Concept analysis — Onix vs the 90 theory concepts
Forecaster is the thin client to the VIZ on-chain prediction market — the access layer that lets people anywhere participate by signing
pm_*operations (see the section overview). Onix is the protocol it talks to. This page maps each of the 90 PM-Atlas prediction-market concepts onto how the live VIZ on-chain implementation addresses it, and whether it is needed for this architecture.Grounding docs: whitepaper, specification, workflows & disputes.
Legend
| Mark | Meaning |
|---|---|
| ✅ Resolved | Onix design directly solves or handles it |
| ⚪ Inherent | A property Onix exhibits/inherits by construction (no extra work) |
| ➖ Not needed | Architecturally unnecessary under Onix |
| 🟡 Partial / Roadmap | Partly addressed today; rest is on the VIZ roadmap |
| 🏛 Client-layer | Handled by the jurisdictional client, not the protocol |
| 🔴 Open / Risk | Still a live concern; not fully solved |
The single biggest structural difference from every other platform: LP principal is structurally guaranteed (winners paid only from losers' forfeited stakes), pricing is CPMM for binary and LMSR-softmax + parimutuel settlement for multi, and there is no order book. Most "liquidity & trading" concepts that exist to manage market-maker inventory risk simply do not apply because Onix has no inventory-bearing maker.
On-chain actualization (HF14 / live). This mapping was first written against the whitepaper/spec. Several items then marked roadmap are now implemented as consensus operations and verified in
consensus_sim:
- Batch auctions + commit-reveal betting —
pm_commit_bet/pm_reveal_bet/pm_batch_settle, per-marketallow_batch/allow_instant_bet, median kill-switchpm_commit_reveal_enabled. Binary only (multi forcesallow_instant_bet— no LMSR batch yet).- Opt-in leverage subsystem —
pm_leverage_open/close/convert, lazy-pool-funded, kill-switchpm_leverage_enabled(default off). Directly answers Position Collateralization (#30).- The Lazy Pool itself — singleton, auto-allocation, MasterChef accounting, leverage loans, graduated recall.
endogeneity_tiermarket field; on-chain creator bans (pm_creator_ban_object); richer settlement virtual ops (pm_payoutper bettor,pm_leverage_resolve,pm_market_accepted,pm_auto_payout) + matching plugin API.- New since the spec: lazy-pool stake counts as governance weight in PM disputes and DAO committee-request voting (converted to vesting-shares, HF14-gated).
Deliberately NOT built: commit-reveal dispute voting — committee disputes are open public hearings by design (votes stay public via
pm_dispute_vote, and ballots are revisable until close). Still roadmap: automated exogenous data oracles. Rows and the mitigations table below are updated to this live state.
1. Information Theory
| # | Concept | Verdict | How Forecaster-on-VIZ handles it / is it needed |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Brier Score | ⚪ Inherent | Not a protocol mechanism but the metric by which Onix markets are judged. On VIZ, every bet/resolution is a consensus-validated event, so per-market price histories and outcomes are fully on-chain → Brier scoring of the platform (and of oracles) is computable by anyone. Needed only as an analytics/reputation input, not core logic. |
| 2 | Calibration | ⚪ Inherent | Onix prices are genuine probabilities (CPMM P(A)=reserve_b/(reserve_a+reserve_b), LMSR softmax sums to 1). Calibration is an emergent property to measure, improved indirectly by the time-penalty (discourages no-info last-second bets) and deep LP liquidity. Not something the protocol enforces. |
| 3 | Credibility Markets | 🟡 Partial | The bonded-oracle + 14-metric reputation + composite trust score is effectively a credibility market for resolvers. Staking credibility against an outcome is native. A general "stake reputation on claims" product is a possible client-layer build, not core. |
| 4 | Distribution Markets | 🟡 Roadmap | Onix Multi (3–10 discrete outcomes) approximates a distribution via bucketed outcomes. True continuous distribution markets (CDF/scalar) are not in scope today; would need a scalar-outcome operation. Listed-adjacent to the roadmap's "category-level AMMs." |
| 5 | Endogeneity | 🟡 Partial (mitigated) | The risk that the market changes the thing it predicts. Category-specific (econ-data clean, political/social risky). Mitigated by the live endogeneity_tier market field (oracle-tagged 1/2/3) and opt-in commit-reveal/batch betting (now on-chain) that stops the public price from "leaking" mid-window (the thermostat channel); exogenous resolution via automated data oracles is still roadmap. See Mitigations §. |
