Payouts and refunds

The fee

3% of the pot, taken only when a round is decided — that is, when one side actually won.

A tie and an uncontested round are fee-free. In both cases the contract takes nothing at all and every stake is returned whole. This is not a discretion we exercise; it is what the contract does.

Where the fee goes

Fees accumulate inside each market contract and are withdrawn to the protocol treasury.

We commit to using every protocol fee to buy back $WICKD on the open market.

This is a commitment we execute from the treasury, not an automatic on-chain mechanism. Nothing in the market contracts performs a buyback, so do not read it as a guarantee enforced by code.

Only decided rounds generate fees at all. Ties and rounds that never found a counterparty contribute nothing, because the contract takes nothing from them.

How a payout is calculated

When a round is decided, the losing side's stakes join the winning side's in one pot, 3% is taken, and the remainder is split across the winning side in proportion to each stake:

payout = your stake × (pot − 3% of pot) ÷ total staked on your side

A worked example

A round on a 45-minute market:

The fee is 3% of 400 = 12 USDG. That leaves 388 USDG to split across the 300 USDG staked on UP.

• You staked 100 of the 300 on UP, so you collect 100 × 388 ÷ 300 = 129.33 USDG. Your 100 back, plus 29.33 of profit.
• The other UP caller staked 200, so they collect 258.66 USDG.
• The DOWN caller collects nothing. Their 100 USDG is gone.

Note what the multiple depended on: the size of the other side, and the size of your own. Both kept moving until the round locked. Had more people joined UP before lock, your share would have been smaller.

The four ways money comes back

1. You won

The round was decided, and you called the direction right. You collect your share as above.

2. The round tied — everyone refunded, no fee

If the close price is exactly equal to the lock price, nobody wins. Every stake is refunded in full and no fee is taken.

This is not an edge case to be surprised by. Equity feeds publish on deviation rather than continuously, so a round in which the feed simply does not move is routine — particularly outside market hours. The contract treats that as a tie and gives everyone their money back.

3. Nobody took the other side — refunded in full, no fee

If a round ends with nothing staked on one side, there was no contest. Every stake is refunded in full and no fee is taken — including for the caller who happened to call the direction correctly.

This one deserves a note, because it is a deliberate protection and it is not how the code we forked behaves. In the original design, a round with an empty side left its pot permanently stuck: it could not be collected as a win and it could not be refunded either, and the house still took its fee on a contest that never happened. Someone who called the direction right could lose their whole stake to it.

WICKD treats an empty side exactly like a tie: full refund, no fee. A call with no counterparty was never a bet, so nobody pays for it.

4. The round never settled

If settlement is not triggered within the 60-second window after a round's scheduled close, the round does not settle. Once that window has passed, every stake in it becomes refundable in full.

The same applies when the feed itself is the problem — for instance if its last update is more than two days old, which the contract refuses to settle against. Your stake is not stuck; it becomes refundable.

Collecting a refund

Refunds are collected exactly like wins: the same action, from the same place, with no deadline. A refundable round stays refundable until you collect it.

Checking it yourself

For any round and address, the contract exposes claimable and refundable as public views. Between them they tell you precisely what a round owes you, and they are the same values the app reads. The addresses are in Markets.