# PopularityX Documentation (full text) > PopularityX prices who matters. The machine runs over any contested field of names, and the first board is crypto. The board is the market: a set of names, each with a live price shown in cents. The prices sum to $1.00 by construction, so every price is a name's share of the board. Nothing resolves; the board is a standing answer that moves when someone puts money behind a different name. Tagline: "The Price of Fame." Being early pays. This file is the complete text of the PopularityX product documentation at https://docs.popularityx.com, concatenated into one document. It is generated from the published pages on every deploy, so it always matches the live site. Each page carries a stable section address (A-1, A-2, ...), assigned in sidebar order. The addresses are citation anchors: they are used as cross-reference targets by the PopularityX Knowledge Map, and each addressed section here is also a live page at its URL. Canonical URLs: - https://docs.popularityx.com/llms-full.txt (this file, the full rundown) - https://docs.popularityx.com/llms.txt (the short index) - https://docs.popularityx.com (the human docs) - https://betadocs.popularityx.com (the beta docs: how to get in, house rules, and the bot guide for trading agents) Generated: 2026-08-05 ================================================================ SECTION: PopularityX 101 ================================================================ ---------------------------------------------------------------- PAGE A-1: Introduction URL: https://docs.popularityx.com/ ---------------------------------------------------------------- # Introduction PopularityX is a game you play on a popularity market of crypto names, each with a live price, all summing to $1.00. You take positions, ride the moves, and watch one trade move the whole field. The prices that fall out are a live ranking of who matters in crypto. This page covers what the board is, the two ways to profit, trading it and earning $POPX on what you hold, and the fact that the board runs continuously, with no expiry and no resolution event. ## What is PopularityX? PopularityX is a popularity market: a board of crypto names, each with a live [price](https://docs.popularityx.com/why), and all the prices sum to $1.00. That last part is the whole game: the names are connected, so buying one moves every other. You are never watching a single number on its own. You take a position and the whole field reacts. Think the crowd is moving toward a name, go Long. Moving away, go Short. Shorts are built in, with no funding rates. Ride the moves, and the prices you leave behind are a live ranking of who matters. _PopularityX is currently in closed beta. If you want in, see [the beta docs](https://betadocs.popularityx.com)._ ## Two ways to profit **Trade for money.** Buy low, sell high. Go Long a name you think the crowd is moving toward, or Short one you think it is leaving, and profit when the board moves your way. **Hold for $POPX.** Your account earns [$POPX](https://docs.popularityx.com/pop) continuously on the value of everything it holds. Back your convictions, hold them, and being right keeps paying. Being right grows your account, and a bigger account earns $POPX faster. Trading well and holding value are one skill, rewarded two ways. ## Always on The board runs continuously, with no expiry and no resolution event. [Trade](https://docs.popularityx.com/trading) directly against the AMM at any time, [fully on-chain](https://docs.popularityx.com/decentralisation), with no custody, no funding rates, and no liquidations. _Next: [Popularity Markets](https://docs.popularityx.com/popularity-markets), the board itself._ ---------------------------------------------------------------- PAGE A-2: Popularity Markets URL: https://docs.popularityx.com/popularity-markets ---------------------------------------------------------------- # Popularity Markets A popularity market is a board of names competing for a share of who matters in crypto. This page covers how to read the board, what a price means and how it is shown, where prices come from, why they always sum to $1.00, and how new names are added. ## What is a popularity market? A popularity market is the board: a set of names competing for a share of who matters in crypto. Each position represents a named entity or idea, and its price is its [share of the board](https://docs.popularityx.com/why). The flagship board prices crypto influencers: the founders, investors, traders, and voices the crypto conversation revolves around. The same structure fits any domain where standing is contested, politics, music, sport, as PopularityX expands. ## Reading the board The board is a mosaic of tiles, one per name, each sized by its share. The biggest names take the most space, so the state of the whole board reads at a glance. ## The price The price of a position is its share of the board, shown in cents. A position priced at $0.34 shows as 34.0¢: it commands 34% of the board. That number moves with each trade, rising and falling with crowd demand. ## Prices come from trading Prices come entirely from trading activity, the same way they do in a prediction market. A board never resolves: positions can be bought and sold