Pyth, fully verified
Lock and settle read a Pyth price update on chain. The program checks the feed id, the publisher program, and that the update is fully verified. A partially verified update is refused.
A new round every 15 minutes.
Pick up or down on 24 coins, from BTC and ETH to WIF and FARTCOIN. There is no market maker and no order book. The two sides of a round fund each other.
- Round length
- 15 min
- Markets
- 24
- Rounds per day
- 96
- Protocol capital
- None
01 · The round
How a round works
Every round has two windows of the same length. You bet in the first one. The price decides it in the second.
Betting window
15 minutes to stake SOL on up or down. Your stake joins that side of the pool, and the payout on both sides moves as money comes in. One wallet, one side, one bet at a time, and no way out once it is placed.
Lock
Betting closes and the Pyth price is written on chain. That is the number the round is measured from. Nobody can bet after this point.
Price window
15 minutes of price. Meanwhile the next round is already taking bets, so there is always one round open and one round running.
Settle
The Pyth price is read again. Higher than lock, up wins; lower, down wins. The 1% fee comes off the whole pool and the rest goes to the winning side. Claim any time after that.
Why there is nothing to buy from
A parimutuel pool has no counterparty to find. Every lamport paid out was staked by somebody on the losing side of the same round, so the protocol never needs a treasury, an inventory, or liquidity providers to quote against you. It also means a round with stake on only one side has nothing to settle, so the program refunds it instead.
02 · The board
Markets
Twenty-four feeds, 96 rounds a day on each. Prices are live from Pyth right now.
03 · The arithmetic
Payouts
One formula, and it is the whole protocol.
payout
=
your stake
winning side total
x
pool x 0.99
The pool is everything staked on both sides. Take 1% off it, then split what is left across the winning side in proportion to stake.
Worked example
| Up side | 4.0 SOL |
|---|---|
| Down side | 4.0 SOL |
| Pool | 8.0 SOL |
| Fee (1%) | 0.08 SOL |
| To winners | 7.92 SOL |
Price closes higher, so up wins. You staked 1 SOL of the 4 on the up side, so you take a quarter of 7.92: 1.98 SOL, a 1.98x return on a round that was close to even.
The same pool, read as prices
Turn that formula around and a stake is buying units of a payout at a price. A side holding 89% of the pool costs about 89c to back and pays 100c if it wins, which is the number the app puts on the button. The two sides add up to roughly 101c, and that extra cent is the fee, doing the same job a spread does on an order book. It is the same mechanism either way, just the readable way round.
When a win still loses money
The multiple falls as your side gets crowded. If the losing side is thinner than 1% of the pool, the fee is bigger than the winnings and the payout multiple drops below 1.00x. Quarta does not hide this: the live multiple is on the button before you commit, and a round with nothing at all on the other side is refunded rather than settled.
04 · The machinery
Under the hood
What actually runs, and what it can and cannot do.
Non-custodial
Stake sits in a vault owned by the round it belongs to. Nobody, including the authority, has an instruction that can move it anywhere except to the winners and the 1% fee.
Permissionless crank
Starting, locking and settling a round are open to anyone. If the keeper stops, somebody else can run it, and if nobody does within the grace window the round is cancelled and refunded.
A fee ceiling in code
The authority can change the fee, but the program refuses anything above 5%, so the ceiling is not a promise, it is a constant.
Refunds, not edge cases
Unchanged price, nothing on one side, or a missed crank window: all three refund every stake in full and take no fee.
Locked in when you buy
There is no selling out. Once your stake is in it stays in until the round settles, which is at most thirty minutes away. A pool has no counterparty to sell a position to, so an exit would only ever be a withdrawal, and one that moved the odds for everyone still in.
One bet at a time
A wallet holds a single running bet across every market. The program enforces it, not just the page, and the next round you can take opens the moment your current one settles.
Rent comes back
Every round puts up rent for its own accounts, and at 96 rounds a day across every market that would pile up without end. A finished round is closed and the rent returns: the bettor gets back what their position cost, the keeper what the round cost.
Same clock everywhere
Rounds land on :00, :15, :30 and :45. The page and the chain agree on when a round opens without having to negotiate it.
05 · Questions
FAQ
The things worth knowing before you stake anything.