Hunch Research20 articlesCC BY 4.0

The paper, unpacked

The Vested Parimutuel whitepaper is a specification: it states the rules, proves what follows, and publishes the cases where the design fails. These articles are the other half — what the mechanism means, who it is for, who it is not for, and what it takes to run.

Every figure quoted across the library is the paper’s own, cited to the section that measures it.

Read the paper Markdown · for LLMs

Agents: fetch playhunch.xyz/vpm-whitepaper/articles.md for the whole library in one request, or /vpm-whitepaper.md for the paper itself.

Foundations

5 articles

Start here. What the two rules do, why the lock window exists everywhere else, who funds the first counterparty, what a stake is worth, and the one parameter that makes the mechanism a binary-market instrument.

What a Vested Parimutuel actually doesTwo rules, one worked example, and what happens to your money — the whole mechanism in plain language, before any notation.§4.1§4.2§5 The lock window, and what it costs to keepEvery parimutuel venue closes entry before the event. Here is the free-ride that forces it, the handle it burns, and why this mechanism deletes it as an identity rather than a policy.§5 P4§13.1§13.2 Who funds the first counterpartyNo market structure has a first bettor. Four structures, four answers, and what each one costs the party who pays it.§1.3§2.2§2.4 What a stake is worth when it arrivesThe pricing formula, the belief it implies, the two-sided band that proves the pool ratio is not a probability, and the winner's curse that halves the number you thought you had.§7§7.1§9 Capacity, κ, and the market that freezesThe matching rule that makes vesting sound, the partial fills it causes, and the absorbing n-way failure that makes finite κ a binary-market instrument.§4.3§5 P5§14

Comparisons

4 articles

The mechanism against every other way of making a market — and, in each case, the venues for which the comparison goes the other way.

Four ways to make a marketOrder books, CFMMs, scoring rules, pools — what each one needs before it can quote, what it costs to run, and where each one stops working.§1§2 Against the classic parimutuelThe strongest adoption case in the paper: same pool, same plumbing, one moment moved — and the free-ride, the lock window, and the dilution all go with it.§4.2§13.1§5 P3 Against AMMs and scoring rulesLMSR, Maniswap, pm-AMM, Azuro: every one funds its first counterparty with a negative-EV position. The comparison is about incidence, not about who is cleverer.§2.2§2.4§5 P6 Against order booksPolymarket and Kalshi solved the head of the market properly. Why this mechanism does not compete with them there, and what it is actually offering instead.§1§2.1§14

Adoption

4 articles

For operators. Whether to adopt it, how to migrate without breaking your existing pools, what the change earns and what it costs, and how to set the two published parameters.

Should your venue adopt this?A decision guide with the disqualifications first: five venue shapes that should not adopt it, four that should, and the three questions that separate them.§4.5§14§15 Migrating a pool venue, step by stepλ = 0 is the rule you already run. The staged path from there to a vested pool, what to publish at each stage, and the two things that break if you skip one.§4.5§15§12 What it saves, what it costsThe revolving float, the recovered lock-window handle, and the honest cost column: carry, resolution risk, a worse late price, and a secondary layer you now owe your users.§1.3§9§13.1§14 Choosing λ, market class by market classNo point on the dial gives you all four properties. A table of market types with the setting each one wants and what it gives up to get it.§4.5§13.1§14

Building

4 articles

For implementers. The constant-time settler, the resolution attacks vesting makes sharper, the MEV it prices, and the layer the late price has to come from.

Implementing itThe O(1) accumulator, the fixed-point scale you must choose correctly, four settlement-path MUSTs, and the conformance suite that tells you whether you got it right.§6§5.2Appendix A Resolution when the claims are already accruedVesting changes the resolver's incentives in three specific ways, two of them for the worse. Delay farming, stall-into-void, and the direction premium — with the fixes.§12§5 P5 MEV, vintages, and the price of one blockBatching by block removes the ordering game inside a block and prices it exactly between blocks. The capture formula, and every mitigation with its cost.§4.4§14§15 Where the late price comes fromIf late pool entry is supposed to die, something else has to carry the last hour's information. The measured bound on what a thin transaction layer delivers — and the cheaper repair that does not exist.§8§13.2§13.3

Ecosystem

3 articles

The wider argument: why the market count is what it is, what a machine market maker actually does, and the objections that land.

Why there are only a few thousand prediction marketsThe count is not a demand problem. It is a per-market cost problem, and the cost has a name in every structure that exists.§1§10§16 Agents as market makersSeeding is the first market-making job with a closed-form value and a floor. It is also the one where a naive growth estimate loses 11.5% per entry.§10§7.1§13.2 The objections, answered honestlyIs it a Ponzi, can a whale take it over, can you wash-trade it, does it worsen the favorite-longshot bias — the structural questions, with the ones that land conceded.§9§5 P5§14FAQ