Oracle Resolution

Strike markets are resolved exclusively by Pyth Network oracle price feeds. No human intervention, no subjective arbitration, no governance votes.

Settlement Rule

Each market has an expiry timestamp T. Resolution uses the earliest Pyth price update with publishTime in [T, T+Δ], where Δ is a protocol parameter (default: 60 seconds).

• The resolver fetches signed update data from Pyth's Hermes historical API

• The contract verifies it on-chain using parsePriceFeedUpdatesUnique(updateData, priceId, T, T+Δ)

• The Unique variant guarantees it returns the first update in the window, eliminating ambiguity

• The price field is used for settlement (not ema_price) — spot price for clean market semantics

Confidence Interval Check

Pyth publishes a confidence interval with every price update. If the confidence is too wide relative to the price, the resolution is rejected:

Reject if: conf > confThresholdBps × |price| / 10000

Default threshold: 1% (100 bps). This prevents settlement on unreliable price data.

Fallback Windows

If no Pyth update exists within [T, T+Δ]:

• The resolver can try [T, T+2Δ], then [T, T+3Δ], up to K×Δ

• This handles rare cases where Pyth publishing is delayed

• If no valid update exists within the maximum window → market cancels

Finality Gate

Resolution is not instant:

1. Resolver submits Pyth update → pendingResolution is set

2. Protocol waits for economic finality (n+2 blocks under BEP-126, ~1.1s on BSC)

3. During this window, anyone can submit an alternative Pyth update with an earlier valid publishTime

4. After the finality window, finalizeResolution() is called → market enters Resolved state

This "procedural challenge" mechanism ensures the deterministic rule (earliest update wins) is enforced even if the first resolver submits a suboptimal update.

Resolver Incentives

• Resolution is permissionless — anyone can call resolveMarket()

• A resolver bounty is paid from the market creation bond (e.g., 0.005 BNB)

• The protocol runs backstop keepers to ensure timely resolution

• If no one resolves within 24 hours, the market auto-cancels and all funds are refunded

Why Pyth?

• Pull oracle — no continuous on-chain price pushing needed; only one update at resolution time

• ~400ms update cadence at the oracle network level

• Cryptographic verification — signed data is verified on-chain, not trusted from an EOA

• Historical data available — Hermes API serves signed updates for past timestamps

• Low cost — update fees are negligible on BSC (1 wei default)