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How settlement works
Published July 9, 2026 · last updated July 13, 2026
Settlement is how a prediction market decides which contracts pay out. On GADUIN it is deterministic: every market's terms are fixed when it opens, and once the event has happened the market resolves automatically from official data — no house, no adjuster, and no discretion.
In a real-money market, settlement is the part that has to be beyond dispute. If the people running the market could decide outcomes, the price would mean nothing. GADUIN removes that risk in two ways at once: the terms a market settles against are frozen the moment it opens, and the result is read from authoritative data by an automated pipeline rather than judged by a person. This guide walks through the three steps every market follows, a worked example, what happens when the data is missing, and why settling this way is what makes a price worth trusting.
How does a market settle, step by step?
1. The market's terms are fixed
When a market opens, its terms are fixed: the exact service it refers to, the delay threshold that separates on time from delayed, and the scheduled time that threshold is measured against. For a flight that is the scheduled arrival and the number of minutes past it that count as a delay; for a train it is the timetabled arrival at the destination. Those terms are fixed before trading starts and cannot be changed afterwards, so the first trade and the last trade in a market are made against exactly the same rule.
2. The event happens
Trading continues until the market closes, usually at the scheduled time of the event. Prices move as new information arrives — weather, congestion, a cancelled upstream service — and each price is the market-implied probability of the outcome. A market closes before the underlying event is decided, and after close no new trades are accepted; the market simply waits for the data.
3. The market settles automatically
Once the result is available, GADUIN's ingest pipeline reads it from an official source and resolves the market against the terms fixed at the open. Winning contracts pay $1 each; losing contracts pay $0. Payout is automatic and appears in your transfers — there is no claim to file and no operator to convince, because no person is involved in the decision at all.
A worked example: settling one flight market
Suppose a market asks whether a particular evening flight will arrive more than 30 minutes late. You think it will, so you buy 10 “delayed” contracts while they trade at $0.30 each — a $3 position. Weather closes in over the destination and the price climbs to $0.55 as other traders come round to the same view. Trading stops at the scheduled arrival time, and no new trades are accepted after that. The flight arrives 46 minutes behind schedule, past the 30-minute threshold, so the outcome is “delayed.” When that arrival time is recorded, the market resolves against the threshold it opened with: every “delayed” contract pays $1, so your 10 contracts return $10. Because GADUIN charges no trading fee, your profit is the full $7 — the $10 payout less the $3 you staked. Had the flight landed on time, the “delayed” contracts would have paid $0 and the “on-time” holders would have been paid instead.
Does settlement work the same for flights, trains, and ships?
The mechanism is identical across every market; only the measurement changes. A flight settles on its recorded arrival against its scheduled arrival, a train on its recorded arrival at the destination or an official cancellation, and a ship or chokepoint on the recorded arrival or the official throughput over the window. In every case the terms are fixed when the market opens, the market waits for the event, and it then resolves automatically from official data — so once you understand how one market settles, you understand how all of them do.
Where does the settlement data come from?
Every vertical settles from authoritative, official data — the operational record of what actually happened, rather than an estimate produced here. What gets measured differs by vertical: for a flight, the recorded arrival against its scheduled arrival; for a train, the recorded arrival at its destination or an official cancellation; for a ship, the recorded arrival or the official throughput at a chokepoint. The data that settles our markets covers what each one measures and why.
Can the settlement rule change after a market opens?
No. A market's terms — the service it refers to, the delay threshold, and the scheduled time that threshold is measured against — are fixed the moment it opens and cannot be changed once trading has started. They are part of the question the market asks, so everyone trades against the same, known rule for the whole life of the market. Nobody — including GADUIN — can move the goalposts after money is on the table.
What if the data is missing or ambiguous?
Official feeds occasionally have gaps — a cancelled service, a missing record, or two sources that briefly disagree. When an outcome cannot be read unambiguously, the market moves to a disputed state and a human reviewer resolves it within 24 hours against the same evidence and the same fixed terms. If no outcome can be established at all, the market is voided and every stake is refunded in full rather than settled on a guess. This is the rare exception, not the mechanism: the review only applies the market's terms to messy data, and never second-guesses the market.
Why does automatic settlement matter?
Automatic settlement is what makes the price meaningful. There is no counterparty deciding whether you were right and no adjuster weighing a claim — the outcome is a recorded measurement applied to terms that were fixed before anyone traded. That is also why these markets are easy for software to trust: an agent can read a market's terms, read the outcome it settled to, and check that one follows from the other. New to the mechanics? See what an event contract is.
Settlement, in brief
- How much does a winning contract pay?
- Every winning contract pays exactly $1, and every losing contract pays $0. Your profit is the difference between that payout and the price you paid for the contract.
- Are there any fees when a market settles?
- No. GADUIN charges no trading or settlement fee, so the payout you receive is the full $1 per winning contract.
- How quickly am I paid?
- Payout is automatic. As soon as the result is recorded and the market resolves, your winnings appear in your transfers — there is no claim to file and no operator to convince.
- What is a disputed market?
- A disputed market is one where the data is unclear — a gap, a missing record, or conflicting reports. It is paused and resolved by a human reviewer within 24 hours against the same evidence, applying the market's fixed terms.
Keep exploring
For the big picture, start at the supply-chain disruption category hub. For account, deposit, and settlement specifics, the FAQ goes deeper.