Risk

Read the rest before you trade.

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If you trade

You can lose your entire stake in under a second, and that is the design working correctly. This is a knockout barrier product, not a perpetual. At high leverage the barrier sits a very small distance from your entry — a move against you that would be invisible on a chart ends the position. There is no margin call, no partial liquidation, and nothing to top up. At the barrier you receive nothing. The stake is gone. Any interface telling you otherwise is wrong. A barrier that close is not a remote edge case — treat reaching it as the ordinary result of the mechanism, not a surprise, and size your stake accordingly. Your position’s collateral is capped, at the maximum collateral in the config (config.params.maxCollateral, governed). The venue is fee-inclusive: any entry fee comes out of the budget you sign, so one open never debits more than that budget. Adding to a live position counts against the same collateral ceiling, so a double-down cannot take the position’s collateral past it. Doubling down on a winning position moves your barrier toward the price. You may add collateral to a position that is already live. Leverage is fixed by the POSITION’s tier — the one chosen at open — so an add buys size at market rather than posting margin: the entry becomes the average of what you paid, and both levels move with it. Adding while you are behind widens the runway; adding while you are ahead narrows it. It is a way to press a view, never a way to defend one — see adding to a position. A double-down is an order too: it is priced at the next price after a short delay, or returned. A returned double-down keeps the time it added to your timer. Until it is priced, and for a short time after, you cannot close the position. Closing costs a fee, and it is higher on a loss. The exit fee is a share of what the position is worth when it closes: a lower rate on a win, a higher rate on a loss, and a rate between the two for a close near your entry price. On a gain the terms also withhold part of the gain, so a target pays less than its multiple. A knockout pays nothing, so it carries no fee. The rates and a worked example are on Fees and limits, with the date they were read. A win is paid in full, and part of it may be paid later. Your stake comes back at once and the profit is paid from the pool’s free cash. What the pool cannot pay yet joins a queue and is paid in order, with no guaranteed time. See how a win is paid. Holding costs money once the borrow fee is running. The borrow fee is rent on the pool capital your position freezes. It comes out of the payout and never out of your equity, so it does not move your barrier, but held long enough it reaches the whole of your stake. Its rate and free window are frozen onto your position at open, and the rate may be zero: Fees and limits has it, and the mechanism the rest. Your outcome is decided by the venue’s signed price for your market, not the price on your own screen. That price can differ from the venue you are watching, and you can be knocked out at a price you never saw. See oracle risk below for what backs it. Your entry is the next price, not the price on your screen. An open is an order. It takes your stake when it lands, and the first price of the venue’s price feed after a short delay sets your entry. The price can move in that delay, in either direction. If no usable price or no filler comes in time, the order is returned and the whole stake comes back. A returned order is a normal outcome, not a fault. A close you ask for is a request, and its price is not locked. The first price after a short delay prices it. Anyone may complete it, and the venue’s keepers do. If nobody completes it inside the exit window, the next window’s price applies, and a knockout price in between still ends the position. A request cannot be withdrawn, and you cannot send one in the first slots after your entry price (the minimum hold). A knockout can be proved with a recent price. Anyone may prove it with any signed price newer than your entry and up to a governed number of slots old. The move that ended your position can already have reversed by the time you look. Opens can be refused or returned, and both are normal. The protocol refuses an open when the venue or the market is paused, when a market is inside a scheduled event window, when a market is outside or near the end of its trading hours, or when a limit on your side of the market is reached. An order that lands is returned when its price does not come in time, does not meet the venue’s quality rule, or does not fit the pool’s cover rule at its fill (your whole stake comes back, with no fee). A client should show the reason, not retry blindly; see error handling. Gold has trading hours. A gold position’s tenor ends before its session closes. A position not settled before its session’s close ends at par: a price from after the reopen never prices it. An add that would outlive the session is returned in full. See markets. Settlement needs a transaction. Your position does not close itself. It becomes closable, and anybody, including you, can then close it. Nobody is paid for doing so: a close is somebody spending SOL on your behalf. The venue runs a keeper so a closable position usually clears quickly, but that is a service, not a protocol guarantee, and you can close your own. If no price can be obtained, your position waits for the 24 hour refund. Every priced close needs a fresh signed price. If a market has had no posted price for 24 hours, anyone can close any position on it, and the position gets its stake back with no exit fee. A position with a finite tenor can also be closed with no price once its tenor and a further grace period (config.lastResortGraceS) have passed. Until then a position stays open, and it can still be knocked out or reach its rung once prices return. The price feed can go down, and an outage can last hours. A short interruption usually recovers within minutes. A longer one can last hours. A single market can also pause on its own when its price is not reliable enough; that usually lasts seconds. While there is no price, an order you place is returned, no close can be priced, and positions wait; the no-price close above is the backstop. An operator stop can pause closing. A guardian key can freeze the oracle. Opens, adds and the no-price close are refused, and every priced close fails for want of a price, so a live position cannot be closed until the freeze is lifted. It can also disable settles (no close for any reason, including a knockout). Only the protocol’s config authority can lift either. While either switch is set you cannot exit. Both switches are public fields on the config account (config.oracleFrozen, config.settlesDisabled). An order or a double-down that is waiting for its price when a stop starts is not lost: it is filled or returned, at the latest once the stop ends.

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The liquidity pool

The pool is the counterparty to every trade, and losses are real. It funds every win and keeps every loss, and none of that is a promise of a return — a run of trader wins draws the pool down, same as it would for any counterparty on the losing side of a run. In short:

• Deposits are closed, and a redemption is refused unless the governed flag allows it or the venue is in a wind-down. A redemption pays at most the free cash, which is not a stake, not funded queue money and not the cover the venue needs.
• A win may be paid later. A win is paid in full, but the pool pays what it cannot pay at once from a queue, in order, with no guaranteed time. Your shares are priced from lpAssets, which does not subtract what the queue owes.
• A withdrawal delay on top of that: governed, and frozen onto your request.
• No insurance fund standing behind you. See the insurance fund.
• A small pool. Capacity is limited, and a handful of large wins is a large fraction of a small pool.

Each of those, in full: the liquidity pool.

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Risks that apply to everyone

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When the venue pauses

The team can pause the venue, and an automated monitor may pause it too, for example if the pool’s value falls sharply in a short time. A pause stops new orders and new double-downs. It does not stop you leaving: closes, timer ends and knockouts keep working, and every open position can still be closed. An order already placed is still filled or returned as usual. The team reopens the venue by hand. In a serious incident the team can also stop pricing altogether, as described under “An operator stop can pause closing” above. The operator can also wind the venue down: new orders and adds stop, and open positions still end by their own rules.

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What is unfinished

Named plainly, because “alpha” on its own tells you nothing:

• No third-party audit.
• Live parameters will change. A market’s leverage tier is a ceiling you pick under; fees and caps are governable; every change is on chain.
• The pool is small, and a small pool pays a large win late: part of it is paid from the queue, in order.
• This is an experiment, built in public. Expect parameters, limits and features to change as we learn, and expect occasional upgrades to the program itself. Do not put in more than you can afford to lose.
• The stack is young. Where the SDK cannot yet prove something, it says so rather than implying coverage it does not have.

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Verify rather than trust

Everything that governs your money is on chain and readable. Do not take this page’s word for it. The venue already gives you the three commands and the SDK exports that check it yourself — the config PDA, the vault PDA, and the program’s own upgrade authority, which is who can change the program that holds your funds. Run them. We would rather you verified it than believed us.