| 6 | Forecasting Accuracy | ⚪ Inherent | The whole value proposition. Onix improves it indirectly: zero-risk LP → deeper books → less slippage → more informed participation → better prices. Accuracy is the output to measure, not a feature to build. |
| 7 | Info Finance | ⚪ Inherent | Onix is an info-finance instrument: consensus-level operations turn information into priced, settleable positions. VIZ migration makes the information layer censorship-resistant and composable. |
| 8 | Information Aggregation | ✅ Resolved | Core function. CPMM/LMSR pricing aggregates dispersed bets into a single probability; deep risk-free LP liquidity is precisely the lever Onix pulls to make aggregation work (the flywheel in §7.3 of the whitepaper). |
| 9 | Information Asymmetry | 🟡 Partial | Onix's parimutuel/CPMM design means informed traders extract from other losing bettors, not from the LP — so asymmetry doesn't bankrupt liquidity (unlike CLOB/LMSR makers). Opt-in commit-reveal + batch betting is now live (binary): committed bets settle at a uniform batch price, removing the mempool-direction leak; per-market allow_batch + median kill-switch keep it optional. |
| 10 | Legibility | ✅ Resolved | Every financial action is a consensus-validated VIZ operation with a market_log audit trail (before/after reserves). Fully legible/auditable by any node — strictly more legible than a centralized backend or opaque CLOB. New settlement virtual ops (pm_payout per bettor, pm_leverage_resolve, pm_market_accepted) + dedicated plugin API methods make per-bettor outcomes and leverage resolutions directly queryable. |
| 11 | Longshot Bias | 🟡 Partial | CPMM/LMSR pricing can still exhibit favorite-longshot bias from bettor behavior; Onix doesn't correct it directly. The time penalty and deep liquidity dampen distortion, but bias is a behavioral output, not eliminated. |
| 12 | Noise Decomposition | ⚪ Inherent | Analytical lens, not a protocol feature. On-chain price/volume series on VIZ make signal-vs-noise decomposition feasible for analysts. Not needed in core. |
| 13 | Nowcasting | ⚪ Inherent | Onix prices update continuously per bet (~3s VIZ blocks), giving real-time nowcast estimates. Inherent to any live AMM market; no extra mechanism. |
| 14 | Price Discovery | ✅ Resolved | CPMM and LMSR-softmax are continuous price-discovery engines; price coherence (Σ price = 1) holds by construction with no arbitrage/split-merge layer needed. |
| 15 | Probability Infrastructure | ✅ Resolved | This is essentially Onix's thesis on VIZ: prediction markets as first-class consensus operations (pm_*), not smart contracts — a base-layer probability primitive. Directly the migration goal. |
| 16 | Superforecasting | ⚪ Inherent | Individual-skill concept; Onix rewards accurate bettors via the losers→winners payout. Position transfers + reputation could support superforecaster identity, but it's a participant trait, not protocol logic. |
| 17 | Wisdom of Crowds | ✅ Resolved | The mechanism Onix monetizes. Risk-free LP lowers the barrier so more of the crowd participates, sharpening the aggregate. Core to the design rationale. |
| 18 | Yes Bias | 🟡 Partial | Behavioral tilt toward "Yes." Onix's symmetric CPMM and profit-only time penalty don't structurally favor Yes, but they don't correct human bias either. Mitigated by liquidity depth; a measurement concern. |
2. Mechanism Design
| # | Concept | Verdict | How Forecaster-on-VIZ handles it / is it needed |
|---|---|---|---|
| 19 | Binary Contracts | ✅ Resolved | Onix Binary = CPMM (x·y=k) on two outcomes. AM-GM proof guarantees reserve_a+reserve_b ≥ L, so LP principal is covered. This is the primary market type. |
| 20 | Combinatorial Prediction Markets | ➖ Not needed (today) | LMSR decomposes naturally over combinatorial spaces, but Onix Multi caps at 3–10 independent outcomes and deliberately omits CTF split/merge. Combinatorial/conditional bundles are explicitly out of scope; not required for the LP-guarantee model. |
| 21 | Incentive Compatibility | ✅ Resolved | LMSR inherits IC from the log scoring rule (truth-telling dominant). Onix adds incentive alignment via bonded oracles (insurance > manipulation profit), losers-fund-winners settlement, and time-weighted LP rewards. |
