OpinionMarketCap.
A Hardened Marketplace
for Opinions.

The $20 bet

From spark to protocol

• A $1 economic commitment to an answer is more informative than 10,000 likes — because likes are free and money isn’t.
• A market for opinions doesn’t need oracles, judges, or moderation — the price IS the verdict.
• A perpetual market — one that never resolves — captures the way real arguments live. "Best CRM" gets re-litigated every year for a decade.
• A protocol with exit mechanics — V4 Self-Exit + Vacant Reclaim — ensures no participant is trapped if a market goes stale.

OMC is the operationalisation of that insight: a question is a market, the current answer is its price, and the next person to disagree must pay for the privilege of being heard.

Traditional limitations

• Reliance on algorithmic interpretation of content quality
• Vulnerability to SEO manipulation and content farms
• Misaligned incentives: advertisers — not information providers — capture value
• Centralized control of ranking and visibility
• No mechanism to settle perpetual debates (best CRM, GOAT athlete, best pizza)

What OMC does differently

• Information value is set directly by market forces (price = consensus)
• Question creators earn 3% royalty on every trade — forever
• Answer owners capture 95% of every flip
• Communities can pool funds to acquire high-value answers (PoolManagerV2)
• No platform extraction beyond a 2% fee
• Stuck positions can always exit — V4 introduces a hard guarantee

2.1 · OMC is not a prediction market

Prediction markets (Polymarket, Kalshi, Augur) and OMC share one ancestor: pricing information via wagers. But they solve different problems and the surface-area gap is three orders of magnitude wide.

What that 200,000× gap unlocks: opinion topics that don’t resolve to an event (best CRM, GOAT athlete, best pizza, most overhyped CEO) can have permanent on-chain consensus. Brands can be the answer. Communities can collectively own a take. Creators mint markets and earn royalties forever. None of this works under "binary outcome, expires when the event ends."

Modular architecture

OMC is deployed as a 5-contract system + 3 linked libraries. Each contract is UUPS upgradeable, role-gated, and under the 24 KB Base bytecode limit.

4.1 · Market regimes

Each new trade calls PriceCalculator.calculateNextPrice which samples one of four regimes:

Regime weights adapt to topic activity:

4.2 · Trading is unrestricted

OMC is built to stimulate activity, not throttle it. There are no per-block trade caps, no per-user rate limits, and no minimum trade size. Anyone can submit answers as fast as they want, as often as they want, with any price the contract accepts.

What the protocol does protect is the integrity of the regime detector — so a single bot can’t fake "this market is HOT" by spraying tiny trades. The guards below apply only to how each trade is weighted in the COLD / WARM / HOT calculation; they never block a trade.

Entropy. NextPrice mixes 14 sources (block.timestamp, prevrandao, opinionId, sender, balance, nonce, trade history…) — non-deterministic, non-replayable. This is why V4 disables the legacy V1 anti-MEV rate limit and the rapid-trade fee penalty: when the next price is unpredictable, there’s no profitable sandwich attack to defend against (Ch. 08).

4.3 · Fee distribution

On every trade, the buyer pays price. It splits 3 ways:

Worked example — $100 trade. Buyer pays $100. Previous owner receives $95. Question creator gets $3 royalty (claimed via FeeManager.claimAccumulatedFees). Platform fee $2 accrues to treasury. MEV penalty in V4: 0% (admin-tunable).

4.4 · Pool economics

• Pool creation: 5 USDC fee (split: platform + question creator)
• Contribution: free (0 USDC fee)
• Target: NextPrice (set automatically by PriceCalculator at execution time)
• Max pool duration: 60 days
• Pool reward distribution: proportional to contribution at sale time (95% of resale)
• Early exit: 20% penalty (prevents pump-and-dump)

5.1 · Self-Exit (for the current king)

After the configurable cooldown (production setting: 60 seconds solo · 24 hours pools · 72 hours extended pools), the answer owner can call selfExit(opinionId) to walk away. Refund = 80% of the locked stake; penalty 20% splits 50/50 between creator and platform.

5.2 · Vacant Slot Reclaim (for the next bidder)

When the king exits, the slot becomes vacant with currentAnswerOwner = address(0). The next claimant calls reclaimVacantSlot(opinionId, …) and pays the reclaim price = max(50% × lastPrice, $2 floor). 95% of that payment becomes the new lockedStake — so future Self-Exit refunds scale with the reclaim price.

