Proof Desk · Field Dispatch 13
The catalogue, bounded by resolution
13
Dispatch 13prediction markets · resolution

What can
be a market.

Nobody runs out of things to bet on. They run out of ways to say what happened in time. A market whose outcome takes longer to establish than the market itself lasts does not trade badly, it cannot exist. Below are twenty-seven of them. Drag resolution latency from a two-day committee down to ten seconds and watch the catalogue fill in.

Markets that can exist
2/27
25 cannot exist at this resolution latency.
Resolution latency 2dhuman committee
2d6h1h5m1m10s

01 · The rule

One inequality decides the catalogue.

Fermah states the design rule in a single line, and it is more severe than it first reads. If establishing what happened takes longer than the market is open, the market never settles while anyone still holds a position. That is not a liquidity problem or a demand problem. It is a market that cannot be listed.

resolution latencyhow long until the outcome is known
<
market lifetimehow long anyone can trade it
48h
supports
multi-day markets
1h
supports
daily markets
minutes
support
hourly markets
seconds
support
block-scale markets

Targets as published by Fermah, Aug 2026.

02 · The curve

Every step down in latency opens a new shelf.

The same twenty-seven market types, evaluated at each resolution regime. Nothing about the traders changes between rows. Only how fast someone can say what happened.

03 · What disappears

The shelf a committee can never stock.

Everything below needs an answer faster than two days. With a human in the resolution loop, none of it can be listed. These are not exotic edge cases. They are the markets people already argue about in real time: the next goal, the gas spike, the view count, the rain.

The bottleneck is deciding what happened, not finding something to trade.
Paraphrasing Fermah, Sep 30, 2026, on 100,000+ production markets hitting the same ceiling.
04 · Method

The catalogue is open. Change the numbers.

Every cell on this page is evaluated in your browser by the same file that ships in the repository. Add a market, change a lifetime, and the curve redraws itself.

catalog-sim
Twenty-seven market types, each with a lifetime and a resolution requirement, and the one rule that decides which survive. Six tests, one dependency-free file, runs in Node and the browser.
# the whole curve in one screen
npm run demo

# the rule, the curve, the catalogue
npm test

Lifetimes and resolution requirements are representative, chosen to describe each market type rather than measured from any venue: a tennis set, a block, a rush hour, an election. The argument is the shape of the curve, not any single cell. The production figures quoted from Fermah (100,000+ markets, 1M+ markets resolved) are their stated numbers, not independently verified here.

Sources

  1. Fermah on resolution latency setting the shortest viable market, and the design rule latency < market lifetime with published targets. @fermah_xyz, Aug 29, 2026.
  2. Fermah on human resolution determining which prediction markets can exist. @fermah_xyz, Sep 4, 2026.
  3. Fermah on the prediction market catalogue being bounded by the ability to resolve outcomes. @fermah_xyz, Sep 30, 2026.
  4. Kernel, the Protocol Agency Engine, and Flashcast, the prediction market app running on it. fermah.xyz, flashcast.social
  5. The model behind every cell on this page. catalog-sim

This dispatch is an independent model built by this desk. It is not published by Fermah. Their thesis is theirs; the catalogue, the numbers and any errors in them are mine.