Resolution & Disputes

Aura uses an optimistic oracle: most markets resolve without any vote. A bonded proposer states the outcome, and if no one disputes within the challenge window, that outcome stands. When a market is disputed, $AURA stakers settle it through a tier-weighted commit/reveal vote.

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Submitting an outcome

Once a market reaches its end date, anyone can submit a proposed outcome (YES or NO; TOO_EARLY is a dispute-vote option rather than a submittable outcome) by posting a refundable proposer bond in USDT. This opens a dispute window.

• If no one disputes the proposal before the dispute deadline, the market automatically resolves to that outcome.
• The proposer’s bond is refunded in full.

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Initiating a dispute

If another user disagrees, they can initiate a dispute by posting an equal disputer bond in USDT before the dispute deadline. The market then enters a structured commit/reveal vote. Both the proposer and the disputer have funds at stake, and the loser’s bond is forfeit. The winner gets their own bond back plus half of the loser’s bond; the other half goes to the protocol treasury. (Paying the winner the full loser bond would make a self-dispute free, since you could propose from one wallet and dispute from another, enabling risk-free griefing of voters.)

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The commit/reveal vote

The vote runs in two phases to prevent voters from copying each other’s choices: The build-tx endpoints for this flow are POST /v1/tx/oracle/commit and POST /v1/tx/oracle/reveal.

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Why commit/reveal?

A naive “vote in one transaction” design lets later voters mirror earlier ones, which collapses the vote into whatever the first big voter does. Commit/reveal forces every voter to lock in their answer privately first, then prove it after the deadline. The result is an honest snapshot of what each voter believed at vote time.

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The TOO_EARLY option

Some disputes shouldn’t resolve in either direction, because the underlying event hasn’t actually happened yet, the data source isn’t out, or the question is malformed. Voters can pick TOO_EARLY to signal this. If TOO_EARLY clears the 65% supermajority, the submitted outcome is thrown out and the market goes back to open:

• Trading continues uninterrupted. Nothing is cancelled, no positions are unwound, and nobody is refunded. Your shares and resting orders stay exactly where they were.
• Trading fees stay with the market. They keep accruing and are only paid out to the creator, treasury, and referrers once the market eventually resolves YES or NO.
• The disputer won, so they get their own bond back plus half of the proposer’s bond (the proposer called it too early); the other half goes to the treasury.
• No voter rewards are paid on a TOO_EARLY round. The slashed $AURA rolls forward into the penalty pool for the market’s next dispute round.

Anyone can submit an outcome again later, which opens a fresh dispute window. This is what stops a premature or bad-faith submission from killing a live market: the worst it can do is cost the proposer half their bond.

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Eligibility

Voting is open to $AURA stakers:

• You must hold a vaulted $AURA position above the **None** tier (i.e. at least the **Iron** tier, 60,000$AURA) at commit time.
• Your staked balance is snapshotted when you commit, so unstaking between commit and reveal doesn’t dodge the slashing risk.

There is no on-chain restriction on voting in markets you’ve traded; your protection against biased voting is the 65% supermajority requirement and the slashing economics, since a voter risks real $AURA to push a wrong outcome.

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What happens if no outcome clears 65%?

If neither YES, NO, nor TOO_EARLY clears the supermajority threshold, the round is inconclusive. The protocol starts a new commit/reveal round with the same windows. This repeats until an outcome wins decisively. A restart does not amnesty silent voters: anyone who committed in the inconclusive round and never revealed is slashed before the new round opens. Only then does the round counter advance, so sitting out the reveal can’t be used to dodge the penalty by forcing a restart. This is intentional. Aura would rather take longer to resolve a contested market than ship a 51/49 result that half the market disagrees with.

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Voting power

Voting weight matches your staking tier: See Tier Structure for stake requirements.

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Voter rewards (and penalties)

Aura’s dispute system uses slashing, not protocol fees, to reward honest voting:

• Wrong-side voters. Anyone who revealed a vote for the losing outcome has 0.1% of their vaulted $AURA slashed per vote.
• Non-revealers. Stakers who committed but never revealed (or never committed at all) are slashed by the same amount, since silent voters undermine the oracle.
• Slashed $AURA flows into a penalty pool for that market.
• Winning voters then claim a proportional share of the penalty pool, weighted by their voting tier.

Dispute rewards are paid in **AURA**, so the wrong side of a controversial market literally funds the right side. See [Staking & Vaulting AURA](/tokens/staking) for the slashing mechanics in detail.

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Bonds & finalization

After a vote round resolves with a clear winner:

• Bonds. The winning side’s representative (proposer or disputer) gets their own bond back plus 50% of the loser’s bond; the remaining 50% goes to the treasury.
• Settlement. Winning share holders are paid out automatically in USDT.
• Penalty bookkeeping. Eligible stakers who never committed are slashed during the reveal window itself; wrong-side voters and non-revealers are slashed after finalization. The penalty pool can only be finalized once every committed vote has been revealed or slashed (penalties can’t be silently skipped), and only then do winning voters receive their $AURA rewards.

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If the protocol is ever paused

Pausing the oracle (an emergency admin action) freezes the entire dispute pipeline: submissions, disputes, votes, finalization, and slashing. Because on-chain clocks keep ticking through a pause, any dispute round or challenge window the pause cut into is voided and restarted, not silently expired: interrupted vote rounds re-open with full commit/reveal windows after unpause (nobody from the voided round can be slashed), and interrupted outcome submissions are unwound with the proposer’s bond refunded. A pause can never burn your voting window or force an outcome through unchallenged.

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TL;DR

• Most markets resolve without a vote, and only disputed ones go through the commit/reveal flow.
• Voters lock a hashed vote, then reveal it; copy-voting is prevented.
• A 65% supermajority is required; otherwise a new round runs.
• TOO_EARLY throws out the submission and returns the market to trading.
• The dispute loser forfeits their bond: half to the winner, half to the treasury.
• Voters are paid in $AURA from a slashing pool, not in USDT fees.