5.3 · Pool stale-exit dissolution (V2)

PoolManagerV2 mirrors the same logic at the pool level. Large holders (≥10% contribution) can trigger a pool exit after 24 hours; any contributor can trigger after 72 hours. Pool funds redistribute proportionally with the same 20% penalty.

5.4 · Parameter table

MIN_COOLDOWN = 60 seconds (constant) is the contract floor — production runs at that floor for solo exits so the 20% penalty (not a multi-day wait) is the anti-grief lever. Pool cooldowns escalate (large-holder window then public window) because pools are a commitment device — a single contributor shouldn't be able to instantly torpedo the rest.

6.1 · Question Creators

• Earn 3% of every future trade on their question — forever
• Earn 50% of the 20% Self-Exit penalty (= 10% of locked stake) whenever a king exits their question
• Set initial framing through question + initial answer + initial price
• Can attach descriptions and external links (120 char description · URL)
• May enhance with extension content (V2 ExtensionsV2)

6.2 · Answer Owners

• Hold the contested slot — and the narrative; every visitor reads YOUR take first
• Receive 95% of the next purchase price when their answer is bought
• Establish on-chain reputation through ownership history
• Can be EOAs, smart wallets, or pools
• Can Self-Exit after cooldown if the slot goes stale

6.3 · Pool Creators & Contributors

• Coordinate collective conviction at price points individuals can’t reach
• Contributors pay no per-contribution fee (free entry)
• Rewards distribute by contribution percentage at sale time
• Stale pools dissolve through V2 mechanism (10% holder triggers @ 21d · any contributor @ 35d)

6.4 · Governance Roles

• DEFAULT_ADMIN_ROLE — root authority. Rotatable via transferFullAdmin() across all 5 contracts in a single transaction.
• ADMIN_ROLE — parameter updates and contract upgrades (72-hour timelock on upgrades)
• MODERATOR_ROLE — opinion deactivation and answer moderation
• TREASURY_ROLE — treasury rotation (48-hour timelock + confirmation)
• CORE_CONTRACT_ROLE — fee-accrual gateway granted to OpinionCore by FeeManager

7.1 · Contract sizes

7.2 · Version history

7.3 · Base Layer 2

• Low transaction costs (sub-cent gas)
• High throughput (thousands of tx/s)
• Ethereum security guarantees via OP Stack fault proofs
• USDC-native; Coinbase on/off-ramp integration

8.1 · Price manipulation defenses

• 14 entropy sources for NextPrice — block.timestamp, prevrandao, opinionId, sender, balance, nonce, trade history, etc.
• Configurable max price-change (absoluteMaxPriceChange) prevents extreme single-trade moves
• Parabolic regime capped at +80%
• Minimum price floors prevent devaluation below 1 USDC

8.2 · Anti-MEV

Original V1 included a per-block trade limit and a rapid-trade fee penalty. Both are disabled by default in V4 (maxTradesPerBlock = 0 = unlimited; mevPenaltyPercent = 0%) because V3 dynamic pricing — non-deterministic, non-replayable — already neutralizes the value of sandwich attacks. Both remain admin-tunable.

8.3 · Fund security

• Non-custodial — contract holds only locked stakes and accumulated fees
• Pull pattern — creators withdraw fees via claimAccumulatedFees()
• ReentrancyGuard on every external state-mutating function
• Checks-Effects-Interactions on every transfer
• Emergency pause + emergencyWithdraw (admin-only, only when paused)
• SafeERC20 throughout (no naked transfer / transferFrom)

8.4 · Treasury & governance hardening

• Treasury changes require 48-hour timelock + confirmation
• Contract upgrades require 72-hour timelock
• Role-based access via OpenZeppelin AccessControl
• transferFullAdmin() for single-call admin rotation across all 5 contracts

9.1 · Pool coordination

• Shared goals around specific answers
• Transparent contribution tracking on-chain
• Collective ownership of high-value slots
• Proportional reward distribution at resale
• Stale-exit dissolution (V2) — no pool stays trapped

9.2 · Information provenance

Every answer change writes a full history record on-chain: timestamp, owner address, price paid, answer text, description, link.

9.3 · Categories

40 categories shipped at launch — covering tech, sports, music, food, crypto, local knowledge, brands, and culture. New categories require ADMIN_ROLE via addCategoryToCategories().

Treasury: 0x67902d93E37Ab7C1CD016affa797a4AF3b53D1a9 · Admin: 0x9786eDdf2f254d5B582DA45FD332Bf5769DB4D8C