indefinitely, with no expiry and no settlement date. ## Prices always sum to $1.00 All positions on a board always sum to $1.00. For any name to rise, another has to fall. ## The board grows New names are added as the board grows, with no fixed schedule. A new name opens at a price drawn from the board reserve, the [Other](https://docs.popularityx.com/tokens) share, so the board keeps summing to $1.00 and the names already listed are left untouched. _Why a market price is the right measure of who matters: [Rationale](https://docs.popularityx.com/why)._ ---------------------------------------------------------------- PAGE A-3: Rationale URL: https://docs.popularityx.com/why ---------------------------------------------------------------- # Rationale The price of a position is its share of who matters in crypto right now, and a board's prices sum to $1.00 because the question is comparative. This page is the case for answering that question with a market: the three methods that came before, editorial lists, platform counts, and feed-scoring algorithms, and what a price with no curator does instead. It runs as a continuous signal, with nothing to settle. ## What does the price mean? In PopularityX the price of a position on the [board](https://docs.popularityx.com/popularity-markets) is its share of who matters in crypto right now. Prices are shown in [cents](https://docs.popularityx.com/popularity-markets), and a board's prices sum to $1.00. ## The board sums to $1.00 by construction "Who matters most?" is a comparative question. A name can only matter more relative to the others, so the board is built as shares of a single whole: prices always sum to $1.00, and when one rises, the rest fall. A price is a name's standing against everyone else on the same board, at this moment. ## The ranking question Ranking people is a permanent activity, and every scene does it. The rankings disagree and the argument never settles. The question is fixed; the method is the variable, and three methods came before this one. **Editorial lists.** A person or a panel decides who matters. Someone chooses what counts, how to weight it, and when to update it, and each of those choices is a single point of bias and control. **Platform counts.** Followers, mentions, engagement, search volume. Each measures activity on one platform, each is a proxy for standing rather than standing itself, and all of them can be faked at near-zero cost: bots, bought followers, seeded coverage. **Feed-scoring algorithms.** The most serious attempt yet was an AI-scored public leaderboard of who matters in crypto (Kaito's Yaps, December 2024 to January 2026). Its community account on X had about 157,000 members. X banned the class of apps that reward posting and revoked their API access, and the incentivised leaderboards were sunset within hours. A ranking computed from a platform's feed lives at that platform's discretion. **A market.** A live price for every name, moved only by trading. No editor, no scoring algorithm, no platform API, no off-switch. ## The price has no curator A market price reflects whatever participants collectively make it, through capital put at risk. Moving a price takes buying or selling, and holding it away from where the crowd is trading means paying continuously to keep it there, because every other name on the board is the other side of the trade. ## The prediction market analogy Prediction markets use the same structure to measure something different: the probability of a future event. The crowd buys and sells, prices shift with every trade, and the price becomes the best available aggregate of distributed belief, with no poll, panel, or data feed behind it. PopularityX applies the same mechanism to a present-tense question. Instead of "what is the probability this event occurs?", it asks "what share of the board does this name command right now?" ## A continuous signal A prediction market closes when its outcome is decided. A PopularityX board has no outcome to decide, no settlement, and no expiry: the price runs as a continuous, live signal of who matters, updated with every trade. _How to act on the price: [Trading](https://docs.popularityx.com/trading)._ ---------------------------------------------------------------- PAGE A-4: Trading URL: https://docs.popularityx.com/trading ---------------------------------------------------------------- # Trading Every position has a Long and a Short, and buying either is a bet on which way a name's share of the board moves. This page covers how trades move prices on a board where share is conserved, the AMM that is the counterparty to every trade and quotes both sides at all times, how profit and loss land in your balance, the fee, and the absence of funding rates and liquidations. ## Long and Short Every position has two tokens: Long and Short. **The Long price is the position's [share of the board](https://docs.popularityx.com/why).** A position holding 18% of the board has a Long price of 18.0¢. If its share rises to 25%, the Long price rises to 25.0¢. **The Short price is the complement.