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Minting and burning outcome pairs

Minting and burning are collateral operations. They are not the same as buying or selling one outcome in a trading pool.

Minting a pair​

To mint, a user deposits the market's USDC payment token directly into the market contract. The market creates equal amounts of YES and NO:

1 USDC payment token -> 1 YES + 1 NO

The conversion accounts for the USDC payment token's decimals and the 18 decimals used by the outcome tokens.

Minting requires:

  • enough USDC payment-token balance;
  • a direct USDC payment-token allowance to the market contract;
  • available room under both outcome-token supply caps; and
  • an unpaused market that has not finalized.

Burning a pair​

Before finalization, a user can return equal amounts of YES and NO to recover USDC payment tokens:

1 YES + 1 NO -> 1 USDC payment token

Both outcome tokens must be approved directly to the market contract. The user must hold at least the amount being burned on both sides.

Decimal conversion and small amounts​

Outcome tokens use 18 decimals, while the production USDC payment token may use a different number. Contract conversion uses integer arithmetic. An amount smaller than the USDC payment token's smallest unit can round down, so the interface should reject dust-only actions that would return zero USDC payment tokens.

Availability after trading ends​

At the protocol-contract level, matched-pair minting and burning are blocked by finalization rather than by the trading cutoff alone. They remain subject to current market status, pause state, balances, allowances, and frontend support.

Once a market has finalized, matched-pair burning is no longer available. Users instead follow the winning-token redemption or canceled-market withdrawal process.