| 22 | Keynesian Beauty Contest | ✅ Resolved (market) / ⚪ (dispute layer — accepted by design) | KBC is a pathology of relative/peer scoring. The Onix market layer pays bettors against external ground truth (parimutuel), so it is structurally anti-KBC — you profit by deviating from the crowd price when it's wrong. The only KBC exposure is the stake-weighted committee dispute vote (a peer mechanism). Decision: commit-reveal dispute voting will NOT be implemented — a committee dispute is an open public hearing, and the DAO's credibility depends on resolving disputes as transparently as possible; hiding ballots would erode that trust. The residual KBC risk is accepted and structurally small: voters are not paid for matching the majority (no bandwagon bounty) and ballots are revisable until close (so honest updates on new evidence are expected, not suppressed). Pooled DAO members are also enfranchised (lazy-pool stake → vesting-shares, HF14). See Mitigations §. |
| 23 | LMSR | ✅ Resolved (the key innovation) | The concept file notes LMSR failed for binaries (permanent loss on the 0/1 boundary). Onix's answer: use CPMM for binary, and use LMSR only for multi where the maker is NOT the counterparty — parimutuel settlement pays winners from losers, so the LMSR subsidy is never at risk (LP max loss = 0 vs b·ln(N)). This is the central design move. |
| 24 | LOX (Log-Odds Excess Lateness) | ➖ Not needed | A specialized scoring/lateness metric. Onix instead uses a quadratic time penalty on profit to handle late-bet incentives — a simpler, settlement-time mechanism. LOX scoring is not part of the model. |
| 25 | Market Manipulation | 🟡 Partial | Bonded oracle (bond must exceed manipulation profit), DPoS-validated operations, and committee dispute arbitration raise manipulation cost. Price manipulation via large bets is bounded by depth and — on batch/commit-reveal markets (now live) — by uniform-price settlement that neutralises speed-based sniping (the "sniper's tax"); active surveillance is still roadmap. |
| 26 | Market Scoring Rules | ✅ Resolved | Onix Multi is a market scoring rule (LMSR) implementation, repurposed with parimutuel settlement. Directly used. |
| 27 | Multi-Outcome Markets | ✅ Resolved | Onix Multi handles N=3–10 via LMSR softmax pricing + parimutuel payout, with b = S/ln(N). First-class market type. |
| 28 | Parimutuel Markets | ✅ Resolved (foundational) | Settlement in both market types is parimutuel: losers' forfeited stakes form winners_pool, distributed by token share. This is what makes the LP guarantee structural rather than insured. |
| 29 | Peer Prediction | ➖ Not needed | Truth-telling-without-ground-truth schemes. Onix relies on bonded oracles + committee dispute, not peer-prediction scoring. Could inform subjective-market resolution but not used. |
| 30 | Position Collateralization | ✅ Resolved (+ opt-in leverage, live) | By default every bet is fully prepaid (full amount enters reserves; no fees at bet time) — total collateralization by construction. Onix now also ships the concept's "next level": an opt-in leverage subsystem (pm_leverage_open/close/convert, kill-switch pm_leverage_enabled, default off). Margin is a loan from the Lazy Pool (no token emission — zero-sum preserved), so the position stays fully collateralized from the system's view. The binary "jump risk" that breaks CLOB liquidation engines (per this concept) is handled by liquidating against pre-bet reserves: opposing-bet / settlement force-close recovers min(cancel_value, obligation) ≥ loan, so the pool gets loan + interest back; the only bounded bad-debt path is a same-side pm_cancel_bet (Case B). The liquidation cascade is deliberately not gated by the kill-switch, so toggling leverage off never strips protection from open positions. |
| 31 | Proper Scoring Rules | ✅ Resolved | LMSR is the cost-function dual of the log proper scoring rule; Onix Multi inherits its truthful-elicitation property. |
| 32 | Reflexivity | 🟡 Partial (mitigated) | Parent of endogeneity. Mitigated by the same toolkit — commit-reveal/batch betting + endogeneity_tier are now live, exogenous resolution still roadmap — plus on-chain creator bans (pm_creator_ban_object) for harmful reflexivity (assassination/"hit" markets, propaganda markets that create a "constituency for the outcome"); the prohibited-category list itself stays client-layer. Deep risk-free LP depth also raises the cost of newsworthy price manipulation. See Mitigations §. |
3. Liquidity & Trading
Headline: Onix has no order book and no inventory-bearing market maker. A large class of these concepts exists specifically to manage CLOB/maker inventory risk and therefore do not apply to Onix.