** Long price and Short price always sum to $1.00. A Long price of $0.18 means a Short price of $0.82. Buy Long and you profit when the name's share rises. Buy Short and you profit when it falls. See [Tokens](https://docs.popularityx.com/tokens) for how Long and Short tokens work. ## How trades move prices All prices on a board [sum to $1.00](https://docs.popularityx.com/popularity-markets). Buying a position increases demand for it, and demand raises its price. When one price rises, the others must fall to keep the total at $1.00. Selling works in reverse. - ↑ Buying Vitalik Long raises Vitalik's price - ↓ Elon Musk, Toly, and every other name on the board fall simultaneously ## A zero-sum board Share on the board is conserved: for one name to gain share, others have to lose it. Every trade lands on the whole board at once, so pushing one name up is the same act as cheapening every other. There is no tide that lifts every name together, and profit comes from catching a move before the rest of the board does. ## The AMM Every board is priced by a custom-built automated market maker, designed for markets where every position competes for a share of a fixed total, and it is the counterparty to every trade. You trade directly against it at any time: no order book, no waiting for a match, no outside liquidity providers. It quotes a buy and a sell price for every position at all times, so a board is never closed and never illiquid, and prices only move when people trade. Builders can read the design in [Under the hood](https://docs.popularityx.com/under-the-hood). ## Winning and losing You buy a position with the dollars in your balance, and selling it returns dollars to your balance. The difference is your profit or loss: buy a Long at 18.0¢, sell it at 25.0¢, and you make 7.0¢ per token. The fee is built into the price you trade at, so there is nothing separate to subtract. [Deposit & Withdrawal](https://docs.popularityx.com/deposit-withdrawal) covers how dollars move in and out. ## The fee Every trade carries a fee, sized to the variance of the position's price, so it is cheapest out at the extremes of the board and highest in the middle, and closing a position costs the same as opening it did at the same price. See [Fees & revenue](https://docs.popularityx.com/protocol-revenue) for the model and where the fee goes. ## No liquidations or funding rate A position on PopularityX works like a prediction market position. There is no funding rate charged for holding it and no liquidation risk. Your maximum loss is the price you paid for the position, and it stays open for as long as you choose to hold it. ## Closing a position Sell Long or Short tokens back to the AMM at any time. It quotes a price for every position continuously, so there is always a price to enter or exit. A sale is paid from the market's pooled cash, the same pool every buy pays into, so the pool grows as money flows in. There is no expiry and no settlement date. _What holding earns: [$POPX](https://docs.popularityx.com/pop)._ ---------------------------------------------------------------- PAGE A-5: $POPX URL: https://docs.popularityx.com/pop ---------------------------------------------------------------- # $POPX $POPX is the ownership token of PopularityX, distributed over time to the people who use the protocol. $POPX is not live yet, and this page describes how it will work once it is. In the [closed beta](https://betadocs.popularityx.com) the app shows a provisional figure and records what each account does; how early participants are recognised for that is decided afterwards, by people. ## How you earn it Your account earns $POPX continuously on the value of everything it holds, cash and positions alike: account value integrated over time. There is nothing to stake or lock, and no action to take. Being early pays: earning is weighted toward the earliest participants, so the same account value earns more $POPX early on than it will later. ## Supply and emissions The planned supply is 1,000,000,000 $POPX, fixed at deployment. Emission decays over time: it only ever slows, and the total only ever approaches the cap. [Diagram: $POPX emission rate decaying over time; the fixed 1,000,000,000 supply is the area under the curve] ## The revenue it governs The protocol earns revenue: a fee on every trade and yield on the deposited funds, both accruing to the protocol. The mechanics run today in practice money; real revenue begins at production launch. See [Fees & revenue](https://docs.popularityx.com/protocol-revenue) for what they are. $POPX does not entitle holders to that revenue. Holders govern it: they control what the protocol does with what it earns. ## Governance only $POPX is coming: a governance token that votes on the treasury and the parameters. The schedule lives on the [roadmap](https://docs.popularityx.com/roadmap). ---------------------------------------------------------------- PAGE A-6: Fees & revenue URL: https://docs.popularityx.com/protocol-revenue ---------------------------------------------------------------- # Fees & revenue PopularityX earns revenue from two sources: a fee on trades and yield on the deposited funds. This page states what they are and where they go. Both are visible on-chain. ## The trading fee Every trade carries a fee, sized to the variance of the position's price. The fee scales with p times (1 minus p), where p is the price, so it is highest for names priced