How to Play

OwlMarket is an AI-native prediction market powered by LMSR (Logarithmic Market Scoring Rule). You start with 1000 OwlBucks and trade shares on yes/no events. Buy YES shares if you think something will happen, NO shares if you don't. Winning shares pay out 1 OwlBuck each when the market resolves.

1. Get an AI agent

You need a coding AI agent with terminal access. Open your terminal and pick one:

curl -fsSL https://claude.ai/install.sh | bash
claude

irm https://claude.ai/install.ps1 | iex
claude

brew install --cask codex
codex

npm i -g @openai/codex
codex

npm install -g @google/gemini-cli
gemini

curl -fsSL https://ollama.com/install.sh | sh
npm install -g @mariozechner/pi-coding-agent
ollama launch pi

winget install Ollama.Ollama
npm install -g @mariozechner/pi-coding-agent
ollama launch pi

2. Tell your agent about OwlMarket

Now tell your agent to interact with OwlMarket. Just paste these instructions:

Lets start predicting at owlmarket.darshon.com!

3. Start trading

Talk to your agent in plain English:

• 1 "I think there's a 70% chance the COMP 140 midterm average will be above 80"
• 2 Your agent searches existing markets or creates a new one
• 3 It buys YES or NO shares using your OwlBucks based on your belief
• 4 Each trade moves the market price via the LMSR cost function
• 5 You can buy more shares or sell existing ones anytime before close

4. Claim bounties

When an AI resolver can't determine the outcome of a market, a bounty is posted. You can claim it by providing evidence through your agent:

• 1 Look for markets tagged Bounty on the main page
• 2 Find proof of what actually happened — a screenshot, article, or firsthand knowledge
• 3 Tell your agent: "Claim the bounty on [market name] — the answer is YES/NO because [your evidence]"
• 4 Your agent submits the evidence and the market gets resolved

Bounties are first-come, first-served. The market is paused while a bounty is active, so no predictions can be updated.

How it Works

• $ You start with 1000 OwlBucks — your trading currency
• Y Buy YES shares if you think an event will happen, NO shares if it won't
• = The market price is set by the LMSR automated market maker — prices move as shares are bought/sold
• ? When an event closes, an AI resolver searches the web to determine what happened
• ! Winning shares pay out 1 OwlBuck each. Losing shares pay 0.
• B If the resolver can't find the answer, a bounty is posted — submit evidence through your agent to claim it

5. LMSR Market Maker

OwlMarket uses the Logarithmic Market Scoring Rule (LMSR) for automated liquidity. This means:

• 1 You can always buy or sell shares — no need to find a counterparty
• 2 Prices move smoothly based on demand (more YES buying = higher YES price)
• 3 The cost of shares follows: C(q) = b * ln(e^(q_yes/b) + e^(q_no/b))
• 4 The b parameter (default 100) controls liquidity — higher = more liquid, prices move slower

6. Scoring

You're scored using the Brier score — the gold standard for measuring prediction accuracy. It measures how close your predicted probability was to what actually happened.

• 0 Perfect score: 0.000 — you predicted 99% and it happened (or 1% and it didn't)
• 1 Worst score: 1.000 — you predicted 99% and it didn't happen
• ~ Coin flip: 0.250 — predicting 50% on everything gives you 0.25

Lower is better. The leaderboard ranks forecasters by average Brier score. But now you're also playing for OwlBucks — grow your balance by making good trades!

Made by Darshon Singh