| # | Concept | Verdict | How Forecaster-on-VIZ handles it / is it needed |
|---|---|---|---|
| 33 | Adverse Selection | ✅ Resolved (reframed) | The classic problem (informed flow bankrupts the maker) cannot bankrupt the Onix LP: winners are paid from losers, never from LP principal (AM-GM / parimutuel guarantee). Informed traders extract from other bettors, not the LP. Eliminates the core LP failure mode. |
| 34 | Arbitrage | ⚪ Inherent | Intra-market arbitrage is unnecessary: price coherence (Σ price = 1) holds by construction in both CPMM and LMSR-softmax. No split/merge arbitrage layer needed. |
| 35 | Batched Auctions | ✅ Resolved (opt-in, live) | Implemented as a per-market uniform-price batch (mode=1 bets + commit-reveal → pm_batch_settle at each pm_batch_epoch_blocks epoch); only the net residual moves the AMM, so all same-side fills clear at one price and speed-based sniping (the "sniper's tax") is neutralised. Per-market allow_batch + median kill-switch pm_commit_reveal_enabled; binary only today (multi forces allow_instant_bet). The LP Σreserve ≥ L invariant is untouched — each batch is one valid CPMM transition. |
| 36 | Bid-Ask Spread | ➖ Not needed | No order book → no quoted spread. "Cost of trading" appears as CPMM/LMSR slippage, governed by liquidity depth, not maker spreads. Concept doesn't map. |
| 37 | Bonding Trades | ⚪ Inherent | Bets are bonded trades: capital is committed into reserves and only released at resolution (or via cancellation/transfer). Native behavior. |
| 38 | Continuous Double Auction | ➖ Not needed | CDA is the CLOB model Onix explicitly rejects in favor of AMM pricing. Not used. |
| 39 | Covariance Markets | ➖ Not needed | Trading correlation between events requires combinatorial/conditional structure Onix deliberately omits. Out of scope. |
| 40 | Cross-Platform Arbitrage | 🟡 Partial | Onix prices can diverge from Polymarket/Kalshi; arbitrage across platforms is possible but external to the protocol. VIZ's open API + headless client make price data accessible; no native cross-platform bridge. |
| 41 | Execution Quality | ✅ Resolved (reframed) | No partial fills/queue position. Execution quality = deterministic slippage + optional min_tokens/min_return slippage guards, validated at consensus. Predictable by construction. |
| 42 | Gap Risk | ✅ Resolved (for LP) | Gap risk (sudden jump to 0/1 wiping the maker) is the failure mode Onix's structural LP guarantee eliminates — the LP never holds the losing side's terminal risk. Bettors still bear their own outcome risk (as intended). |
| 43 | Hedging | 🟡 Partial | Bettors can hedge by taking offsetting positions, transferring positions (pm_transfer_position), bet cancellation (if allowed) via reverse CPMM, and now opt-in leverage (pm_leverage_open/convert) for capital-efficient offsetting. No native multi-leg derivatives; basic + leveraged hedging is possible. |
| 44 | Implied Correlation | ➖ Not needed | Requires multi-event/combinatorial markets Onix omits. Out of scope. |
| 45 | Insider Trading | 🟡 Partial / 🏛 Client | Protocol can't detect insider info; mitigated by time penalty (late-info bets earn less profit) and bonded-oracle resolution. KYC/surveillance to police insiders is a client-layer responsibility (regulated clients). |
| 46 | Kelly Criterion | ⚪ Inherent | A bettor staking strategy, not a protocol feature. Onix exposes clean probabilities and full collateralization so Kelly sizing is computable by participants; the new opt-in leverage lets a bettor act on a fractional-Kelly edge with margin (pool-funded, liquidation-bounded). No core involvement beyond exposing the primitives. |
| 47 | Liquidity Fragmentation | 🟡 Roadmap | Per-market pools fragment liquidity today. The whitepaper's top-priority roadmap item — shared/category-level AMM pools — is the architectural fix. Lazy Pool already mutualizes deposits across markets. |
| 48 | Liquidity Provision | ✅ Resolved (core differentiator) | Risk-free LP is the headline: principal structurally guaranteed, time-weighted fee rewards, Lazy Pool auto-allocation + MasterChef accounting. Solves the "LPs lose money" problem that motivates the whole protocol. |
