Market integrity

Nobody trades a market they control or hold non-public information about. Four layers enforce this, and every block is recorded. • The person who created a market cannot trade it, and neither can the person who resolves it. • Named individuals can be placed on a restricted list — either barred from a specific market or from all of them. For a market about a named person, that person and the people close to the outcome are entered before the market goes live. • A second account confirmed to belong to the same person as a market's creator or resolver is covered too — a restriction is not escaped by trading from a different login. • Confirmed linked accounts taking opposite sides of the same market are flagged for review. If a restriction check cannot run, the order is held rather than allowed through. Being blocked in error is recoverable; a self-dealt trade is not.

Monitoring runs off the trading path — it reviews activity after the fact and raises a case for a person to look at. It does not silently cancel your trades. What it looks for, described in general terms: unusual position-building shortly before a market resolves, especially by someone connected to that market; the same pattern repeated across several markets run by the same operator; accounts that behave as though they are being coordinated; and trading patterns that move a price without genuine two-sided interest. We deliberately do not publish the thresholds or time windows these checks use. Publishing them would tell anyone trying to manipulate a market exactly how to stay under the line. What we will always tell you is that a flag is a case for review by a person, not an automatic penalty, and that enforcement decisions can be appealed.

Election markets settle on the results authority's validated official results — not on a media projection, and not on a network calling a race. A market can stay open after the outcome looks obvious, because “looks obvious” is not the standard we settle on. A judicial recount concluded inside the market's dispute window is honoured. A recount concluded after the window stands, per the finality rule written into the market's own criteria before it opened. Election markets are settled by a person against the official declaration, never by an automatic feed, and each one names its results authority on the market page.

A market about what a named person will say or do is reviewed before it publishes. It is never auto-published by the market generator. Before it can go live: it has to match a section of the listing standard; the subject and the people close to the outcome are entered on the restricted list so they cannot trade it; the title and description are screened for prohibited content; resolution is set to human-in-the-loop rather than the automatic sweep; the counting or judging rules are published and linked on the market; and an administrator approves it explicitly. Some subjects are off the table entirely — minors, private individuals, and anything framed around a person's death, injury, or illness. Those are set out in the listing standard.

If you think a market is mis-specified, has settled incorrectly, or is being manipulated, the dispute window on the market is the direct route: every resolved market can be challenged while its window is open, and the market page shows whether it still is. Enforcement decisions that affect your account are appealable. A surveillance flag is a case for review, not a verdict.