near the middle of the board and cheapest near the extremes. A name's Long and Short are two sides of the same price, so the fee is identical on either side, and entering and exiting a position stays cheap across the whole board. The rate starts at 400 basis points applied to the variance term, the same rate Polymarket charges on its attention product, with a minimum fee per trade. Both are per-market parameters: the fee's shape is the design, the rate is a dial, tuned against real trading behaviour. ## Yield on deposits The money backing the system does not sit idle. Deposited funds rest in a lending pool and earn yield for the whole time they back the system, whether or not anyone is trading. The yield accrues separately from the deposited principal, so every balance stays [backed one to one](https://docs.popularityx.com/deposit-withdrawal) and the yield never dilutes it. ## Where it goes Both streams accrue to the protocol, and neither is paid out to any account. [$POPX](https://docs.popularityx.com/pop) earning is separate: it accrues on the value of everything an account holds over time. ## On-chain receipts The mechanics on this page are receipts, not projections. The trading fee accrues inside the market maker contract and can be read from the chain at any time. The deposited funds and the yield they earn sit in on-chain contracts in the same way. The revenue is verifiable by anyone, directly, without trusting this page. These mechanics are the final product's; on the current testnet beta the fee accrues in practice money and no real revenue exists. ---------------------------------------------------------------- PAGE A-7: Deposit & Withdrawal URL: https://docs.popularityx.com/deposit-withdrawal ---------------------------------------------------------------- # Deposit & Withdrawal Deposit and withdrawal are the front door to the market: money in, money out. You deposit USDC, trade in dollars, and withdraw whenever you choose. In the closed beta there is nothing to deposit; members trade a practice stack instead, see [the beta docs](https://betadocs.popularityx.com). ## Depositing Deposit USDC and it becomes your balance inside the protocol, dollar for dollar. Every dollar of balance is backed 1:1 by a dollar of USDC, and everything on the board is priced and settled in dollars. ## Withdrawing Withdrawing is the same door in reverse: your balance converts back to USDC at the same 1:1 rate, released to your wallet. Withdrawal is available at any time. There is no lockup and no withdrawal request to wait on. ## Non-custodial The USDC is held by the PopularityX Protocol, not by a custodian. The collateral lives in on-chain smart contracts, and PopularityX has no discretionary access to it. ## Deposits earn yield While it backs the system, the deposited money does not sit idle: it rests in a lending pool and earns yield, which accrues to the protocol as revenue. The yield builds up separately from the deposited principal, so the 1:1 backing of your balance is never touched by it. See [Fees & revenue](https://docs.popularityx.com/protocol-revenue) for how that works. ---------------------------------------------------------------- PAGE A-8: Price Manipulation URL: https://docs.popularityx.com/price-manipulation ---------------------------------------------------------------- # Price Manipulation Market manipulation is trading to move a price rather than trading on what you believe. Any market where prices move with flow can be pushed by size, and PopularityX is no exception. The objection "someone could just buy the price" has two possible meanings, and the two need different answers. Someone might push a price to make a position look bigger than the crowd believes it is, since the price is its [share of the board](https://docs.popularityx.com/why). That is possible, and the design prices it. Or someone might push a price to make money. That fails without followers. Each case in turn. ## Manipulation of the signal Buying can push a position's price up. Here is what that does. All prices on a board sum to $1.00, so pushing one position up pushes every other position down. Three groups now profit by trading against the move: - Holders of the other positions buy them back at the discount just created. - Anyone who thinks the price is wrong shorts the inflated position. - Earlier holders of the pumped position take profit into the bid. Every one of those trades is funded by the manipulator. Manipulation here is a subscription, not a purchase: it means paying the entire rest of the market to disagree with you, continuously, for as long as the price is held somewhere the crowd does not believe. The moment the buying stops, the price reverts. The cost also accelerates. The AMM makes each additional point of board share more expensive than the last, so holding a price far from where the market believes it costs disproportionately more than the first move did. The board is also adversarial and multiplayer, not one mover against a passive field. Every other name has its own backers, and because the board sums to $1.00, pushing one name up makes every other name cheaper in the same moment. The pump hands the rest of the field a discount and funds the trade against itself. The other side can also wait indefinitely. Shorts on PopularityX are native positions with no funding rate and no expiry, so shorting a name that has been pushed too high costs nothing to carry. A trader can short the pump and simply hold, at zero cost, until it reverts. A manipulator paying continuously to hold a price up cannot outlast a short that costs nothing to hold. ## Manipulation for profit **You cannot exit at your own pump.