| 49 | Market Making | ✅ Resolved (reframed) | No active maker needed — the AMM + LP pool is the maker, and it bears no inventory risk. "Market making" collapses into passive, risk-free liquidity provision. |
| 50 | Minimum Viable Liquidity | ✅ Resolved | Enforced floor: min initial liquidity 100 VIZ; Lazy Pool auto-seeds every new market with free_balance × allocation_%. MVL is structurally bootstrapped rather than left to chance. |
| 51 | Order Book | ➖ Not needed | Onix is AMM-based; no order book by design. |
| 52 | Orderflow Arbitrage | ➖ Not needed | No order book / no PFOF-style flow routing → not applicable. |
| 53 | Relative Value Trading | ➖ Not needed | Cross-instrument RV requires correlated/combinatorial markets Onix omits. Out of scope. |
| 54 | Retail Flow | ✅ Resolved (reframed) | In CLOB models retail flow subsidizes maker losses to toxic flow. In Onix there is no maker to protect — retail and informed bettors all pay into the same parimutuel pool; LP is indifferent. The "retail-vs-toxic" tension dissolves at the LP layer. |
| 55 | Semantic Tick Size | ➖ Not needed | Tick granularity is a CLOB concept. Onix prices are continuous AMM functions; precision is the fixed mVIZ unit (1/1000). No tick design needed. |
| 56 | Temporal Arbitrage | 🟡 Partial | Betting earlier vs later carries different risk; Onix's time penalty on profit is precisely the mechanism that prices in lateness, dampening "wait-for-certainty" temporal arbitrage. Not eliminated, but explicitly disincentivized. |
| 57 | Time Arbitrage | 🟡 Partial | Same family as #56 — exploiting information timing. Quadratic time penalty + ~3s block cadence reduce, but don't remove, the edge. Addressed by design intent. |
| 58 | Toxic Flow | ✅ Resolved (for LP) | The defining CLOB/LMSR problem (sniper clears the book at 10¢ on a 99¢ outcome, maker eats 80¢) does not hit the Onix LP — payouts come from losers' stakes, and the LP subsidy is returned unconditionally. Toxic flow simply means informed bettors win the parimutuel pool, as intended. Major structural win. |
| 59 | Wash Trading | 🟡 Partial / 🏛 Client | No fees at bet time removes one wash incentive, but volume-faking is still possible; transfers are pure reassignment (no fee farming there). Detection/surveillance is a client + roadmap surveillance concern. |
4. Oracle & Resolution
| # | Concept | Verdict | How Forecaster-on-VIZ handles it / is it needed |
|---|---|---|---|
| 60 | Corruption Value Multiple (CVM) | ✅ Resolved (by design principle) | The protocol's explicit security invariant: oracle insurance bond must exceed potential manipulation profit. Risk factor (insurance/bets ratio) feeds the composite trust score. CVM is directly the bonding rationale. |
| 61 | Dispute Resolution | ✅ Resolved | Full system: 12h grace, dispute_fee, mandatory oracle response, per-market resolver (dispute_mode==0 committee stake-weighted vote / ==1 named resolver), insurance slashing, 3-outcome no-contest disputes, 14-day auto-close anti-freeze, on-chain creator/oracle bans. Among the most fully specified parts. HF14 addition: lazy-pool depositors keep their dispute vote weight (pool NAV → vesting-shares, added to effective_vesting_shares). |
| 62 | Oracle Design | ✅ Resolved | Bonded oracle model: registration fee, ≥5000 VIZ insurance, explicit acceptance, evidence-backed resolution, 14-metric reputation, freshness decay, ban mechanics. Core subsystem. |
| 63 | Resolution Criteria | 🟡 Partial / 🏛 Client | Market question/criteria live in url/description (custom_json, display-only). Protocol enforces process (who resolves, disputes) but not criterion quality — ambiguous criteria are a creator/client responsibility, policed retroactively via disputes + on-chain creator bans (pm_creator_ban_object, now live). |
| 64 | Self-Resolving Markets | ➖ Not needed (today) | Onix resolution is oracle-driven, not algorithmic self-resolution. Automated data oracles (Chainlink-style feeds) are a high-priority roadmap item for objective markets, which would approximate self-resolution. |
| 65 | UMA Protocol | ➖ Not needed (replaced) | UMA's optimistic oracle (used by Polymarket) is functionally replaced by Onix's bonded oracle + VIZ committee dispute model. Same problem, native VIZ solution — no external oracle dependency. |
