Supported markets
The engine resolves yes/no questions that independent data providers can answer with structured, final data.
What can be resolved
The engine is not limited to one kind of event. It can resolve any yes/no question whose answer comes from structured, final data that meets the data source standard.
Coverage today
The /taxonomies endpoint lists the competitions in coverage.
Coverage is defined per question, not per competition. A covered competition means its match results are supported; a specific statistic, such as a player's passing yards, is supported only when enough providers report it.
Other categories can be added where qualifying data sources exist. To discuss coverage beyond what is currently available, contact the Chainlink team.
Market types
Every market is a yes/no question. The Market Registry API classifies each one with a market_type:
market_type | Market format | Example question |
|---|---|---|
moneyline | Winner of a match. In a three-way sport, the draw has its own market. | "Will New York Yankees win?" |
draw | The match ends in a draw. Used in sports such as soccer. | "Will the match end in a draw?" |
outright | Season or tournament winner. | "Will Player A win the tournament?" |
spread | A participant covers the listed line. | "Will Team A win by more than 1.5 runs?" |
total | The combined score is over or under the listed line. | "Will the match have more than 2.5 total goals?" |
prop | A player or team metric against a target. | "Will Player A record more than 274.5 passing yards?" |
binary | Any other yes/no question. | "Will it rain in New York City on August 20?" |
A market resolves to YES, NO, or, where its rule allows a tie to pay out 50/50, PUSH.
Event types
Most markets belong to an ordinary fixture, such as one game. Some belong to an event that Chainlink derives from a season or a bracket:
event_type | Event |
|---|---|
match | An ordinary fixture. |
championship | A season or conference champion, derived from the postseason. |
series | A playoff series winner, derived from a round and a pair of teams. |
elimination_tournament | A tournament or elimination draw. |
A championship has no scheduled start until its deciding round is scheduled.
The data-source standard
Chainlink resolves a market only when its answer can come from data that meets this standard:
- At least two independent providers. Automated resolution requires agreement between at least two independent providers that report the facts the question needs.
- Single authoritative sources by exception. A single source is accepted only when it is the official origin of the data, such as government-published economic data or a league's official data feed, and only after a review and approval process. Aggregators never qualify.
- Machine-readable and tested. A provider must offer a structured API that the workflow can call without human intervention. Chainlink tests it end to end against historical outcomes before relying on it.
- Durable access. Access must be contracted or officially published. Chainlink does not resolve markets from scraped pages or undocumented endpoints.
Questions without a qualifying source are not resolved automatically. This includes subjective questions and questions that need custom tracking, such as counting a person's social media posts.
How markets enter the catalog
Chainlink adds and maintains coverage. It registers coverage for a whole season, tournament, or competition, and new events appear in the Market Registry as providers schedule them. Your platform discovers them through the same API, without a per-market request.
Before coverage goes live, Chainlink matches the competition's events to the exact fixtures at each provider and confirms that the markets' rules produce the known results on historical events.
To ask for coverage that is not in the catalog, contact the Chainlink team. TODO: Add the request channel.
Resolution criteria
Every market carries resolution_criteria: a one-sentence summary of how it resolves, for example:
Resolves YES if the New York Yankees win according to SportsDataio and OddsPapi.
The summary is built from the market's question and states:
- The condition that resolves the market
YES. - The data providers, when the event has them.
- The tie treatment, when a tie pays out 50/50: "In the event of a tie the market resolves 50/50."
resolution_criteria is a display summary, not a complete rulebook. Full resolution terms come from your agreement with Chainlink.
Next steps
- Trust and failure handling: How agreement is checked and what happens when it fails.
- List markets: Retrieve markets and their resolution criteria through the API.