Core Concepts
Four ideas run through the whole protocol. Three minutes here saves a lot of confusion later.
Market
Every market is built around a single question with two possible answers:
“Will Solana close above $400 on December 31?”
A market carries an explicit close date and a named oracle feed. Trading runs freely until the close; after it, the oracle writes a Yes or No result to the market account.
Outcome shares (YES / NO tokens)
Each market mints two SPL tokens:
- 1 YES redeems for 1 USDC if the result is Yes, and nothing otherwise.
- 1 NO redeems for 1 USDC if the result is No, and nothing otherwise.
Both carry two decimals and transfer like any other SPL token. They sit in your wallet, not in a balance table we keep.
Complete set
1 USDC ⇌ 1 YES + 1 NOA dollar mints one of each, and one of each burns back into a dollar — before or after resolution. That identity is what lets the program match orders without ever holding a position of its own.
Price = probability
A share pays $1 if it is right and nothing if it is wrong. So a YES trading at 18¢ is the book saying there is roughly an eighteen percent chance. Reading the price is reading the crowd's estimate.
YES and NO always sum to a dollar. If one moves, the other is the remainder.
Order book, not AMM
Averea matches resting limit orders on-chain rather than quoting against a bonding curve. There is no house on the other side of your fill: a YES buyer at 18¢ and a NO buyer at 82¢ together fund one complete set, and the program mints it.
The practical consequence is that liquidity comes from traders, the vault is always fully backed, and nobody gets a faster path to the book than you do.
Market lifecycle (overview)
- Open — someone posts a question, a close date and a source, and bonds it.
- Trade — orders rest on-chain; makers quote and takers cross.
- Read — at the close the oracle writes the outcome.
- Dispute — 24 hours in which anyone can stake against that outcome.
- Pay — the winning side redeems at $1 a share.