Lifecycle and payouts

Stages

• Open. Deposits and withdrawals are allowed. A participant can hold both sides of the same market. The minimum deposit is 1 USDX.
• Lock. At the lock time the reference price is recorded and withdrawals close for good.
• Live. Deposits remain open until 2 minutes before settlement, under the cap described below.
• Settle. At the end of the window the settlement price is recorded and the winning side is decided.

Lock and settle are permissionless: once their time has passed, any account can submit them. A keeper does so on schedule. If a market has not settled 6 hours after its settlement time, for example because no valid price was available, anyone can void it.

Payout

pot    = YES pool + NO pool
fee    = 1% of pot
payout = deposit × (pot − fee) / winning pool

A market is voided if the losing side is empty at settlement, or if it is voided after the 6-hour window above. Every deposit is then refunded in full and no fee is taken.

The fee is charged on settled markets only and goes to the protocol treasury. The program caps it at 5%; devnet markets use 1%.

Deposits after lock

A deposit made after lock may already know part of the move. To keep the market open during the window without letting late information dilute the participants who committed before lock, every live deposit carries a cap: the most it can return, as a multiple of the amount. The cap falls as the window runs out.

f    = time left in the window / window length
cap  = (1 − fee) + (max − (1 − fee)) · f^k

On the winning side, deposits made after lock are paid as a group:

• The group receives its pro-rata share of the payout, but never more than the sum of its caps.
• What the caps hold back goes to the winners who deposited before lock.
• If nobody on the winning side deposited before lock, the group shares the full payout.
• Within the group, each deposit first recovers up to its amount minus the fee. The remainder is shared by cap headroom, so earlier entries earn more.

A = winning deposits before lock     S = winning deposits after lock
C = sum of the caps of S             D = pot − fee

late group  = min(D · S / (A + S), C)
early group = D − late group

Claims and rounding

Winnings and refunds are claimed from the app. A claim can also be submitted by any account on behalf of the owner, and the funds always go to the owner's own token account. This lets a keeper push payouts without holding user keys.