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 and the yield never dilutes it.

Where it goes

Both streams accrue to the protocol, and neither is paid out to any account. $POPX 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.