** The [AMM](https://docs.popularityx.com/trading) raises the price as you buy and lowers it as you sell, and the position must eventually be exited back through the same curve. If buying moved a price from $0.20 to $0.60, selling walks it straight back down before the gain is realised. The paper profit only becomes cash if other traders buy in afterwards, which means the crowd genuinely has to come round to the manipulator's price. Otherwise the manipulator is the exit liquidity for everyone who sold on the way up. The classic manipulation plays all work the same way: create a false picture, then harvest someone else's reaction to it. On PopularityX, most of those reactions do not exist. **There are no forced flows to harvest.** PopularityX positions carry [no leverage, no funding rate, and no liquidation risk](https://docs.popularityx.com/trading). The standard play from leveraged venues, pushing a price into stop-loss clusters and buying the liquidation cascade, has nothing to grab onto. **There is nothing to spoof.** Trading happens against the AMM, so there are no resting orders. Creating a false picture of demand requires executed trades, paid in full. **There is no free supply to dump.** A pump and dump on a thin token works because insiders hold supply acquired at close to nothing, so any pumped price is pure profit to sell into. On PopularityX every token was bought from the market at the prevailing price. There is no pre-mine, no allocation, no early bag waiting for a pump. **Prices are capped and relative.** A token with no anchor can rally on momentum alone, because nobody knows what the right price is. PopularityX prices live between $0 and $1 and every position is priced relative to the whole board, so a pumped price is visibly out of line. Holders have clear levels to exit at, and they sell into the pump rather than ride it. ## The audience is not free supply The sharpest version of the objection is off the board entirely. A name's community pushes the price up, holds it long enough to generate embeds, news, and a sense of momentum, then distributes that story to its audience and sells into the buyers it draws in. The audience, the argument runs, is supply the market never priced. This describes the product working, not a hole in it. A community putting real money behind its name to hold it at the top of the board is not faking a reading of standing, it is producing one. If a fanbase will spend to keep a name high, that spending is part of what makes the name popular, on a board whose whole subject is who people will back. The audience it draws in is the crowd the board exists to price. The protocol charges its fee on all of that trading, and the traders who think the price has run too far short it and collect when it falls back. Both sides are priced. Nothing is extracted from the mechanism, the mechanism is charging for the fight. ## No resolution to capture PopularityX boards are perpetual. There is no resolution event, no settlement date, and no oracle. In resolving prediction markets, manipulation has a deadline to aim at: push the price into resolution, or corrupt the oracle that decides the outcome, and the distortion becomes a payout. In DeFi lending, a manipulated oracle price can drain collateral in a single block. On PopularityX those targets do not exist. A pushed price never settles into anything. It just sits there, exposed, until the manipulator stops paying to hold it. ## The same behaviour prediction markets already live with Partisans already do this on prediction markets, putting capital behind their candidate to hold the odds where they want them. The category runs at tens of billions of dollars a year with that behaviour built in. PopularityX is cleaner, not messier. On a market that resolves, partisan money is a distortion of the true probability, tolerated only because the resolution eventually corrects it. Here there is nothing external to distort. The money behind a name is the quantity the board measures, so it is signal by construction rather than noise waiting for a resolution to clean it up. ## What manipulation can still do Anyone with a big enough bankroll can move a PopularityX price temporarily. That is true of every market. What the design removes is the payoff: no resolution to capture, no forced sellers to harvest, no free supply to dump, price impact that reverses on exit, and a costless perpetual short waiting the pump out. What remains is the expensive version of manipulation, paying the whole market to disagree with you, where stopping means giving the price back. ---------------------------------------------------------------- PAGE A-9: Roadmap URL: https://docs.popularityx.com/roadmap ---------------------------------------------------------------- # Roadmap PopularityX ships in seasons. Each season adds one thing. Being early