Numerai is an Ethereum-based platform allowing developers and data scientists to experiment and create machine learning models with improved reliability. The platform’s main goal is to bring decentralization to the data science field and allow developers to compete in creating effective machine learning prediction models.
Machine learning competitions are susceptible to intentional overfitting. Numerai proposes Numeraire, a new cryptographic token that can be used in a novel auction mechanism to make overfitting economically irrational. The auction mechanism leads to equilibrium bidding behavior that reveals rational data scientists¯ confidence in their models¯ ability to perform well on new data. The auction mechanism also yields natural arguments for the economic value of a Numeraire token.