5. Governance & Decisions
| # | Concept | Verdict | How Forecaster-on-VIZ handles it / is it needed |
|---|---|---|---|
| 66 | Attention Markets | ➖ Not needed | Trading attention/virality is a distinct product; Onix is event-resolution focused. Could be a client-layer market category, not core. |
| 67 | Conditional Tokens | ➖ Not needed (explicit) | Whitepaper §7.2 argues CTF split/merge is architecturally unnecessary — price coherence is mathematical, not enforced by tokens. The one useful CTF feature (transferable positions) is reimplemented natively as pm_transfer_position with encrypted memos. Deliberately omitted. |
| 68 | Decision Markets | 🟡 Possible | Onix Multi could express decision markets, but conditional "if-policy-then-metric" structure isn't native (no conditional tokens). Buildable at client layer; not a core primitive. |
| 69 | Futarchy | 🟡 Possible (client) | Concept file: futarchy = decision markets on conditional futures. Onix lacks native conditional markets, so full futarchy isn't supported in core. VIZ's stake-weighted committee already governs parameters; governance-by-market would be a client/roadmap construction. |
| 70 | Hyperstition Markets | ➖ Not needed (deliberate) | Reflexivity-as-a-feature (coordinate, don't forecast). This is a design choice, not a bug to fix: Onix's requirement that an outcome be externally verifiable by a bonded oracle structurally excludes hyperstition markets by default. Could exist as a separate client-layer "coordination market" product with milestone resolution, but is not a core target. See Mitigations §. |
| 71 | Impact Markets | ➖ Not needed | Retrospective-funding/impact-certificate markets are a separate domain. Possible client-layer category; not core. |
| 72 | No-Loss Prediction Markets | 🟡 Adjacent | Onix isn't no-loss for bettors (losers forfeit stakes — that funds winners). But it is "no-loss" for LPs (principal guaranteed). The yield-funded no-loss variant (stake yield, principal returned) is a different model; LP-side no-loss is already delivered. |
| 73 | Opportunity Markets | ⚪ Inherent (adjacent) | The Lazy Pool's opportunity-cost protection (graduated recall, active-market penalty, fault stamps) addresses capital-opportunity-cost directly — though "opportunity markets" as a product category is out of scope. |
6. Business & Platforms
| # | Concept | Verdict | How Forecaster-on-VIZ handles it / is it needed |
|---|---|---|---|
| 74 | AI agents | 🟡 Roadmap | Headless client + open VIZ operations make programmatic agents (bettors, LPs, automated oracles) straightforward. AI-driven liquidity/resolution is a natural extension, not yet specified. |
| 75 | Cross-subsidization | ⚪ Inherent | The Lazy Pool cross-subsidizes liquidity across many markets from one deposit; MasterChef reward_per_share shares fee yield. Cross-subsidization is built into the pool economics. |
| 76 | Demand markets | ➖ Not needed | Markets that gauge/aggregate demand are a product category; not a core Onix primitive. Client-layer. |
| 77 | Distribution moat | 🟡 Strategy | Onix's moat is risk-free LP yield + VIZ-native infrastructure (the flywheel). Distribution (Telegram WebApp today → headless web client) is a go-to-market concern, partly addressed by platform-independence post-migration. |
| 78 | Election markets | 🏛 Client | Supported as ordinary binary/multi markets; their legality is a jurisdictional-client matter (whitelisted oracles, category filters). Protocol-neutral. |
| 79 | Event contracts | ⚪ Inherent | Every Onix market is an event contract. The regulatory classification of these contracts is a client/legal question, not protocol logic. |
| 80 | Federal preemption | 🏛 Client (N/A to protocol) | Concept file: turns on whether US event contracts are "swaps." VIZ DLT is infrastructure, not an operator (whitepaper §6.2) — like Bitcoin is a ledger. Legal obligations attach to clients, not consensus. Not a protocol concern. |
| 81 | Long-tail markets | ✅ Resolved | The exact niche LMSR's bounded-loss enables — and Onix makes it risk-free to seed via Lazy Pool auto-allocation + min-liquidity floor. Long-tail viability is a core selling point. |
