Rain Chain / Markets
Trade outcomes with bounded risk.
Gasless trading on deep merged books, simple fees, and leverage designed so that every share stays fully collateralised and every loss is bounded.
Fees
20 bps taker. 0 bps maker.
The protocol fee is charged on notional at launch. Volume tiers may reduce taker fees to 10 bps and introduce maker rebates — paid only from fee revenue. Placing and cancelling orders costs no gas.
Where every fee goes
Per fill, in the quote asset. The staker share is distributed each epoch; the burn share buys RAIN on the RAIN/USDT book via TWAP and burns it; the treasury/RLP share splits 50/50.
Builder codes
Front ends earn on every fill
An order may name a registered builder and a builder fee of up to 50 bps. The user approves each builder once (revocable at any time). The builder fee is paid on top of the protocol fee, directly to the builder's account in the quote asset, per fill — no off-chain invoicing, no revenue-share contracts.
Leverage model
Isolated, long-only, fully collateralised
A trader with margin m buys YES (or NO) shares worth L·m, borrowing (L − 1)·m in the market's quote asset from the Leverage Lending Vault (LLV). Shorting YES is expressed as long NO, so every position's worst case is the share price going to 0 — the loss is bounded by notional. No funding rate, no external oracle; positions settle naturally at resolution.
2× → 3× → 5×
2× at mainnet beta; 3× after 60 days without bad debt; 5× on Tier A only after 120 days and a governance vote.
0.10–0.90
No leverage on lottery-ticket tails. Full tier leverage only between 0.30 and 0.70.
Decays to 1×
Pre-event leverage decays from 7 days to 24 h before resolution; inside T − 24 h leveraged positions are reduce-only.
L_max = min( L_tier(market), L_price(p), L_time(τ), L_phase ) L_price(p) = 1 + (L_tier − 1) · clamp( (min(p, 1−p) − 0.10) / 0.20, 0, 1 ) L_time(τ) = 1 + (L_tier − 1) · clamp( (τ − 24h) / (7d − 24h), 0, 1 ) maintenance: equity ≥ max(10%, 0.5 / L_max) · notional
Mark price is computed every block from on-chain data only: the median of mid, a 30-second trade EMA and the $5k depth price, clamped to ±2¢ per block (pre-event).
Eligibility
Leverage tiers
| Tier | Eligibility (all required) | Max | Per-market leveraged OI | Per account |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A | Depth ≥ $250k within ±2¢ (7-day median), age ≥ 14 days, OI ≥ $2M, objective resolution source, scheduled time | 5× | min(10% of OI, $2M) | $100k notional |
| B | Depth ≥ $50k within ±2¢, age ≥ 7 days, OI ≥ $500k, objective source, scheduled time | 3× | min(10% of OI, $500k) | $25k notional |
| C | Everything else, including subjective or AI-judged questions without an objective source | 1× | — | — |
Global leveraged OI is capped at 50% of LLV deposits and $20M at beta. Correlated markets on the same event share one cap.
Live events
The in-play regime
A goal or a called state can move a share from 0.55 to 0.05 in one block. Leverage stays available during live events — where sports and event traders want it most — but under a stricter regime. At beta, in-play leverage is at most 2×; 3× is possible for Tier A only after 90 days in-play without bad debt, and it is never above 3×.
| Parameter | Pre-event | In-play (launch) |
|---|---|---|
| Max leverage | Tier cap (2× → 3× → 5×) | min(L_tier, 2×); never above 3× |
| Price band for new leverage | 0.10–0.90 | 0.20–0.80; full leverage only 0.35–0.65 |
| Maintenance margin | max(10%, 0.5 / L) | max(20%, 0.6 / L) |
| Per-market leveraged OI cap | min(10% of OI, tier cap) | Half the pre-event cap, max $1M at beta |
| Event family | Shared cap | All markets on one match share one in-play cap |
| End of event | — | Reduce-only final window (e.g. last 15 min of football) |
| Borrow rate | LLV curve | LLV curve + 5% APR in-play premium |
| Liquidation fee | 1.0% | 1.5% (2/3 reserve, 1/3 liquidator) |
Protections
Every taking action waits 1 s (governance range 0.5–3 s) before matching. Cancels and post-only orders are never delayed, so makers can pull quotes inside the window. Liquidations and reduce-only closes are not delayed.
A validator-attested live-data feed suspends the market on scoring or review events: new orders and leveraged opens are rejected; cancels and repayments are allowed. Reopening runs 5 s post-only.
Positions above in-play caps are reduced from 15 min before start with no penalty; the final window of each event is reduce-only for leverage.
A ring-fenced insurance sub-account seeded with $0.5M, funded by the premium and fees. If it falls below the worst single-event gap, in-play leverage becomes reduce-only automatically.
No per-block clamp in-play. A position deep under maintenance after a jump goes straight to the RLP backstop instead of dumping into a thin book.
Feeds disagree or stop for 10 s → suspend; down 2 min → reduce-only for the event. In-play OI ≤ 25% of global leveraged OI (≤ $5M at beta).
Liquidation
A four-step waterfall
Each step runs only if the previous one could not close the position without loss to the lending vault.
Partial liquidation via the book
RainCore sells 25% of the position (all if notional < $500) with an IOC no worse than mark − 3¢, repeated each block until maintenance is restored.
RLP backstop
If equity is below 2/3 of maintenance, or the book can't absorb the order within the slippage cap, RLP takes the remaining position at mark − 5% and assumes the debt.
Insurance fund
Any shortfall is paid by the insurance fund of that quote asset.
LLV socialised loss
Only if the insurance fund is exhausted: the shortfall is written off pro rata against lenders, and leverage pauses globally.
Liquidation fee: 1.0% of liquidated notional, 50% to the insurance fund and 50% to the liquidator. Liquidations are protocol-generated class-3 actions that run after cancels.
Liquidity
RLP — the Rain Liquidity Provider vault
A protocol vault holding USDT/USDC from depositors, with three strategies:
- Quote new markets with a capped two-sided book for their first 72 hours — always post-only.
- Backstop liquidations (step 2 of the waterfall).
- Supply idle balance to the Leverage Lending Vault, up to 30% of RLP.
Deposits have a 4-day lock-up. RLP earns its strategy PnL plus half of the 20% treasury/RLP fee share. Per-market inventory is capped at 2% of RLP equity.
Leverage Lending Vault
One vault per quote asset. Borrow APR = 4% + 16% · u up to 80% utilisation, then + 200% · (u − 80%); borrowing is refused above 90%. 10% of interest goes to the insurance fund.
Insurance
Sized for the worst gap
Worst case for a leveraged share jumping to 0: lender loss = (L − 1)/L of notional — 50% at 2×, 80% at 5×. The insurance fund is sized against the largest eligible market gapping to 0 at its cap.
| Phase | Global leveraged OI cap | Single-market cap | Worst single gap | Insurance required |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Beta (2×) | $20M | $2M | $1.0M | ≥ $1.5M |
| 3× | $35M | $2M | $1.33M | ≥ $2.0M |
| 5× (Tier A) | $50M | $2M | $1.6M | ≥ $3.0M and ≥ 6% of leveraged OI |
- Seeded with $1.5M before leverage launches; if it falls below requirement, the leverage phase drops one step automatically.
- Kill switches: per-market pause and reduce-only, a global in-play pause, a global leverage pause, and an automatic pause on any socialised loss. Pauses never block closing or repaying.
- Simulation gates: leverage goes live only after backtesting the exact formulas on ≥ 500 resolved markets (and in-play rules on ≥ 300 live-event markets) against published acceptance thresholds.