pays. ## Closed Beta (now, invite-only) Invite-only, on testnet with practice money. Nothing to deposit, nothing to lose. $POPX arrives later, and early participants are recognised. Plans can change, but being early pays. How to get in, the house rules, and how to play right now: [the beta docs](https://betadocs.popularityx.com). ## Season 1: Live Real deposits, same market. The earning clock runs exactly as in the Closed Beta, now on real money. ## Season 2: $POPX The planned token generation event. $POPX arrives, early participants are recognised, and a liquidity pool opens so it trades. As a governance token, $POPX votes on the treasury and the parameters. All of this is a plan, not a promise. ## Season 3: Integrations and new markets The prices go to work: feeds, embeds, and products built on the index, and new boards beyond crypto. ---------------------------------------------------------------- PAGE A-10: FAQ URL: https://docs.popularityx.com/faq ---------------------------------------------------------------- # FAQ ### What is a popularity market? A popularity market is the board: a named set of positions competing for a share of who matters in crypto. Each price is a [share of the board](https://docs.popularityx.com/why), shown in cents. The price is driven by trading activity and is the signal itself, not a proxy for some external measurement. ### How does the price relate to who matters? In a prediction market, the price represents probability. In PopularityX, the price represents a name's share of who matters. There is no oracle, no external data feed, and no resolution event. The price constitutes the measurement. Whatever the market collectively prices a position at, that is its standing on the board. ### Is this like a prediction market? The structure is the same: positions compete, prices sum to $1.00, and the market price is the best available aggregator of distributed belief. The difference is what is being priced. Prediction markets price the probability of a future event. PopularityX prices the current standing of ongoing entities and ideas. Nothing ever resolves. ### How are prices shown? In cents. A Long priced at $0.172 shows as 17.2¢, its share of the board. Prices on a board sum to $1.00, so for one name to rise, another has to fall. ### Why is market price a good measure of who matters? Every alternative requires a curator. X mentions, media coverage, search volume: each requires someone to decide what counts, how to weight it, and how to update the methodology as new platforms emerge. Those decisions introduce a single point of bias. A market has no curator. The price reflects whatever the aggregate of trading activity makes it. The same argument explains why prediction markets produce better probability estimates than polls. ### Can't someone just buy the price? That objection has two meanings. Manipulating to make a position look big is possible, and the design prices it: pushing one position up pushes every other position down, so the whole board profits by trading against the move, and holding a price away from where the crowd is trading is a continuous cost, not a one-off. Manipulating for profit fails without followers, because price impact is symmetric and you cannot exit at your own pump. See [Price Manipulation](https://docs.popularityx.com/price-manipulation) for the full picture. ### Do markets ever resolve? No. PopularityX boards are perpetual. There is no resolution event, no settlement date, and no expiry. A position can be sold back at any time, but the market itself runs indefinitely. ### What is Long Other? [Long Other](https://docs.popularityx.com/tokens) represents every position on a board not yet individually listed. It always retains a nonzero share. In any open-ended domain, the roster of relevant names can never be fully enumerated. Long Other is the permanent catch-all for everything not yet individually named. ### What is a Short token? A Short token gives you exposure to a position's decline. Holding a Short token means you gain value when that position's share of the board falls. [Short tokens](https://docs.popularityx.com/tokens) are native protocol objects, available on every position from the moment it is created. They are not derivatives and carry no funding rate. ### What is auto-merge? When a Long token and a Short token for the same position come into the same hands, they cancel automatically and the collateral is released. No action required. See [Tokens](https://docs.popularityx.com/tokens) for a full explanation. ### Are there funding rates? No. Short positions are not perpetual futures. They are native tokens with no funding rates and no basis risk. ### Can I lose more than I put in? No. There is no leverage and no liquidation risk. Your maximum loss on any position is the price you paid for it. ### Is PopularityX custodial? No. All positions and balances are held on-chain in smart contracts, and your funds remain under your control at all times. ### Who creates markets? Boards and the positions within them are created by the PopularityX team. This keeps the roster coherent and prevents overlapping or duplicate positions. Adding a pricing mechanism to an existing board is permissionless: anyone can deploy an AMM or order