Resolution & Disputes

How Aura’s optimistic oracle settles markets, and how the commit/reveal vote handles 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, neutral $AURA stakers settle it through a tier-weighted commit/reveal vote.

Submitting an outcome

Once a market reaches its end date, anyone can submit a proposed outcome (YES, NO, or one of the categorical options) 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.

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 — the loser’s bond is forfeit, the winner’s is doubled.

The commit/reveal vote

The vote runs in two phases to prevent voters from copying each other’s choices:

1. Commit phase

   Eligible voters submit a hashed vote: keccak256(choice || salt). The choice is one of YES, NO, or TOO_EARLY (see below). Nobody can see what anyone else voted for during this phase.

2. Reveal phase

   Once the commit window closes, voters reveal their vote by submitting the original choice and salt. The contract verifies the hash and counts the vote with the voter’s tier weight.

3. Finalization

   After the reveal phase, the protocol checks whether any single outcome cleared the 65% supermajority threshold of revealed weight.

The build-tx endpoints for this flow are POST /v1/tx/oracle/commit and POST /v1/tx/oracle/reveal.

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.

The TOO_EARLY option

Some disputes shouldn’t resolve in either direction — 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 market is canceled:

• All open positions are unwound; share holders are refunded.
• Both the proposer’s and disputer’s bonds go to the disputer (the proposer made an avoidable mistake).
• Trading fees collected up to that point go to the treasury.

Eligibility

Only neutral $AURA stakers can vote in a dispute:

• You must hold a vaulted $AURA position above the **None** tier (i.e. at least the **Iron** tier, 60,000$AURA).
• You must not hold any open position in the disputed market and must not have traded it during the dispute window. The contract enforces this by checking the market’s stake-holder registry — any address that placed an order is excluded.

What happens if no outcome clears 65%?

If neither YES, NO, nor TOO_EARLY clears the supermajority threshold, the round is inconclusive. The protocol immediately starts a new commit/reveal round with the same windows. This repeats until an outcome wins decisively.

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.

Voting power

Voting weight matches your staking tier:

Tier	Voting weight
Degenerate	30
Diamond	22
Platinum	16
Gold	11
Silver	7
Bronze	3
Iron	1
None	0 (cannot vote)

See Tier Structure for stake requirements.

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

Bonds & finalization

After a vote round resolves with a clear winner:

• Bonds — the winning side’s representative (proposer or disputer) receives the full proposer + disputer bond pool.
• Settlement — winning share holders are paid out automatically in USDT.
• Penalty bookkeeping — once applyVotePenalties and applyNonVoterPenalties finish slashing, the penalty pool is finalized and winning voters can claim their rewards.

TL;DR

• Most markets resolve without a vote — 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 cancels the market and refunds traders.
• Voters are paid in $AURA from a slashing pool, not in USDT fees.