Whitepaper · v1.0
Firstprint: prediction markets on crypto tokens
A public, scored way to call where a crypto token’s price lands, with no capital at risk.
Abstract
In trading, the first print is a token’s very first trade. Firstprint started with that moment, the most watched hours in a token’s life, and now runs prediction markets on crypto tokens in general: new exchange listings, trending tokens and established tokens with a live price. Players stake points on where the price will be at the result time compared with a start price, across five outcomes from Crash to Moon (or a Yes/No question). Correct predictions share the pool, with a bonus for calling it early. Every result is public, so a player’s record becomes a track record.
The product is live with free points, no cash value, and an on-chain layer on Solana’s test network where points move as the TestFPT token. This paper describes the market design, how prices and payouts work, the rules that keep markets fair, the on-chain layer, the business model and the path to value-backed markets.
1The problem
Crypto trades around the clock, and everyone has a view on where a token goes next. Calls spread across X and Telegram, opinions are loud and prices move fast. New listings are the sharpest case: every week major centralised exchanges list new tokens, and the first hours of trading see thin order books, wide spreads and violent wicks.
- Opinions are unscored. Calls in group chats are never checked, so there is no way to tell skill from noise.
- Expressing a view is costly. Trading means real capital, fees and often leverage; for a fresh listing, it also means the worst liquidity of the token’s life.
- General prediction markets don’t cover it. Their inventory is elections, sports and macro; a market on one token’s price over the next days, across several exchanges, is too short-lived and too frequent for them.
Firstprint turns a token’s next move into a clean, time-boxed question with a public answer.
2Market design
The five-outcome ladder
A ladder market asks where the price will be at the result time, as a change from the start price. The range is split into five outcomes:
| Outcome | Price at the result vs the start price |
|---|---|
| Moon | +50% or better |
| Up | +10% to +50% |
| Flat | −10% to +10% |
| Down | −50% to −10% |
| Crash | −50% or worse |
Five outcomes keep the question simple while rewarding a sharper view than up-or-down. Thresholds are set per market, so a calmer token can use tighter bands.
Yes/No markets
A binary market asks one question, such as “will the price be at or above $0.25 when the result is posted?”. The target is the market’s start price; Yes and No stakes go into one pool, shared by whoever is right.
Market life cycle
- Draft and review. A market starts as a draft, either from a detected listing or set up by an operator for a trending or established token. An operator checks the token, logo, exchanges and times, then publishes it.
- Upcoming. A listing market can open before the token trades. Its start price is unknown until trading begins.
- Open. Players predict until predictions close, at most three days.
- Countdown. Predictions are closed and the start price is locked; the market counts down to its result time, usually 7 to 30 days later.
- Settled or cancelled. The result is posted and the pool is paid out, or the market is cancelled and every stake is refunded.
3Start and result prices
Prices are noisy, and a new listing’s first minutes are the noisiest of all. Firstprint never uses a single trade as a reference.
- Start price at the close. For a token that is already trading, the start price is its price at the exact moment predictions close, read from the market’s sources (the median when several answer). A token that climbs while predictions are open gives nobody an edge, because the move is measured from the close.
- Opening price for upcoming markets. When a token starts trading, the start price is the median of the closes of its 2nd to 4th one-minute candles, skipping the chaotic first minute. A market only opens once trades have been flowing for a few minutes and the live price is within 10% of that reference.
- Averaged windows. In automatic mode the start and result prices are one-hour averages of one-minute candles, combined across exchanges as a volume-weighted median, so a wick on one venue can’t decide a market.
- Coverage checks. A window must have real candles in at least half of its minutes and a minimum number of trades, or the market is cancelled rather than settled on bad data.
Today, production markets are published by operators. At the exact result time the server reads the price from each of the market’s sources (the one-minute candle ending at that moment, the median across sources) and posts the result by itself: winning outcome from the % change, winners paid, players notified. If no source has that price, the operator is alerted with links to each exchange’s chart at that minute and posts the result by hand. An operator can also end a countdown early; the result time then moves to that minute and players see it at once.