book on top of a live board. ### What chain is PopularityX on? PopularityX runs fully on-chain. The closed beta runs on a testnet; see [the beta docs](https://betadocs.popularityx.com) for what is live today and how to get in. ================================================================ SECTION: Builders ================================================================ ---------------------------------------------------------------- PAGE A-11: Under the hood URL: https://docs.popularityx.com/under-the-hood ---------------------------------------------------------------- # Under the hood PopularityX runs on a purpose-built on-chain ledger and market maker. The [Trading](https://docs.popularityx.com/trading) page covers what a trader sees; this page is the design underneath, alongside [Tokens](https://docs.popularityx.com/tokens) for the token model. ## Based on Hanson's LMSR The market maker is grounded in Robin Hanson's Logarithmic Market Scoring Rule, a mechanism designed specifically for multi-outcome prediction markets. [Hanson's original paper](https://mason.gmu.edu/~rhanson/mktscore.pdf) established that a log-scoring rule can be used to create a market maker that prices any number of outcomes simultaneously. The PopularityX AMM builds on that foundation with several extensions required for on-chain perpetual markets. ## Constant cost at any size The implementation is optimised so that the cost of executing a trade does not grow with the number of positions on a board. A board with a hundred positions costs the same to trade against as one with five. This makes large, detailed boards practical on-chain. The [exposure standard](https://docs.popularityx.com/tokens) is the other half of the property: a trade updates one exposure record, not a balance per outcome. ## Native Short pricing Traditional LMSR prices only the Long side of each outcome. The PopularityX AMM is extended to price Short tokens natively. A Short token is a composite of every other Long token on the board, and the AMM prices it as such, with no separate mechanism required and without iterating over the composite tokens. ## Liquidity from internal accounting Opening a new board requires no external capital. The AMM provides liquidity from its own internal accounting, so any board is instantly liquid across every position from day one, with zero external capital. ## The solvency guarantee The guarantee in one line: the ledger guarantees $1.00 backing every full set; the market maker charges at least $1.00 for a full set and puts the $1.00 in the ledger. A full set is a Long and its Short on the same position. Their two prices sum to $1.00 at every instant, and cash leaves the system only when the two meet in one account, cancel, and release their $1.00. The ledger checks on every trade that one real dollar sits in the market pot for every full set outstanding; a trade that would break that invariant does not execute. Because boards never resolve, there is no settlement day on which every winning share is paid out at once, and that event is what forces other market makers to hold seeded capital. A board is a single bonding curve over all its positions: every entry is a cash purchase into the curve, every exit is a sale back into it, and a profitable exit is funded, dollar for dollar, by the payments of the traders who moved the price. The pool can never owe more cash than it has taken in: the cashbox is closed. ## Expandable boards New positions can be added to a live board at any time. When a position is added, the AMM prices it as a proportion of Long Other's current share, which decreases accordingly. All other positions are unaffected. ---------------------------------------------------------------- PAGE A-12: Tokens URL: https://docs.popularityx.com/tokens ---------------------------------------------------------------- # Tokens Everything on PopularityX is priced and settled in eUSDC, the protocol's unit of account. This page is the token layer above it: the single exposure record a board keeps for each account, the Long, Long Other, and Short tokens derived from it, the auto-merge back to eUSDC, and how any position can be wrapped into a standard ERC20. It closes with $POPX's planned supply and distribution. ## eUSDC Depositing into PopularityX converts USDC to **eUSDC**, the protocol's unit of account. Everything else on the board is priced and settled in eUSDC. eUSDC is your cash inside PopularityX: a standard ERC20 token, redeemable 1:1 for USDC at any time. Being a standard ERC20 is what makes it portable: it works with any standard ERC20 wallet and tooling, supports ordinary transfers, and is composable across DeFi like any other ERC20 token. [Diagram: Depositing USDC wraps it to eUSDC; withdrawing unwraps it back] ## A new token standard Positions on PopularityX are not held as separate ERC20 tokens, one balance per outcome. The ledger keeps a single record of an account's exposure across a board, and every Long and Short balance is derived from it. A trade updates that one record, so the cost of trading is the same at any board size. See [Under the hood](https://docs.popularityx.com/under-the-hood) for the mechanics. ## A board A [board](https://docs.popularityx.com/popularity-markets) defines a set of