The oath lifecycle
From promise to payout.
An oath is a goal with money on it and a crowd watching. Here's every stage — from the moment you swear to it, to the moment proof settles who was right.
The anatomy of an oath.
Five parts. Lock them in and the oath becomes a bettable object the whole crowd can act on.
Goal
The promise, in plain first-person.
Deadline
When the clock stops and proof is checked.
Stake
Your own money on yourself — the signal you mean it.
Proof condition
Exactly what counts as kept, set up front.
Betting pool
What the crowd adds, backing or fading.
Making an oath.
You state the goal, set a deadline, and stake your own money. Then come the gates that make the whole thing work. To open a public pool, an oath must be binary, objectively measurable, hard-deadlined, pre-proofed, and substantially within your own control. That last one is load-bearing: you can oath on shipping your app or losing 15 lbs — not on your team winning or Bitcoin hitting $100k. Those are outside events, not commitments.
Fail a gate and you're never rejected outright — the oath becomes a personal oath: just your own stake on the line, no public betting. Pass them all and it's an open oath with a crowd pool.
Walk the create flow →The betting.
Once an oath is live, the crowd takes sides. Backingmeans you believe they'll do it. Fadingmeans you bet they won't. Every bet flows into one pool, and the split between the two sides is the live odds — it shifts in real time as money lands. Stake limits keep any single bettor from owning the pool.
Verification — the core.
Money's on the line, so outcomes have to be real. Every oath picks one of four methods at creation. The principle never changes: the condition is set up front, proof settles it, and there are no judgment calls after the fact.
Connected data
Automatic, read straight from an API — Strava, GitHub, follower counts, chess ratings, a connected scale. The cleanest proof there is.
Neutral judge
A named third party both sides agreed on before betting opened. They confirm the outcome; their call is final.
Community verdict
A randomly-assigned jury reviews the submitted evidence and votes. Majority decides. For things a sensor can’t read.
Mutual confirm + dispute
Both parties confirm; if they disagree, it escalates to a judge or jury. The fallback that catches everything else.
Disputes
Oracle results are final— the data is the verdict, so there's nothing to dispute. That's why we funnel as many oaths as possible into oracles. A judge, jury, or mutual result can be challenged within a fixed window and escalates to a community jury, whose verdict is final. Funds stay in escrow until settlement is final, and a frivolous dispute costs the disputer a bond — so it can't be used to stall payouts.
Settlement & payout.
When the deadline hits, proof is checked and the pool settles. The winning side splits the losing side's money in proportion to their stakes. Oath takes a small platform fee on the distributed pool — and nothing if an oath is voided. Keep your oath and your stake comes back with your winnings; break it and the doubters take it.
See the fee structureReputation.
Every oath becomes part of your public record — oaths kept, oaths broken, your win rate. It's the moat: it's why people trust (or doubt) your next promise. Bettors build a record too, as judges of who actually delivers.
What you can't oath on.
If it can't be proven, it can't be bet on. The no-go list:
- ✕ Subjective or unverifiable goals
- ✕ Anything illegal
- ✕ Outcomes that harm others
- ✕ Things you can’t prove with data, a judge, or a jury