Polynuts is a non-custodial prediction market for crypto price direction, built on Base mainnet. Users bet on whether BTC or ETH will PUMP (close above a strike), DUMP (close below), or RANGE (stay within a band) over a fixed window — today, tomorrow, or next week.
Max loss = your bet. Settlement is automatic and trustless. No account, no withdrawal request, no custody.
Polymarket's UX, Deribit's pricing infrastructure, and no one in the middle.
| Polynuts | Polymarket | |
|---|---|---|
| Settlement | Automatic, on-chain oracle | Manual (UMA oracle, disputable) |
| Custody | Non-custodial (your wallet, your keys) | Custodial (USDC locked in their contracts) |
| Pricing | On-chain payout simulation (real option math) | AMM-driven (pool imbalance pricing) |
| Market types | Binary + spreads, butterflies, condors | Binary only |
| Markets | Crypto price direction (objective, instant) | Everything (often resolved slowly) |
| Infrastructure | Audited, live options vaults (Thetanuts V4) | Custom AMM |
- No options jargon. "Will ETH pump today?" instead of "Buy 0.5Δ call, $3200 strike."
- Fixed risk. No liquidation, no margin calls.
- Minimum bet $1. Accessible at any size.
- Wallet-native. No KYC, no account, no email.
- No leverage risk. Max loss is the bet.
- No funding rates. Clear binary outcome.
- Shorter time horizons (hourly/daily/weekly), not open-ended.
Polynuts is not a prediction market that hand-rolls its own AMM. It's a frontend over Thetanuts V4 — an audited, institutional-grade options vault protocol live since 2021.
The difference matters:
- Orders are maker-signed. A market maker (professional options firm) sets the strike, premium, and collateral cap. Polynuts routes takers to the best available order.
- Payout math is on-chain. Every multiplier and implied probability shown in the UI comes from
simulatePayout()called against the live contract — not a formula Polynuts invented. - Settlement is trustless. The Deribit index price is recorded on-chain at expiry. Winners claim USDC without any Polynuts involvement.
- No smart contract risk Polynuts controls. The OptionBook and vault contracts are Thetanuts' — Polynuts is a referrer/aggregator.
User Browser
│
├── Next.js 16 App Router (React 19, TypeScript, Tailwind)
│ ├── /markets — browse active markets
│ ├── /market/[id] — trade panel (bet, approve, fill)
│ ├── /portfolio — open positions + PnL
│ ├── /leaderboard — ranked traders, win rates, PnL
│ └── /activity — per-wallet trade history
│
├── RainbowKit + wagmi (MetaMask, Coinbase Wallet, Rainbow, WalletConnect)
│
├── Thetanuts Client SDK (@thetanuts-finance/thetanuts-client)
│ ├── Odette API — ~350 active signed orders, polled every 30s
│ ├── previewFillOrder() — compute contracts + collateral before signing
│ ├── simulatePayout() — on-chain payout at any settlement price (for odds display)
│ ├── fillOrder() — submit signed tx to OptionBook contract on Base
│ └── getUserPositions/History() — indexer-backed position tracking
│
├── Base Mainnet (chainId 8453)
│ ├── OptionBook contract — receives fills, locks collateral
│ ├── Option contract (per fill) — holds user's position
│ └── Deribit oracle — posts settlement price at expiry
│
├── Supabase (Postgres + RLS)
│ ├── trades — write-on-fill, recovered by cron
│ ├── settlements — indexed from Thetanuts after expiry
│ └── leaderboard_v — view: win rate, realized PnL per address
│
└── Vercel Cron (every 30 min)
└── /api/cron/sync-leaderboard — recover missed fills, sync settlements
Stack: Next.js 16 · React 19 · TypeScript · Tailwind · wagmi v2 · viem · ethers v6 · RainbowKit · React Query · Zustand · Supabase · Base mainnet
Prediction markets are having their breakout moment. Polymarket hit $1B+ in monthly volume in 2024. The TAM is anyone who wants to express a directional view on anything — and crypto price direction is the most liquid, most globally accessible version of that.
The gap Polynuts fills:
- Polymarket markets on crypto price resolve slowly (manual oracle, hours of dispute window) and are custodial.
- On-chain options (Deribit, Lyra, Premia) are inaccessible to most retail users — options jargon, margin, Greeks.
- No one has combined Polymarket-style UX with real options infrastructure and trustless settlement.
The regulatory angle: Binary options on crypto price are simpler to structure compliantly than perps or leveraged products — no liquidation, no leverage, fixed risk per trade.
- $4.4M lifetime volume
- 10,899 trades executed
- 243 active markets at any moment
- 241 days live on mainnet
- ETH and BTC markets with intraday, daily, and weekly expiries
- ~350 orders always available from professional market makers
Every fill includes a referrer fee built into the Thetanuts V4 protocol. Polynuts captures this fee (set via NEXT_PUBLIC_REFERRER_ADDRESS) on every bet — without touching user funds, without any custody.
This is a pure fee-on-fill model:
- No spread markup
- No protocol tax on winnings
- No hidden fees — the taker pays the premium plus a flat 0.10% broker fee, disclosed upfront
- Mobile-first — WalletConnect already works; native PWA or React Native shell
- More assets — SOL, DOGE, XRP, AVAX markets already served by Thetanuts; surface in UI
- Copy trading — one-click "follow this wallet's direction bets"
- Farcaster Frames — bet from a frame, share wins to feed
- Maker interface — let power users post their own orders
- Vaults — passive "bet-with-the-house" yield product
- Base mainnet has the wallet density (Coinbase ecosystem, 10M+ users with Base wallets).
- Thetanuts V4 infrastructure is live and audited — no smart contract build time.
- Polymarket proved the prediction market UX works at scale. Polynuts is the version where settlement is trustless and pricing is honest.
- The macro window for on-chain derivatives is open: DeFi summer II is perps + options + prediction markets, not just spot.