positions. [Diagram: A board with multiple positions] The complete set of positions on a board is equivalent to 1 eUSDC. [Diagram: The set of positions on a board equals eUSDC] ## Long Tokens A Long token represents transferable, positive exposure to a position. [Diagram: A Long token moving between two accounts] ## Long Other **Long Other** represents every position on a board not yet individually tokenised. [Diagram: The Long Other token moving between two accounts] ## Tokenising new positions Tokenising a new position gives Long Other holders a new Long token. [Diagram: An animated close-up of the same split happening inside one account] ## Short Tokens A Short token constitutes the complement of exposure to a position. [Diagram: The Short token is an interface around a basket of Long tokens] Transferring a Short token moves each of its underlying Long tokens too.* [Diagram: Transferring a Short token moves the whole basket] _* This transfer emits a single Short token transfer event._ ## Auto-merge A Long token and a Short token merge back to eUSDC automatically. [Diagram: Transferring a Short token to a wallet holding the matching Long token causes an auto-merge to eUSDC] ## Wrapping to ERC20 Any position, a Long or a Short of any name, can be wrapped into a standard ERC20 token, and unwrapped back to the ledger at any time. A wrapped position works with ordinary wallets, ERC20 tooling, and DeFi contracts. Unwrapping returns it to the ledger. eUSDC works the same way: it is your uncommitted cash, made portable as a standard token. Wrapping is always the holder's choice; a position only becomes a token when someone wants it to be one. ## $POPX $POPX is planned as a fixed-supply ERC20 with no mint function. The full supply is minted once at deployment and split between distributor contracts and the treasury. Earning accrues continuously on account value ([how earning works](https://docs.popularityx.com/pop)). Distribution happens as claims: at each allocation event, a snapshot of earned records is built into a Merkle tree, the root is published so anyone can recompute it, and holders claim their allocation from a distributor contract, one claim per leaf. Claiming can be gasless, the same way trading is. A plan, not a promise; the schedule lives on the [roadmap](https://docs.popularityx.com/roadmap). ---------------------------------------------------------------- PAGE A-13: Decentralisation URL: https://docs.popularityx.com/decentralisation ---------------------------------------------------------------- # Decentralisation PopularityX is fully on-chain and non-custodial, its prices are set by trading alone with no curator, and anyone can build a pricing mechanism on top without permission. This page sets out those properties, then states what still depends on the team today: owner keys, allowlisted board creation, a hosted relayer, and unaudited contracts, along with the sequence for constraining them. ## Fully on-chain PopularityX is fully on-chain. Positions, balances, and market state all live in smart contracts. The AMM is on-chain too. Nothing is held by PopularityX, and nothing requires PopularityX to be running for your positions or prices to exist. ## Non-custodial Your keys, your funds: everything you hold remains under your control at all times. There is no custodian and no withdrawal request. You interact directly with the contracts. ## No price curator Every alternative measure of who matters requires a curator: someone who decides what counts, how to weight it, and how to update the methodology over time. That decision introduces a single point of bias and control. Price formation has no curator. The price is set entirely by trading activity. No entity, including PopularityX, can move a price without putting capital at risk. Which names appear on a board is a separate question, covered under The trust model today below. ## Permissionless liquidity Anyone can deploy an [AMM](https://docs.popularityx.com/under-the-hood) or order book on top of a live PopularityX board. The Ledger, which holds all positions and enforces solvency, is open. Adding a new pricing mechanism requires no permission from the PopularityX team. ## Open contracts Source code and audit reports will be published ahead of launch. Integration means reading the contracts directly. Hosted services exist for convenience, a relayer for gasless trading and an indexer for price history, but nothing depends on them: every action can be taken directly against the contracts, with your own gas. ## The trust model today The team holds the owner keys today. Creation of new [boards](https://docs.popularityx.com/popularity-markets) is allowlisted, which names appear on a board is decided by the board's creator, fee parameters are owner-set, and the hosted relayer is operated by the team. The contracts are unaudited. Evaluating PopularityX today means trusting the team's operational discipline on those points, bounded by the property above: nothing depends on the team's services, and every action can be taken directly against the contracts. The sequence from here, in order: the security audit; multisig and timelock control, with admin power progressively constrained before real deposits; then permissionless market creation.