Trader guide

What you hold when you hold a dClutch claim, what it can and cannot do to you, and how to read what the protocol tells you.

Nothing is tradeable yet — dClutch is not deployed. This is how trading works in the protocol as it runs today on a local test chain.

What a claim is

A market asks one question with a bounded, checkable answer — say, where SOL/USD is at noon on Friday. The possible answers are split into buckets called cells, fixed when the market is created. Every claim is a claim on one cell.

A claim pays one collateral unit if the answer lands in its cell, and zero if it doesn't. That is the whole product.

One claim on every cell — a complete set — pays exactly one unit no matter what happens. So the protocol treats a complete set and a collateral unit as the same thing: deposit a unit and you mint a complete set; return a complete set and you get the unit back. That deposit is where every claim comes from. The collateral sits in the market's vault (its Hoard) before any claim exists, and it does nothing but pay claim holders.

What this means for you:

• The most you can lose is what you paid for your claims. Ever.
• There is no leverage, so there is no liquidation, no margin call, and no funding rate. Nothing can force-close your position.
• Because a complete set is always worth exactly one unit, cell prices always sum to exactly one unit. A cell priced at 0.07 units is the market pricing that outcome at seven cents on the dollar.

Buying protection

"Protection against SOL below $100" is not a special product. It is claims on every cell below $100. If SOL resolves below $100, exactly one of your cells wins and pays you one unit per claim. If not, your claims expire worthless and the seller keeps what you paid — like an insurance premium.

The same shape covers a range ("between X and Y") or a tail ("above Z"): pick the cells, buy claims on each. The price of the bundle is the sum of the cell prices, exactly.

No price feed watches your position along the way, because there is no position to liquidate. The only moment that matters is resolution.

How the market resolves

Every market pins its source when it is created — a specific price feed, down to the exact program deployment it trusts — and names a time window with real width. The first valid observation from that source inside the window settles the market; every later one is rejected. No committee, no vote, nobody to appeal to — and nobody to be surprised by.

If the source publishes nothing through the whole window, the market takes a fallback outcome that was disclosed and funded before it opened. You know before you trade exactly what silence produces.

When the protocol says no

dClutch refuses any transaction that doesn't check out exactly: wrong account, wrong signer, stale state, a window that hasn't opened, a replay. A refused transaction rolls back completely — your collateral stays exactly where it was, and you're out a transaction fee and nothing else.

Every refusal carries a code naming the program that refused and why. The full list, with meanings, is in the refusal reference. A refusal isn't a malfunction; it's the protocol keeping the market's rules.