Economics & Incentives
Every mechanism serves an explicit game-theoretic purpose: make honesty profitable and misbehavior costly.
Mechanism Table
| Mechanism | Design | Game-theoretic purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Creation deposit (≥600 USDC) | Staked at creation, fully refunded unless the result is overturned | Deters junk / maliciously wrong markets; creators own result quality |
| Taker fee (0.2%) | Paid by takers | Core protocol revenue, scales with volume |
| Cross-match surplus | Price spread from cross fills goes to the protocol | Extra revenue, transparent to users (who already got price improvement) |
| Dispute stake | Disputer stakes = creation deposit, forfeited on loss | Raises the cost of frivolous disputes |
| Vote staking + pool split | Winning side gets principal back + pro-rata share of the losing pool | Rewards honest voting, punishes the wrong side |
| Dispute payout | The dispute winner takes their stake back + the loser's deposit | Economically rewards correcting wrong results / punishes wrong challenges |
| Rent reclamation | Rent refunded when closing markets / accounts / vote records | Lowers long-run account cost |
Protocol Revenue
Protocol revenue = taker fees + cross-match surplus
Competitive Comparison (architecture)
| Dimension | Astromarkets | Polymarket | Traditional CEX prediction desks |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chain | Solana (sub-second, cent-level fees) | Polygon | Centralized |
| Matching | Fully on-chain CLOB | Off-chain matching + on-chain settlement | Centralized matching |
| Liquidity model | Order book + cross matching (implied mint/redeem) | CLOB (off-chain) | Order book |
| Capital efficiency | Yes/No liquidity merged, ~2× depth | Single-sided | — |
| Result resolution | Oracle + staked voting + DAO review | UMA optimistic oracle | Platform decides |
| Custody | On-chain PDAs, nobody can divert funds | On-chain | Platform custody |
| Transparency | Fully on-chain, event-reconstructible | Partly off-chain | Opaque |