How a market appears
On an exchange, a market appears when a committee approves it. On BATHRON, a market appears when someone can settle it. This page walks through that moment — who does what, who pays what, and where the protocol stops.
Four steps, no gate
1. INVENTORY 2. QUOTES 3. SETTLEMENT 4. OTHERS JOIN
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someone holds publishes signed a counterparty another provider
the asset (PIVX, bid/ask for accepts; the M1 leg quotes the same
DOGE, LTC, BTC…) PIVX/M1 — off-chain, settles on BATHRON, pair, tighter,
and M1 on any relay the external leg on or deeper
its own native chain,
linked by compatible
conditions
│ │ │ │
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no listing committee approves the pair — the protocol only settles step 3
Step 1 — inventory. A market maker holds the asset to be paired and M1. M1 is acquired either from an existing holder or by the one-way route (destroy BTC, receive M0, lock it into M1 — → From destroyed BTC to M1). Creating M0 by burn irreversibly destroys BTC. The resulting protocol position is transferable and may acquire a market value that the protocol neither fixes, supports nor predicts. Whether an activity recovers its economic cost is a commercial outcome, not a protocol guarantee.
Step 2 — quotes. The maker publishes signed quotes: pair, bid, ask, size, expiry. They travel off-chain — a relay, an HTTP endpoint, a message bus. The consensus never sees a quote and never needs to. → Quotes live off-chain
Step 3 — settlement. A taker accepts a quote. If the pair is BTC/M1, the M1 leg settles on BATHRON and the BTC leg on Bitcoin, the two linked by one hashlock so that claiming either reveals what unlocks the other; if the other asset lives on a chain with hashlocks and timelocks, the same pattern applies; if it is an M1-denominated position (a hedge, an escrow), a covenant settles it. The BATHRON leg is the only step consensus performs, and it performs it identically for every market.
Step 4 — others join. Nothing about the pair is registered, so nothing needs to be joined "officially". A second provider publishes a tighter quote and the market has two makers. A third arbitrages against an external venue. The pair deepens because it is profitable to deepen, not because anyone was invited.
Who pays what
| Party | Pays | Earns |
|---|---|---|
| Liquidity Provider | inventory cost (the BTC destroyed to acquire M0 is gone), capital, market risk | the spread |
| Clearing Provider | orchestration, deadlines, service | explicit fees |
| Taker | the spread and fees, disclosed in the quote | the settlement it wanted |
| Operators | running consensus | block fees only — no reward, no subsidy |
Competition compresses spreads; the protocol guarantees none of it and takes none of it.
What "no permission" means precisely
Anyone can build, quote, pair and settle on BATHRON without asking permission. Operator admission is not yet open: the current operator set is project-run while the open-admission threat model is worked. → Status & claims
The first half is a property of the design: the consensus does not know which pairs exist, so it cannot gate them. The second half is where the network is today.
What a market cannot do
It cannot make the protocol publish its price, favour its provider, or guarantee its liquidity. A pair nobody quotes is simply silent — not delisted, silent — and it comes back the moment someone quotes it again. Nobody can revoke what nobody granted.