Settlement & Voids

What settles a market

Each window resolves against its opening price: if the settlement price is at or above it, Up wins; below it, Down wins. The settlement price comes from a multi-source price reference — never a single exchange tick — and each market's reference and result are published, so every settlement can be checked.

Checking a settlement yourself

Every market's settlement question is public on the oracle explorer. Open a question and switch to the Graph tab to see the whole pipeline for that specific market: the question as it was recorded on-chain, each price source with the value it returned, the median across them, how many sources had to agree, and which side that median landed on.

Nothing about a settlement is a black box. If a result ever looks wrong, that page is the receipt.

The lifecycle

1. Trading — orders accepted while the window is open. You can sell back into the book; the sell is immediate-or-cancel against resting bids, so a thin book can fill part or none of it.
2. Settling (indexer status Locked) — the window ends; no new orders. The app only places immediate-or-cancel orders, so nothing of yours rests on the book to cancel.
3. Resolved — the settlement price is compared to the opening price and the winning side is fixed. Winning contracts redeem for 1 USDso each.

The comparison happens within a short settlement window after expiry. Markets roll continuously, so the next window is already open while the previous one settles.

Voided markets

If a reliable settlement price cannot be determined within the settlement window, the market voids rather than settling on bad data. There is no winner, and no fee is taken on a void.

On a void, each contract on either side redeems for 0.50 USDso, so a matched pair returns the 1 USDso that backed it. That is the protocol's default void policy, and every dreamDEX market uses it. The protocol also supports a policy that splits the payout by the market's closing price instead; developers can read which one a market uses off the market itself — see the developer reference.

The payout is not a refund of the entry price. A holder who paid more than 0.50 is down on a void and one who paid less is up.

What you receive is what the redemption pays on-chain. On a void, Positions, the redeem confirmation and your trade history all value the position at 0.50 per contract, which matches what dreamDEX markets pay today.