Options that mint themselves.
Set a range and a date. Padstock locks up a dollar, splits it into an UP coin and a DOWN coin, and drops them straight into a pool — so the market exists the second you hit enter, with nobody on the other side of the trade but the pool itself.
Playbook
Four moves, nobody to trust
Set the range
Underlying, a lower strike, an upper strike, an expiry date. That's the entire form — no order book to bootstrap, no depth to seed.
Mint the pair
One dollar goes in, an UP coin and a DOWN coin come out. Hold both and you can always merge them back into that same dollar.
Let the pool price it
Buy UP and you're really selling DOWN into the pool, and vice versa. The reserve ratio is the price — nobody has to be quoting.
One read, done
At expiry the oracle gets checked exactly once. The dollar splits between the two coins and that's the whole settlement.
The model
Split the dollar, not the risk
Every market is a strike range turned into two coins against one dollar of escrow. UP owns everything above the top of the range, DOWN owns the rest, and a pool sits between them so either side can trade from block one.
1.00
USDG escrowed
UP
wins above the top strike
DOWN
keeps whatever's left
⇄
the pool sets price
Nothing here gets marked, called, or liquidated — the most either coin can ever be worth is fixed the moment it's minted, and the dollar backing it is already sitting in escrow. Because UP and DOWN can always be merged back into that dollar, their prices are pinned to each other the entire time the market is open.
Why bother
Fewer moving parts, not more
Backed on day one
The dollar behind every coin is locked at mint time. There's no margin call because there's never any margin.
No desk on the other side
You're not waiting on a writer or hunting for a fill. The pool takes every trade, every time.
Settles in one shot
Expiry pulls a Chainlink price exactly once and splits the escrow by construction. No dispute window, no keeper.
Exit whenever
Own both legs of a market? Merge them back into a dollar any time before expiry, no questions asked.
Price means something
A coin trading at 33 cents is the market pricing a one-in-three shot of finishing past the strike. Nothing fancier.
Just a coin
UP and DOWN aren't wrapped derivatives — they're plain transferable tokens. Send them, pool them, forget them.
Markets
Nothing exists until somebody mints it
ETH
spot 3,244.10
BTC
spot 98,120.00
SOL
spot 191.40
AVAX
spot 36.90
Read this part
Fine print
- What's actually holding the value?
- A dollar of escrow, locked in at mint time and sitting inside the market contract until it's redeemed or expiry settles it. It's never lent, staked, or rehypothecated.
- Who calls the outcome?
- A price feed, checked exactly once when the clock runs out. UP takes its cut above the top strike, DOWN takes the rest — the two always add back to a dollar.
- Do I have to wait for expiry?
- No. A matching UP and DOWN coin can be merged back into a dollar whenever you want, and either coin can be sold into the pool at any time.
- Has this been audited?
- No — treat it as unaudited, experimental software. Coins minted on Padstock are collateralized spreads that expire; nothing here is investment advice or an offer to sell a security.