Pool markets

One pot per outcome#

The pool venue — "the pot" in the interface, StampedePool in the contracts — is the venue that always works. There is no market maker, no inventory and no house side. You post USDG on an outcome; so does everyone else; if your outcome wins you get your own money back plus a share of what the losing outcomes put in.

Because payouts are drawn only from collateral already in escrow, the pool cannot become insolvent. The sum of every payout plus every fee is at most the total pot, as an arithmetic identity rather than a risk parameter.

What a position is#

Posting a position ("charging" in the interface) records two things for you on the outcome you chose:

• your principal — the USDG you put in;
• your weighted amount — principal multiplied by the earliness weight at the moment the transaction was included.

At settlement, the losing pool is shared among winners in proportion to their weighted amounts, and each winner's principal comes back on top. The weight therefore decides how the losing pool is split; it never decides how large the payout is, which is why no weighting rule can create insolvency.

The transaction carries a weight floor you signed. There is no fee at entry, so a fee ceiling would protect nothing; what can surprise you is the weight, because a transaction sent one second before the opening plateau ends and included one second after it gets a materially worse multiple. If the weight on inclusion is below your floor, the transaction reverts instead of silently costing you.

The earliness weight#

Every market has an opening plateau that ends at tFair, set at creation to the opening time plus the smaller of one tenth of the market's length and fourteen days. Inside the plateau the weight is flat at 1 + λ; from the end of the plateau to the cut-off it decays as

w(t) = 1 + λ · (1 − x³), where x is the fraction of the decay period elapsed,

reaching exactly 1.000000 at the cut-off. The template sets λ between 0 and 0.5 (the immutable ceiling); a template with λ = 0 is pure pro rata. The decay is cubic rather than linear because a linear decay punishes taking a day to think, while the cubic removes most of the remaining advantage inside the final tenth of the market, which is where an information advantage lives.

The interface prints the current weight on every ticket and shows the blend when you add to an existing position: the two charges keep their own weights, and new money does not dilute the weight of the old.

The late window#

Once less than 30% of the plateau premium is left — at the default λ = 0.5, once the weight is below 1.15 — the market is in its late window, and an account's remaining capacity in that market is cut to a quarter. This is an anti-snipe device. The market page names the late window as the binding limit when it is.

Leaving at par#

A position can be withdrawn at par — full principal, no penalty — but only inside the opening plateau, and only once per market per account. Outside the plateau a par exit would be a free-look straddle: post both sides early at the high weight, drop the wrong leg late, and walk away with more weight per net dollar than an honest late position; inside the plateau the weight is constant, so the straddle gains nothing and the exit is free.

The once-per-market rule is the sharp edge: exiting 10 USDG of a 500 USDG position spends the whole right and leaves the other 490 in until settlement. The control defaults to the full amount and states the rule beside the field. After the plateau, a pool position rides to settlement; there is no secondary market for it.

Limits on a position#

A position is refused if any of these holds:

• the market is not open, or it is before the opening time or at or after the cut-off;
• the market's template is paused;
• the entry gate is on and your locked RINO is below it;
• the amount is below the venue minimum, which is 25 USDG at launch and governance-settable between 25 and 75;
• your total in this market would exceed your tier's cap for the market's risk class — quartered in the late window;
• the venue's total escrow would exceed its cap, or this market's pot would exceed its share of that cap (40% of the venue cap by default, so one popular market cannot close every other market).

The market page shows every bound and names the one that binds. See RINO token and tiers.

Timing#

Every clock in the pool is the block timestamp. A market opens at tOpen, stops taking positions at tCut, and may resolve from tRes, which is at least one hour after the cut. The interface shows all three, and a live countdown to the next one.

Settlement and claims#

Once the market's condition has an answer, anyone may settle the market; the first claim does it automatically. A claim pays your principal plus your weighted share of the losing pool, less the fee on that profit, in one transfer to your wallet. Claims never expire. A batch claim across many markets skips the ones that would pay nothing rather than failing the whole transaction. See Payouts and void markets and Fees.