the capability to launch their own private prediction markets. While this may not sound very impressive at first, the implication here is that companies can avoid the hefty regulatory costs and risks associated with running public prediction markets.

Ron Bernstein, Advisor to the Augur project and Founder of the now-defunct prediction portal Intrade, knows the regulatory risks of running a centralized public prediction marketplace in the US. In 2012, Intrade was forced to shut down after the CFTC filed a civil suit against the site.

Gray also mentioned that companies can leverage the power of Augur to crowdsource intelligence from their own internal pool of people, “Employees could even be incentivized to predict by rewarding accurate forecasters with internal or external perks.” said Gray.

According to a recent Forklog article, Syscoin is planning to launch their decentralized marketplace on the Azure platform at some point in the future:

“Blockmarket is an open source, cross-browser web experience which is also fully mobile compatible. It allows anyone to easily create a decentralized marketplace with one click and customize the shopping experience to fit the needs of their market,”

This is the 6th addition in the ever-expanding Azure developer sandbox, and many other unique blockchains are expected to be added in the coming months.

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