On July 11, it was announced that Veil, which is a prediction market that runs on the Ethereum network, was ceasing its operations. The company made the announcement in a blog post on Medium.

Starting on July 11, it was no longer possible to add new markets to Veil, and the site will completely shut down on July 24. Paul Fletcher-Hill, who is one of the founders of Veil, recommended that users of the platform do the following: redeem any open positions that they may have, withdraw all positions from active markets and withdraw all funds that they have stored in Veil Ether and convert it to Ether.

Veil was, in essence, an extension of another Ethereum-based predictions market called Auger, which is still in operations. It allows users to utilize smart contracts for the purposes of betting on the outcome of events. For example, at the moment you can place wagers on the winners of Wimbledon and on events relating to the U.S. presidential election. While betting primarily occurs using Ethereum, this past April the platform added support for using the DAI stablecoin from MakerDAO.

Veil's intention was to make Augur more popular by improving the speed of transactions. It allowed users to made trades using the 0x protocol. It also allowed users to receive instant settlements. This was accomplished by having users sell their shares to Veil prior to the contract's completion on the Augur blockchain.

In the blog post, Fletcher-Hill noted a number of reasons for the platform's demise. This included a lack of user friendliness, the centralized nature of the platform and the fact that it was not regulated. He also indicated that they perhaps offered too many options for users.

Augur itself has been experiencing its share of problems. Both Binance and Reddit users have accused the platform of having a design flaw that allows for the possibilities of scams. This is because it is possible to make predictions on both unclear and contradictory events. Binance also criticized the site for its lack of liquidity and governance as well as for its many functional deficiencies.