| 82 | Market structure | ✅ Resolved (defined) | Onix defines a clear structure: AMM pricing, parimutuel settlement, bonded oracles, DPoS-governed parameters, consensus-level ops. A coherent, novel market structure vs CLOB platforms. |
| 83 | Market surveillance | 🟡 Roadmap / 🏛 Client | Full on-chain audit trail (market_log, every op consensus-validated) makes surveillance possible by anyone. Active surveillance/enforcement is a client + roadmap concern. |
| 84 | Network effects | 🟡 Strategy | The flywheel (risk-free LP → depth → bettors → fees → more LP) is the intended network effect. Shared liquidity pools (roadmap) strengthen it. Go-to-market, not protocol mechanics. |
| 85 | Parlays | ➖ Not needed | Multi-leg combined bets need conditional/combinatorial structure Onix omits. Out of scope (could be a client construction over independent markets). |
| 86 | Platform competition | 🟡 Strategy | Competes on the unique "passive yield without impermanent loss" angle vs Polymarket/Kalshi (whitepaper §7.1 comparison table). Strategic positioning, not protocol logic. |
| 87 | Polymarket | ⚪ Reference | The primary benchmark. Onix differs on every axis: CPMM/LMSR vs CLOB, zero LP risk vs inventory risk, native ops vs Polygon contracts, bonded oracle vs UMA, no CTF. Used as comparison, not adopted. |
| 88 | Regulatory arbitrage | 🏛 Client | Jurisdictional-client model means each region builds its compliant (or permissionless) client on neutral VIZ rails. Regulatory positioning lives entirely at the client layer. |
| 89 | Regulatory classification | 🏛 Client | Whether markets are swaps/gaming/securities is decided per-jurisdiction at the client layer; the protocol is classification-neutral (same pm_* ops for permissionless and regulated clients). Not a protocol concern. |
Summary — what the Onix-on-VIZ design actually changes
Solved structurally (the core wins):
- LP-side adverse selection, toxic flow, gap risk, impermanent loss, market-maker inventory risk → all eliminated because winners are paid only from losers' forfeited stakes and LP principal is returned unconditionally (CPMM AM-GM proof; LMSR parimutuel settlement).
- LMSR's binary-market failure → sidestepped by using CPMM for binary and confining LMSR to multi-outcome markets where the maker is not the counterparty.
- Liquidity provision, minimum viable liquidity, long-tail viability → risk-free LP + Lazy Pool auto-allocation.
- Oracle design, dispute resolution, CVM → bonded oracle + 14-metric reputation + stake-weighted committee disputes.
- Price discovery, arbitrage, conditional tokens → price coherence is mathematical (
Σ price = 1), so no order book, no split/merge, no internal arbitrage layer needed.
Not needed / deliberately omitted: order book, CDA, bid-ask spread, semantic tick size, orderflow arbitrage, CTF split/merge, combinatorial/covariance/correlation/relative-value/parlay markets, UMA, peer prediction, LOX.
Pushed to the jurisdictional client layer: federal preemption, regulatory classification/arbitrage, election-market legality, KYC/insider-trading enforcement, surveillance.
Newly implemented since the spec-era mapping (now live on-chain, HF14): opt-in batch auctions + commit-reveal betting (binary), the opt-in leverage subsystem (position collateralization), the Lazy Pool, endogeneity_tier, on-chain creator bans, per-bettor/leverage settlement vops + plugin API, and lazy-pool governance weight in PM disputes + DAO committee-request voting.
On the VIZ roadmap (partial today): shared/category liquidity pools (fixes fragmentation), automated data oracles (→ self-resolving objective markets), distribution markets, AI agents. (Note: commit-reveal dispute voting is not on this list — it is deliberately rejected; dispute hearings stay public. Commit-reveal betting is already live.)
Still open / behavioral (mitigated, not eliminated): longshot/yes bias, market manipulation via depth, cross-platform arbitrage. The reflexivity family (endogeneity, reflexivity, KBC, hyperstition) has a concrete mitigation plan — see below.
Mitigations for the reflexivity family
Endogeneity, reflexivity, the Keynesian beauty contest (KBC), and hyperstition are one root problem at different layers: the market/price influences the outcome it measures. One small set of primitives addresses all four.
