The core idea
Three things have to be true at once, and they pull against each other:- The pool needs a total, or winnings cannot be divided.
- Individual stakes must stay hidden, or the market punishes anyone with an edge.
- Everything must be verifiable, because it is a public chain and nobody should have to trust an operator.
The four moves
Deposit. Lock collateral, publish a commitment to a note only you can spend. The amount is public and must be a standard denomination, so it does not single you out. Bet. Prove you own some unspent note without revealing which, and publish an encrypted stake. The contract adds the ciphertext to a running total it cannot read. This is where the link from your address to your position is cut. Redeem. Once the market settles, prove your position won and receive a new note holding the payout. No money moves. Nothing about you is published. This is where the link from your position to your money is cut. Withdraw. Turn a settled note into collateral in your wallet, at a time you choose, in a standard amount. Public — but unconnected to anything above.Why two separate exits
Redeeming and withdrawing look like they could be one step. Combining them would undo the product. A parimutuel payout is whatever the arithmetic produced — 1,041, an odd number determined by your stake and the pool. Paying that directly to an address publishes an amount that uniquely identifies the position that earned it. Anyone could work backwards from the payout to the bet. So redemption keeps the payout inside the system as a note, and withdrawal takes out a round amount later, keeping the remainder as private change. Two steps, because one would leak.What the contract never learns
- Which note any action spent
- How much any bet was for
- The pool total, at any point before settlement
- Which deposit funded which position
- Which position funded which withdrawal
What is public, deliberately
- That a bet happened, and which side it backed
- Deposit and withdrawal amounts, in standard denominations
- The final pool totals, after betting closes and the outcome is known
- Coarse mid-market odds while betting is open
Where to go next
Notes and commitments
How ownership works without a record of who owns what.
Encrypted totals
How a contract adds numbers it is not allowed to read.
Why parimutuel
The constraint that decides the entire market design.
Resolution
Why the outcome is a computation and not a decision.