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Parimutuel 5 May 22 Update

We are on mainnet!

After a strong rally on the final stretch in the last 2.5 weeks we are happy to announce that the networks parimutuel protocol is on mainnet. Contributors have initiated a 5 minute BTC/USD parimutuel market as the initial mainnet test case. As the network hardens, their intent is to increase the number of markets to 15 - supporting 1, 5, supported markets. We will begin live testing with our closed beta partners soon and hope to open up to the public in the next month.

Why did the last stretch take that long?

That is a fair question, but is also the unfortunate reality of launching new software, especially something as novel as a real-time parimutuel protocol on a blockchain. As we've discussed before, to make a protocol of this nature work, we need to do a lot of cranking and there are loads of accounts constantly created and destroyed. Entering positions into a pool requires creating said pool account, then creating a position account per trader per pool, followed by an entry account per entry per position per pool. All those have to then be settled and destroyed in the reverse order for all rent-exempt SOL to be returned to its rightful owners. Any other order won't do as there won't be enough data on-chain for validations and getting both those restrictions right as well as the cranking respecting the order at high velocity was challenging.

OK, what next?

Our immediate priority is to have our closed beta partners examine the mechanics of the protocol and to "break it". We also need to work on some cost optimizations in the cranking process so we can scale to all markets and timeframes. Contributors have built a Python SDK & API ready for release which we will soon make available to use.
Last, we will soon aim to deploy SAMM - the Parimutuel Automated Market Maker to allow parimutuel market participants and operators to scaffold liquidity on new markets. Additionally, a number of operators partnerships have been consumated and will bring flow from various sources to parimutuel pools as the network moves into an open beta.