BAY
0417
Bidding starts before that last line fills in.
Five steps. No mystery except the contents.
- 01SEALThe protocol composes a basket and publishes its commitment hash on-chain. Composition is hidden; the basket's size is public.
- 02AUCTIONA Dutch auction opens on shares of the bay. Price starts high and falls on a fixed schedule.
- 03TAKEThe auction ends when a buyer takes it. Waiting gets a better price but risks losing the bay entirely. That tension is the product.
- 04CLEARAll participants settle at the same clearing price, allocated pro-rata.
- 05REVEALThe contents are disclosed and must match the published hash.
— YOU KNOW THE SIZE OF THE BASKET. YOU BID ON THE SIZE, NOT THE CONTENTS.
Every tick down is a better price and a worse chance of getting it.
Price descends on a fixed schedule. The first buyer to take it ends the auction; everyone else who was in settles at the same clearing price.
ILLUSTRATIVE PRICE SCHEDULE.
WAITING IS NOT FREE.
The hash goes up first.
Before bidding opens, a cryptographic commitment to the basket is written on-chain. When the bay opens, the disclosed contents must match that hash — byte for byte. There is no room to change what was sealed.
— EVERYONE SETTLES AT THE SAME PRICE, WHENEVER THEY ENTERED.
The visual manifest.
A protocol without pictures leaves too much to imagination. Below, the language we use for sealed cargo: crates, plates, manifests, and the routes between them.
Each cycle is a numbered bay. Public size, private contents, an outline you can see from across the room.
A bay is composed, then locked. The commitment hash is the seal that welds the layers into one lot.
Every bay ships with a manifest. Fields that can be public are public. Fields that cannot are struck through until reveal.
Descending price schedule. Each plate below the last is a lower clearing and a smaller chance of getting there first.
Sealed. Numbered. Prioritized. Shared. Opened. Five stages, one direction, no reversing.
Once a bay closes, its clearing price joins the public ledger of prior bays — the signal the market gets back.