A higher price on a chart is not cash.
Someone can buy up opening tokens or trade between their own accounts to fake demand. Check collected fees and genuine buy offers. You still need a buyer to sell.
01 · Spot the conversation early
“I don’t know the answer.
I think everyone will care.”
A close election. A disputed launch. An unpredictable championship. You may expect weeks of news, disagreement and trading without backing either outcome.
YES and NO tokens are bets on the answer. A market token earns a share of fees when people trade those bets. Buyers may pay more for it if they expect more future trading fees.
Buying one supplies liquidity: cash and YES/NO tokens available for people to buy and sell. Your expectation of a busy market helps fund it.
Back the activity.
Help make room for the trades.
02 · Follow the money
Your purchase gives traders somewhere to trade.
The first opening purchase creates two automated trading pools: cash with YES tokens, and cash with NO. People buy from and sell to these pools. No earlier trading or other buyers are needed.
A $100 market-token purchase
One purchase, immediate funding.
You pay$100for market tokens
To the trading pools$99Cash and YES/NO tokens for trading
To the seller$95The person selling you market tokens
Permanently removed$1Nobody can claim or reuse this money
If a purchase cannot fund the pools, it takes no cash and transfers no tokens. Trades can still move prices sharply in small pools.
Look inside the $99 at opening 50/50 odds
Locking $49.50 creates 49.5 pairs of YES and NO, with $1 set aside for each pair. The remaining $49.50 supplies trading cash.
YES pool49.5 YES + $24.75
NO pool49.5 NO + $24.75
At these odds, YES and NO each start at $0.50. The tokens are worth $49.50, plus $49.50 in trading cash. Their locked backing is already counted in the tokens’ value.
You buy the right to earn trading fees. A separate pool owner, named before sales, owns the deposited assets, bears trading losses and keeps what remains when the market ends. There is no promise to return your purchase money.
03 · A share of the action
Your share of collected trading fees.
YES/NO trading fees are capped at 1%. A $100 buy budget includes at most $1 in fees. Sales pay at most 1% of cash proceeds. Tiny fees round down. No extra pool fee is added.
For each $100 of collected trading fees
One fee, three destinations.
- Market-token holders
- $40
- Pool owner’s account
- $50
- Permanently removed
- $10
The holders’ share is divided across 10,000 market tokens. Holding 100 earns 1% of that share: $0.40 from the $40 above.
Fees become cash you can claim. Selling gives the buyer future fees. Your earlier earnings stay yours in a separate account.
04 · What might tomorrow bring?
A busier future can be worth more today.
Suppose you expect $10,000 of trades each week for four more weeks. A 1% fee collects $400. Holders receive 40%, or $160: $0.016 per token across 10,000 tokens.
Under the same assumptions, $100,000 a week gives $0.16 per token: 10× the trading, 10× the fees.
Try a different future
More trading. Less time. Different value.
Expected future fees per token$0.016
1× the starting example
Resale prices depend on what buyers expect and will pay. If $100,000 of weekly trading lasts just one more week, each token earns $0.04. That is 2.5× the starting example, despite 10× the weekly trading.
What matters is future trading that pays fees to this market. Views, social attention, trades elsewhere and trades with no fee add no income.
05 · Room to move from the first day
The opening price rises as tokens sell.
If new tokens stayed cheap, buyers would have little reason to pay holders more. Instead, each opening purchase raises the next sale price and funds the pools immediately.
Of the 10,000 tokens, 9,000 are for public sale. Up to 1,000 reward the market’s creator. Supply cannot increase while fees are being earned.
Example starting price: $0.004
The price rises as tokens sell.
First $40 of purchases$0.016
Next purchase price.
$39.60 added to the pools.
A further $172.98 of purchases$0.16
About 10× the earlier quote.
About $171.25 more pool assets.
You can resell to a willing buyer, even below the opening sale’s current price. Resales still fund the pools. The system does not promise to buy your tokens back.
The creator sets the starting price before sales. Too low gives away future fees cheaply. Too high can prevent funding.
How the fixed supply and creator allocation work
The creator receives one reward token for every nine public tokens sold, up to 1,000. These earn fees as they are awarded, but cannot be sold until the market’s final settlement.
The fee calculation always divides by 10,000, including unsold tokens and unawarded rewards. Their share goes to the pool owner’s account. Later buyers get no past income, and further sales never shrink your token’s share.
The opening sale normally ends after 24 hours, or sooner if new YES/NO tokens can no longer be created. Resales that fund the pools and fee earnings continue until final settlement.
Next opening price = starting price ÷ (1 − public tokens sold ÷ 10,000)²
The formula uses market-token purchases, not reported YES/NO trading volume. Each order pays the full cost along the line, with rounding and a buyer-approved spending limit.
06 · The earning period has an end
Fees continue while the answer is being decided.
Asking the court to decide the outcome does not stop fee earnings. They continue while existing YES/NO tokens trade, until the result is final and the market settles.
- 01
Market open
Market-token purchases fund the pools. Holders earn their share of collected fees.
Earning fees - 02
The outcome is being decided
New funding buys existing YES/NO tokens for the pools. Without enough offered within its cost limit, the purchase does not complete.
Still earning fees - 03
Final YES, NO or cancellation
Fee earnings end. Earned cash stays claimable. Full token control automatically passes to the creator.
Past earnings protected
The creator can then change the token’s use, supply or balances, or stop transfers, without holders’ approval. It earns no more fees from this market. Any later use has no promised value.
Your earned cash stays in a separate account with its own ownership records. Even deleting your token balance cannot take that cash.
07 · Read the whole picture
A useful idea still needs honest limits.
New pool funding can still be exploited.
A trader can push the YES price up, let new money enter at that price, then sell back and take some of it. The pool owner loses. Your earned fees stay protected. Competing traders may reduce this profit, but cannot rule it out.
Market-token resales have a 5% deduction.
Buy for $100, then resell for $100: you receive $95, plus earned fees. The other $5 funds pools and permanent removal. This is separate from the 1% YES/NO fee cap. More YES/NO liquidity does not guarantee market-token buyers.
Trading with yourself cannot recover all your paid fees: some is permanently removed. But an attacker may still profit by convincing someone else to overpay. Different ways of trading, tiny trades and trades elsewhere can also produce less fee income.
From a model to a market
Designed and tested.
Still to be built into the app.
Researched in October 2026, this proposal is not yet in the public test app. Its 67 passing checks cover opening purchases, pool funding, small-fee limits and protected earnings across final outcomes.
Still to build: market-token trading, saved balances and the steps through final settlement. Tiny markets also need a rule for paying court costs when the cash backing YES/NO tokens cannot cover them. Holders’ earned fees cannot pay that bill.
Continue with YES and NO ownership or trading during resolution.