Glossary

Plain-English definitions for every term used in Prediction Arena.

Above / Below. The two sides of any Prediction Arena asset market. You are predicting whether the asset’s price at the round-end timestamp will be above or below the strike price.

Bracket. The complete tree of matchups in a tournament event, from the first round to the final.

Commit-reveal. A scheme where you submit a sealed cryptographic commitment to your pick during the live window, and reveal the actual pick only after the window closes. Prevents copy-trading and front-running.

Confidence interval. A measure of how tight the oracle publishers’ agreement on a price is at a given moment. Wide confidence intervals mean the market is illiquid or stressed; Prediction Arena will refuse to settle on intervals above a per-market threshold.

First-party oracle. An oracle network whose price publishers are the same entities that originate the prices they publish — i.e. exchanges and market makers signing their own quotes.

Liveness role. A role on the system whose only power is to keep the system running (e.g. paying gas to relay signed oracle data) and which has no power to substitute, forge, or alter data.

Non-custodial. A system where the operator never holds user funds and cannot move them. The opposite of “custodial.”

Pari-mutuel. A pot-based betting structure where winnings come from the losing pot, distributed pro-rata to winning stakes. Contrast with “house” structures where the operator is on the other side.

Path-dependent scoring. A tournament scoring system in which later-round picks only count if the earlier-round picks that set up the matchup were also correct.

Polygon. The EVM-compatible chain on which Prediction Arena runs.

Pyth Network. The first-party oracle network Prediction Arena uses for signed price feeds.

Rake. The flat percentage of each round’s pot that funds protocol operations. Published, immutable, identical for all players.

Round. A single, self-contained instance of an Prediction Arena market — open, prediction window, lock, settlement, payout.

Settlement. The moment a round resolves against a signed oracle price.

SIWE (Sign-In With Ethereum). A standard for proving wallet ownership by signing a free off-chain message. Used for login. Never involves a transaction.

Strike price. The price the asset must be above or below at the round-end timestamp. Drawn from a fresh signed oracle reading when the round opens.

Sybil attack. An attack in which one entity uses many wallets to gain disproportionate influence or rewards. Prediction Arena’s tournament structure is explicitly designed to make this strategy unprofitable.

VAA (Verifiable Action Approval). A cryptographically signed message produced by an oracle network’s guardian set, used as proof that a price reading was endorsed by the network.