OpenPredict

Traditional options contract are typically siloed within the exchange where it was created thereby limiting its liquidity.

Our protocol aims to solve the problem by introducing synthetic assets, also known as synths, in the form of a Liquid Options contract.

A Liquid Options contract gives traders the ability to enter and exit a contract position before expiration without being restricted to the exchange in which it was created. These options are minted into fungible tokens as synthetic assets (synths), enabling first-ever options that are not siloed to a single exchange.

The core strengths of our protocol are primarily focused on risk hedging for traders against extreme price volatility and highly leveraged trading for assets with limited order book depth (or even those with no order book, such as unlisted assets). Traders mint event-specific tokens, which fluctuate in market value, relative to changing market odds.

We utilize a tri-smart contract system which deploys three smart contracts simultaneously for every speculation:

The first contract acts as an escrow holding the entire speculated pool of funds along with associated event-specific data such as creation date, expiration, type of asset, success condition, and so on.

The second contract handles the oracle function. At event deployment, the oracle contract is told to call the event contract at a specific time in the future. At that point, it sets the settlement price for the event and sets the event to 'settled'. The event will then have an outcome and traders may withdraw rewards if they staked on the winning outcome.