Root-cause map
| Layer | Concept | Channel |
|---|---|---|
| Forecaster-level | Keynesian Beauty Contest | herding to visible consensus in relative/peer scoring |
| Market-level | Endogeneity | market existence/visibility changes behavior (category-specific) |
| Market-level | Reflexivity | general price↔reality feedback; manipulation-as-propaganda |
| By-design | Hyperstition | reflexivity used intentionally to coordinate an outcome |
Mitigation primitives
| Primitive | Status | Fixes | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Commit-reveal dispute voting | rejected (will NOT be built) | KBC | A committee dispute is an open public hearing: pm_dispute_vote is a public ballot and stays that way by design — DAO credibility depends on transparent adjudication. Ballots are revisable until close (re-vote overwrites) so voters update honestly on new evidence; KBC residual is accepted (voters aren't paid for matching the majority). |
| Commit-reveal betting (batched) | live (opt-in, binary) | endogeneity, reflexivity, info-asymmetry | pm_commit_bet/pm_reveal_bet/pm_batch_settle hide in-flight order direction/size so the public price doesn't "leak" during the betting window (kills the thermostat channel). Settled as a uniform-price batch (see below). |
endogeneity_tier market field | live field | endogeneity | Oracle tags tier 1 (econ data — clean), 2 (sports/scheduled), 3 (political/social — risky); UI surfaces the reflexive-risk level; clients can restrict tier-3. |
| Exogenous resolution (automated data oracles) | roadmap (high) | endogeneity, reflexivity | Resolution bound to an external feed (BLS/Fed/sports API) the market can't influence → clean thermometer. |
| Prohibited-category list + creator ban | creator ban live on-chain; list client-layer | harmful reflexivity, hyperstition | Block markets where YES creates a "constituency for the outcome" (assassination/"hit"/terror markets, propaganda markets). Enforced via on-chain creator ban (pm_creator_ban_object) + client category filter. |
| Deep risk-free LP liquidity | core today | manipulation-driven reflexivity | The flywheel makes the book deep, so moving price for a "newsworthy" manipulated headline is expensive. |
KBC: why the market layer is already safe
KBC is a pathology of relative scoring (pay for closeness to peers → herd to peers). Onix's market layer pays bettors against external ground truth via parimutuel settlement — you are rewarded for deviating from a wrong crowd price, not for matching it. So the bettor layer is structurally anti-KBC. The only relative/peer mechanism in the protocol is the stake-weighted committee dispute vote, and the residual KBC risk there is accepted by design — the dispute is kept an open public hearing (no commit-reveal) because DAO credibility depends on transparent adjudication; what bounds the risk instead is that voters aren't paid for matching the majority and ballots stay revisable as evidence comes in.
Commit-reveal vs. the CPMM a·b=k invariant
CPMM is path-dependent (tokens depend on reserves at execution time), so commit-reveal cannot be done bet-by-bet against the live curve — reveal ordering would re-introduce MEV and leak price. The fix (and why §8.3 pairs commit-reveal with the batch-auction model): stop updating the curve per-bet; update it once per epoch via a uniform-price batch settlement.
- Commit: submit
hash(side, amount, salt, min_tokens)and escrowamount. - Reveal: reveal
(side, amount, salt); reveals are collected but not applied until epoch close (seeing others' reveals is useless — yours is already committed). - Settle once: opposing flow (
A_invsB_in) nets between bettors at a single clearing pricep*; only the net residual moves the AMM, sokis recomputed once. All A-fills getp*, all B-fills get1−p*→ no intra-batch ordering advantage. min_tokensfloor: since price is invisible at commit time, a per-bet token floor is mandatory; iftokens < min_tokensat settlement, the bet is rejected and refunded from escrow.- Anti-griefing: non-reveal forfeits a penalty from escrow to the LP-fee/DAO pool, killing the "commit optionality, reveal only winners" attack.
The LP guarantee is untouched: each batch settlement is still a valid CPMM transition, so AM-GM reserve_a + reserve_b ≥ L still holds. Only the granularity of curve updates changes (per-bet → per-epoch). Onix Multi is analogous via the aggregated LMSR cost function.
Phasing: (1) uniform-price batch auctions first — already kill ordering MEV/front-running cheaply; (2) commit-reveal hiding on top — adds in-flight confidentiality, enabled selectively for tier-3 (endogeneity-sensitive) markets. Both (1) and (2) are now implemented on-chain for binary markets (multi still forces instant betting — no LMSR batch yet).
Net verdict change
| Concept | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Keynesian Beauty Contest | 🔴 Open | ✅ market / ⚪ dispute — votes public by design (no commit-reveal; revisable ballots, unpaid voters, pooled voters enfranchised) |
| Endogeneity | 🔴 Open | 🟡 mitigated — endogeneity_tier + commit-reveal/batch live; exogenous oracles roadmap |
| Reflexivity | 🔴 Open | 🟡 mitigated — creator ban live on-chain; category list client-layer |
| Hyperstition | 🔴 Open | ➖ excluded by design (optional client product) |