How it works
Every market has two sides. Bettors take a position on an outcome; makers open the market and settle it. Both are real on-chain actions, priced by an LMSR market maker.
For bettors
Place a real on-chain bet in five steps.
- A Solana wallet -- Phantom or Solflare.
- Some of the market's collateral token (e.g. $WAGR) to stake.
- A little SOL (~0.01) for fees and the position account (its rent comes back on redeem).
Go to the board and pick a market. Each shows two outcomes -- YES and NO -- with live LMSR odds that already read as probabilities (they sum to ~100%).
Hit Connect wallet and approve in Phantom or Solflare. Nothing is signed yet -- connecting only lets the board read your balance and show your positions.
Press Place bet, choose YES or NO, and enter how many shares. The modal shows the exact LMSR cost and your balance. Use Max to take the largest position you can afford.
Approve in your wallet. The bet is a real on-chain position -- collateral moves into the market vault and your stake is recorded in its own account. The odds shift with your trade.
Your bets appear under Your positions, each with a live mark value. Once the market resolves, the winning side gets a Redeem button and pays out 1:1; closing the position returns its rent to you.
For makers
Open your own price market; the oracle settles it for you after the deadline. You stay the authority and can settle manually if you ever need to.
Choose a clear YES/NO question, the collateral token (any SPL / Token-2022 mint, e.g. $WAGR), a betting deadline, and the liquidity b. A larger b makes prices steadier but needs a bigger seed.
Creating the market opens a program-owned vault and deposits the LMSR subsidy (~b x ln2). You become the market authority. The vault is bound to the market PDA, so only the program can pay out.
The market is live on the board immediately. Anyone can take YES or NO; every bet is checked so the vault can always cover the winning payout.
Price markets resolve automatically: after the deadline the oracle reads the token's price and the resolver posts YES or NO on-chain -- no manual judging. (You can also settle manually from Your markets, e.g. for a non-price question or to step in.)
Once settled and winners have redeemed, the operator reclaim returns the residual collateral and account rent to you -- but only after a grace window, so it can never front-run a winner.
WAGR uses an LMSR (Hanson 2003) market maker. A side's price is its implied probability, and a share costs more as more of that side is bought, so the two prices always track toward 100% together.
Every winning share redeems for exactly 1 unit of collateral. A YES share bought at 0.62 pays 1.00 if YES resolves true -- and 0 if it doesn't. The maker's seed (~b x ln2) is the most the market maker can lose, and it bounds nothing the bettor pays.
- Every bet is checked so the vault can always cover the winning payout.
- Operator reclaim is time-locked past resolution -- no one front-runs winners.
- Your wallet talks only to wagr.fi; RPC keys stay on the server.