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Anyone with USDC can open a market on Cyphers. You pick the question, set the close time, post a USDC bond, and earn a share of every bet placed on your market. This guide walks through the whole flow.

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What you get out of it

When you open a market, you earn the market-creator fee (up to 5%) on every single bet placed on it. For a market with $10,000 in volume, that’s $500 in fees collected over the life of the market. You also pay back a small fraction at settlement (the payout ratio adjustment), so your real take is closer to $400 on a $10,000 market with typical settings. Still a real revenue stream if the market actually attracts bettors.

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What you’ll need

  • A connected Solana wallet.
  • A USDC balance of at least $20 (the minimum creator bond).
  • SOL for transaction fees.
  • A clear, resolvable question.

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Pick a good question

This is the single most important decision. A well-formed market question is:
  • Unambiguous. Two reasonable people should read it and agree on what would count as YES vs NO.
  • Resolvable. The answer should come from somewhere a resolver can point to - a price feed, an official announcement, a public event.
  • Time-bounded. Pick a clear close time. Open-ended questions (“Will BTC ever hit $1M?”) don’t work.
Examples that work:
  • “Will BTC close above $100k on Coinbase at 00:00 UTC on 1 Jan 2026?”
  • “Will the Lakers reach the NBA Finals in the 2025-2026 season?”
  • “Will SpaceX successfully land Starship’s first stage by 30 Jun 2026?”
Examples that don’t:
  • “Will crypto go up?” (Ambiguous on every word.)
  • “Will I get a promotion this year?” (Not publicly verifiable.)
  • “Will inflation be high?” (No clear threshold.)

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Open the market

Go to the Create Market page in the app and fill out the form.
1

Pick a market type

  • YesNo for a binary question.
  • MultiOutcome for 2–4 named options.
For when to use which, see Market types.
2

Write the question

For a YesNo market, just type the question. For a MultiOutcome market, type the question and then add up to four labelled options.The app handles the label embedding for you. You just type “Solana”, “Ethereum”, “Base” - the encoding happens behind the scenes.
3

Set the close time

Pick when betting should stop. Common choices:
  • Hours to days for fast-moving questions (a sports event tomorrow, a price snapshot at end of day).
  • Weeks to months for slower events (an election, a quarterly economic report).
The app shows you the close time in your local timezone and in UTC.
4

Choose a resolver

The resolver is the wallet allowed to post the real-world outcome when the market closes. By default it’s you. You can change it to:
  • A trusted team wallet if you’re running the market on behalf of an organization.
  • A multisig for added safety.
  • Yourself if the question has a public outcome you can verify yourself (most common).
5

Set the bond amount

The bond is the USDC you put up front. The minimum is $20. You can post more if you want to signal commitment, but it doesn’t change anything in the protocol.The bond is refunded at settlement, along with your accumulated creator fees.
6

Set the challenge window

This is how long after the resolver posts a result that anyone can flag it as wrong. The window is between 24 and 48 hours.A longer window gives more time for the community to catch errors. A shorter window means winners can claim faster. 24 hours is the common default.
7

Confirm

Click Create market and sign the transaction. Your wallet pops up with two requests:
  1. Approving the USDC bond (an SPL token approval).
  2. The market creation transaction itself.
A few seconds after both confirm, your market shows up in the Markets page.

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What happens after creation

Once the market is live:
  • People can bet on it. Every bet pays you the creator fee.
  • The fees accumulate in the market account - you don’t need to claim each one. They’re settled in a single withdrawal at resolution.
  • When the close time hits, betting stops. The market enters the awaiting resolve phase.
  • You (or your designated resolver) need to post the outcome.

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Resolve the market

When the close time passes and you know the real-world outcome, go to your market’s page in the app. There’s a Resolve button. Pick the correct outcome and sign. For a YesNo market, you pick YES or NO. For a MultiOutcome market, you pick the winning option. The resolution triggers Arcium to decrypt every bet and compute the payouts. About 10 seconds later, the market enters pending resolution - the challenge window begins.
Resolving with the wrong outcome doesn’t immediately move money. The 24–48 hour challenge window gives bettors time to flag a bad resolution. If anyone flags, an admin reviews the situation. So mistakes can be caught, but they slow everything down.
If the resolver doesn’t post a result by the deadline, the market enters refundable and bettors can pull their stakes back. Your bond stays locked until the admin closes things out.

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Withdraw your funds

After the market resolves cleanly and the challenge window closes, you can withdraw the bond plus your accumulated creator fees. Open the market’s page in the app. There’s a Withdraw funds button visible to the creator only. Click it, sign the transaction, and USDC lands in your wallet. That includes:
  • The original bond.
  • The creator fees collected over the life of the market.
  • A small adjustment at settlement (called the payout ratio).

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Cancel before any bets

If you create a market by mistake or want to take it down before anyone bets, you can cancel - but only if zero bets have been placed. Once a single bet lands, cancellation is permanently disabled. Go to the market’s page and click Cancel market. You get your bond back and the market is gone.

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What’s next