This page is the honest breakdown of what comes out of every bet you place on Cyphers. Two small fees, a payout calculated from the pool ratios, and that’s it.
Two fees come out of every bet
When you place a bet, two fees are deducted before the rest enters the pool:
| Fee | Typical rate | Maximum | Goes to |
|---|
| Protocol fee | 0.5% | 1% | The protocol treasury |
| Market-creator fee | 1.5% | 5% | Whoever opened the market |
$5 bet, the breakdown is:
| Step | Amount |
|---|
| Your bet | $5.00 |
| Protocol fee (0.5%) | −$0.025 |
| Market-creator fee (1.5%) | −$0.075 |
| Goes into the pool | $4.90 |
$0.10, which is 2% of the bet. That’s typical. For comparison, traditional sportsbooks charge 5–10% and centralized prediction markets often charge similar amounts.
The exact rates can be tuned by the protocol. The app shows you the actual fees before you confirm - always check there.
How odds work
Each side of a market has its own pool - the total USDC bet on that side. The odds you see come straight from the pool ratios.
The intuition:
- If
$1000 is on YES and $1000 is on NO, the odds are even. Betting $1 on either side, you’d win roughly $1 if you’re right.
- If
$3000 is on YES and $1000 is on NO, YES is the favorite. Betting on YES wins less, betting on NO wins more.
- More precisely: your potential payout depends on the total pool divided by the side you bet on. If you bet on the smaller side and win, you get a bigger multiplier.
If you want to know exactly what’s happening behind the scenes:
entryOdds = totalPool / yourSidePool
$3000 YES, $1000 NO example:
- Betting on YES:
4000 / 3000 = 1.33× your stake if YES wins.
- Betting on NO:
4000 / 1000 = 4× your stake if NO wins.
Your entryOdds are locked in the moment your bet lands. Even if everyone piles into your side after you, your payout is computed against the odds you got at submission time. This protects early bettors from getting their returns diluted.
Payouts at settlement
When the market closes and Arcium decrypts every position, the protocol does one final calculation - the payout ratio - to make sure the total payouts can’t exceed what’s actually in the vault.
For a clean market, the payout ratio is roughly 1. You get back what your locked-in odds promised. In edge cases (lots of fees taken, very imbalanced pools), it can be slightly less.
The app shows you the projected payout on each of your positions in the Positions tab. When you claim, the protocol pays out automatically - no math on your end.
The creator’s bond
Opening a market requires a USDC bond from the creator - at least $20. The bond is held in the market until resolution, then returned along with the creator’s accumulated LP fees.
The bond exists for two reasons:
- Sybil resistance. It costs USDC to spin up a market, so nobody can spam thousands of junk markets.
- Skin in the game. A creator who vanishes during resolution loses access to their bond until the dispute period closes.
The bond is fully refundable on a clean resolution. It’s not a fee - just collateral.
Minimum bet
Every market on Cyphers has a minimum bet of $1 USDC. Bets below this are rejected. Most markets accept anything from $1 to whatever you have in your wallet.
What’s next
