Operator guide
Creating a market means choosing its terms, funding its obligations and publishing it on chain. The outcomes, source rules and payout terms are fixed before trading begins.
Use Design a market in the app to explore the terms, and the Console for market operations. The founding walkthrough covers the command-line workflow. Rehearse your configuration on a local validator before creating a devnet market.
Choose the market terms
| Choice | What to decide |
|---|---|
| Collateral | The token backing claims and its admission rules. |
| Outcomes | The complete set of possible results, their boundaries and payouts. |
| Source | The feed or other source that supplies the result. |
| Observation window | When an observation is eligible and how old it may be when submitted. |
| Recovery and fallback | Funded recovery steps and the payout used if they are exhausted. |
| Trading mechanism | Direct signed offers, General batches or Dealer liquidity. |
| Fees | The selected mechanism’s rate and recipient. |
| Program releases | The deployed programs and capabilities used by this market. |
For a price-range market, include every possible price and assign each boundary to exactly one range. The payout chart should make the result clear at the boundaries as well as between them.
Fund the obligations
Claim collateral goes into the market’s Hoard. Source work, recovery, rent and fees have separate accounts and funding requirements.
| Funds | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Claim principal | Pay claim holders. |
| Trading and settlement principal | Fund the selected trading mechanism. |
| Source-work funding | Pay for resolution work. |
| Recovery reserve | Fund the selected recovery steps. |
| Failure bounty | Pay the caller completing the failure procedure. |
| Account rent | Create and maintain the required Solana accounts. |
| Realized fees | Pay the market’s designated fee recipient. |
Native SOL and collateral tokens are separate amounts. Review both before founding. Claim principal cannot be used to cover another obligation.
Open the market
The founding workflow has three stages:
- Prepare the market. Publish and check its outcomes, source, capabilities and selected program releases.
- Fund custody and operations. Create the required accounts and fund their named obligations.
- Found and open. Commit the market terms, lock collateral, initialize claims and enable trading.
The final stage can use one transaction or a funded two-step permit, depending on the selected market. A two-step founding commits the opening terms first; anyone can then complete that exact opening. The permit also defines how an incomplete opening is refunded.
Solana allows at most 1,400,000 compute units in one transaction. Simulate the selected route before submitting it. The transaction budgets reference and the founding walkthrough cover route sizes and measured costs.
Choose a usable resolution window
Allow enough time for the source to publish and for a caller to submit its observation. A narrow window can send a market to fallback even when the source is generally working.
Measure publication intervals for the feed you intend to use. Choose a window covering several intervals, with room for delays. The max_age_seconds parameter separately limits how old an observation may be when submitted; a wider observation window does not remove that limit.
The first valid observation settles the market. Later observations cannot replace the result. Check the selected source’s deadline rules in the reference when scheduling resolution and recovery.
Recovery and failure
Choose recovery sources, activation conditions and funding before opening. If a recovery source supplies the required statistic, the result uses the same market payout rules. If all selected routes are exhausted, the published failure outcome becomes available.
Anyone can complete the failure procedure once its conditions hold. A funded bounty pays the caller; replaying the completion cannot collect it again. Choose a fallback outcome your participants can understand and show it beside the normal outcomes.
Follow the market
Use the market page and Explorer to inspect its state, collateral, claims and source progress. Keep the required source or keeper process running through the observation window. After settlement, complete the selected cleanup and retirement steps so account rent and remaining operational funds reach their specified recipients.
The client developers guide covers integrations. Program instructions, account layouts and error codes are in the reference.