Manifold Markets has announced that they intend to add cash prizes to their current play-money model, with a raft of attendant changes to mana management and conversion. I first became aware of this via a comment on ACX Open Thread 326; the linked Notion document appears to be the official one.

The central change involves market payouts returning prize points instead of mana, which can then be converted to mana (with 1:1 ratios on both sides, thus emulating the current behavior) or to cash—though they also state that actually implementing cash payouts will be fraught and may not wind up happening at all. Some further relevant quotes, slightly reformatted:

• “Mana will remain a purely play-money currency with zero monetary value”
• “Users under 18 years of age may no longer be permitted to use the site.”
• “We are exploring many other win point redemption options including digital goods / cosmetics on Manifold, merch, gift cards, and cash. Prize points will not be transferrable to other users.”
• “We are shutting down all cross-user managrams / mana payments / mana links on May 1st. We will then actively enforce a strict no-transfer policy.”
• “Platform-provided loans on your investment value will be no longer be available after April 30th”
• “Manifold will no longer inject up to M20 per trader into the liquidity pool of each market. We still plan to subsidize markets and interesting content, but we will do so in a more piecemeal and targeted way.”
• “We are planning to raise market creation cost substantially to ensure that all markets have a solid baseline level of liquidity. … Unlisted markets can no longer be created.”

I don't currently use Manifold myself, but this seems relevant to the LW sphere, and I am interested in other people's thoughts on how this is likely to impact both the prediction markets themselves and the way Manifold has become socially (and technologically) embedded into the surrounding context.