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A market’s outcome is a computation, not a decision.

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How it works

Every market commits to its question before betting opens. The commitment is a hash stored immutably in the Vault, covering:
  • which price feed
  • the threshold, and the direction (above or below)
  • the exact timestamp the price is read from
  • how long an update may lag that timestamp
At resolution, anyone submits a signed price update. The resolver checks the supplied question against the committed hash, verifies the signatures through Pyth, and compares. Then it sets the outcome.

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What the caller cannot choose

Resolution is permissionless, which is only safe because the caller has no useful freedom:
  • Not the question — the spec must hash to the vault’s immutable commitment.
  • Not the timestamp — it is inside that hash.
  • Not the price — signatures are verified on-chain, and the update must be the first one at or after the target time.
  • Not the outcome — it is a comparison.
The third point is subtle and worth spelling out. Pyth publishes roughly every 400ms, so a 60-second window holds around 150 candidate prices. If any of them were acceptable, whoever called resolve could pick the one that suited them. Atrum instead pins the result to the first update at or after the target time, with proof that no earlier one exists — so there is nothing to choose.

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Why the price must come from after betting closed

The resolver refuses any market whose target time is earlier than its betting close. A market settled on a price that was already knowable while people were still betting is not a prediction market — it is a payout to whoever checked.

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When a market cannot be answered

If a feed is delisted, or no signed update ever lands in the window, resolution reverts permanently — by design, because that is the same property that makes it trustworthy. So there is an escape hatch. If a market is still unresolved a fixed period after resolution opened, anyone can void it and everyone is refunded 1:1, whichever side they backed. It is deliberately not a control anyone can reach for:
  • It refuses an already-resolved market, so nobody can void an outcome they dislike.
  • It refuses before the deadline, so nobody can race a slow resolver.
  • The resolver itself cannot declare a void.
There is no key, no committee and no judgement behind it — only the clock.