GoMarket 101

This page assumes no prior knowledge of prediction markets. If you already know how binary outcome tokens work, skip to Core Concepts.

A market is a question with two answers

Every GoMarket market is a yes-or-no question with a deadline and a resolution source:

Will the Fed cut rates at the December meeting? Closes 2026-12-10 · Resolves from the FOMC statement

When the question resolves, exactly one of YES and NO is true.

Shares, not bets

Buying into a market means buying outcome tokens. Every market has two SPL token mints — a YES mint and a NO mint — both owned by the markets program. One YES token pays 1 USDC if the answer turns out to be yes, and 0 otherwise. One NO token is the mirror image.

The two always sum to exactly one dollar of value:

1 YES  +  1 NO  ==  1 USDC   (always, at any time, before or after resolution)

That identity is enforced on-chain, not by convention. You can hand the program 1 USDC and get back one YES and one NO (mint_tokens), or hand it a matched YES+NO pair and get your dollar back (merge_tokens). It’s a conversion, not a trade.

Price is probability

Because a YES token is worth either $1 or $0, the price someone will pay for it today is what they think the odds are.

YES trading at	The market thinks	A NO token then costs
$0.08	8% chance	$0.92
$0.50	a coin flip	$0.50
$0.91	91% chance	$0.09

Prices are quoted in USDC per share, between 0 and 1, on a fixed tick grid (see Prices & Order Book).

What a position is worth

Say YES is trading at $0.30 and you buy 100 shares for $30.

• The answer is yes. Redeem 100 YES for 100 USDC. Profit: $70.
• The answer is no. Your YES tokens are worthless. Loss: $30.
• You change your mind first. Sell the 100 YES into the book at whatever the market is paying now. If it’s moved to $0.45 you exit with $45.

The third row is the important one. Your position is a fungible token, so you are never locked in until resolution — as long as there’s a bid on the book.

Buying NO vs. selling YES

These are the same economic position, reached two ways:

• Buy 100 NO at $0.70 — costs $70, pays $100 if the answer is no.
• Sell 100 YES at $0.30 — but you need 100 YES tokens to sell.

If you don’t hold YES, the matching engine can still fill you. When two traders both want to buy opposite sides, the engine mints a fresh YES+NO pair from their combined collateral and hands each of them their side. That’s a MINT match, and it’s why a market can have liquidity on both sides without anyone holding inventory first. See Match Types.

Parlays: many questions, one slip

A parlay stacks 2–10 of these questions together. Pick a side on each, stake once, and the payout multiplier is the reciprocal of the combined probability:

three legs at 50%, 40% and 25%
combined = 0.50 × 0.40 × 0.25 = 0.05
multiplier = 1 / 0.05 = 20×

$10 staked → $200 gross payout, if all three land

All three have to land. One miss and the slip pays nothing. Unlike an order book position, a parlay can’t be sold or exited — it runs to settlement. How parlays work →

The vocabulary

Term	Means
Market	One binary question with a deadline and a resolution source
Event	A group of related markets (one match, one election)
Outcome token	A YES or NO SPL token; pays 1 USDC or 0
Condition ID	The market’s identifier in the catalogue
Token ID / asset ID	The identifier of one side (YES or NO) of one market
Maker	A trader whose order rests on the book
Taker	A trader whose order crosses and executes against resting orders
Leg	One market + one side, as a component of a parlay
Collateral	USDC — the only asset markets settle in

The full list is in the Glossary.