How a prediction resolves
Every prediction has a deadline: the time frame you chose when you published. When that moment arrives, aiternam resolves it — decides whether you were right, and by how much. This page is exactly what happens then, including the one outcome people are surprised by: the void.
Resolution is automatic and objective
There is no human in the loop, and no judgment call. When your time frame is reached, the scoring engine:
- reads the outcome price from the same market-data source that was sealed into your prediction at publish time — for crypto, CoinGecko's USD spot price;
- compares it to the entry price that was captured and sealed the moment you published;
- decides correct, wrong, or void, and computes your skill score.
Because the source and the entry price were sealed at creation, nobody — including us — can pick a friendlier price after the fact. The yardstick was chosen before your call, and it never changes. (More on the sealed source in What you can predict on.)
The noise dead-band — why a "correct" tiny move doesn't score
Here is the outcome that generates the most support questions: "The price went my way — why didn't I score?"
Because a move can be too small to mean anything. If you call a volatile coin "up" and it closes 0.3% higher, you didn't forecast anything — that's the asset breathing. Crediting it would reward noise and let people farm points on coin-flips.
So around the entry price there is a dead-band: a zone of "this didn't really move." A bare directional call that lands inside the dead-band is a void — the market stayed inside its normal range, so your call was never tested. It counts for nothing, neither right nor wrong, and never touches your reputation. There is no penalty.
Expect this to happen regularly: on a bare directional call with no particular drift, roughly one in three ends inside the band. That is the arithmetic of a half-sigma corridor, not a judgment on your forecast — and the prediction's chart draws the corridor, so you can see the price path finish inside it rather than take our word for it.
The dead-band is not a flat percentage. It is scaled to your asset over your time frame: roughly half of the asset's typical swing for that horizon (its sealed volatility). A placid asset has a narrow band; a wild one has a wide band. So "a move worth noticing" means the same thing — beyond the noise — whether you called a stablecoin-quiet asset or a volatile one.
Want the dead-band. It is on your side. It protects you from being marked wrong by a meaningless wiggle against you, just as it declines to credit a meaningless wiggle for you. A void is the system admitting the market didn't actually answer your question.
Voids don't apply to target-price calls
If you name a precise target price, the dead-band doesn't apply. A target call asks a sharp, unambiguous question — did it reach this level? — and the answer is always yes or no. There is no "too small to tell": either the asset touched your target or it didn't. That is also why a target call can never void, which changes the risk in a way worth understanding on its own page: Directional vs target-price.
When there's no data — the unresolvable void
Occasionally an asset can't be priced at the deadline — it was delisted, or the data feed has no value for it. The engine retries for a while; if the horizon has passed and the asset is still unpriceable, the prediction is voided as unresolvable rather than left hanging forever. Like any void, it counts for nothing. A prediction with no valid entry price to begin with can never be scored and voids immediately.
The resolution layer is appended, never edited
When a prediction resolves, the outcome — the closing price, whether you were right, your score — is added to it as a separate resolution layer. Your original forecast is not touched. Not one field of what you sealed is altered; the result is written alongside it.
This matters for trust. The immutable thing is the prediction — your commitment, made before the outcome was known. The resolution is derived from it afterward and recorded openly. So a resolved prediction shows both halves honestly: what you said, sealed and unchanged, and what happened, appended and dated.
Next: Confidence is a stake — how the confidence you set sizes the score you get. Or step back to How reputation works.