4Pools and payouts
Markets are parimutuel: all stakes go into one pool, and the players who picked the winning outcome share it. There is no house taking the other side, so Firstprint never bets against its players.
weight(p) = 1 + k × (time left when placed ÷ prediction window) k = 1
payout(p) = net pool × stake(p) × weight(p) ÷ Σ winners (stake × weight)
- Early-bird weights. A prediction placed when the market opens weighs 2×; one placed at the last moment weighs 1×, and in between the weight falls steadily, minute by minute. The weight only changes how the winners share the pool; it never adds points. Calling it early is rewarded, which also brings liquidity in sooner.
- Caps. A pool has a size cap, and one player’s accepted stake is limited to a share of it (10% by default). A stake that would go over the pool cap or your limit isn’t accepted, so no single player can dominate a market.
- Rounding. Payouts are rounded down; the fee and the remainder are not paid out to anyone.
- No winners. If nobody picked the winning outcome, everyone picked the same outcome, or a market is cancelled, every stake is refunded in full.
Example. A 10,000-point pool, 4% fee: 9,600 points are shared. If the winners staked 2,000 points at equal weight, each winning point returns 4.8 points.
Taking a prediction back
A player can take a prediction back while predictions are open. The stake comes back minus a fee, and the prediction leaves the pool. The fee is there so that a large stake can’t be used to move the odds and then pulled out at the last moment.
fee = 2% in the early window
fee = 2% + 48% × ((0.5 − time left ÷ window) ÷ 0.5)³ after it, up to 50%
stake back = stake − fee (fee rounded up to the nearest point)
- Early window. The first half of the time between the market opening and predictions closing. In a market open for three days, it is the first 36 hours. The market page shows the exact time.
- Rising fee. The fee is 2% in the early window. After that it rises, slowly at first and steeply near the close, up to 50%. In a 72-hour market, it is about 4% with 24 hours left, 16% with 12 hours left, 30% with 6 hours left and 46% with one hour left. The exact fee is shown before you confirm.
- Free undo. Taking a prediction back within 2 minutes of placing it is free, as long as it is still the early window. This covers mistakes, not strategy.
- Lock. Predictions can’t be taken back in the last 10 minutes before predictions close.
- Early bonus is lost. Taking a prediction back gives up its early bonus. A new prediction gets the weight for the moment it is placed, and counts as early only if it is placed in the early window.
Where the fee goes
- Half is burned. Those points are removed for good. Once Firstprint moves to FPT, this becomes a real token burn.
- Half goes to early players. It is shared among predictions placed in the early window that were never taken back, in proportion to their stake. It is paid when the market settles, next to any winnings.
- Win or lose. An early prediction gets its early reward whether its outcome wins or loses. A prediction that was taken back gets none.
- Separate from the pool. Early rewards come only from take-back fees. The pool is the stakes still in at the close, and the winners split it exactly as described above, so early rewards never reduce anyone’s winnings.
- No early players. If no prediction qualifies, the early half is burned too.
- Cancelled markets. Every stake still in is refunded, but take-back fees are not returned, and the early half is burned.
- Changes. Firstprint may change these numbers. A change applies only to predictions taken back after it.
- No cash value. Points, burned points and early rewards have no cash value.
Example. A player takes back 1,000 points with a 30% fee. They get 700 back; 150 points are burned and 150 go to the early predictions. If those total 5,000 points, an early player with 500 points staked gets 15 points at the result, win or lose.
5Integrity rules
Token prices can be pushed around, new listings and smaller tokens most of all. The rules are written so that the cheapest manipulation doesn’t pay.
- Predictions close before the result window. Nobody can predict once the answer is forming.
- The move counts from the close. The start price is taken when predictions close, so following a trend while they are open earns nothing.
- Averages and medians, not last trades. Moving a one-hour, multi-exchange median costs far more than a market could pay.
- Cancellation rules. An automatic market is cancelled and refunded if a listing is delayed by more than a day, trading halts for more than six hours in total, or price data is too thin. Admin-run markets are cancelled and refunded by the operator.
- One account, one player. Sign-in is verified (Google, email code or a signed wallet message); follow, repost and post tasks are checked on X, with one X username per account and each task paying once; referral rewards need the friend’s predictions on three different markets to settle.
- Public results. Every settled market shows its start price, result price and winning outcome.
6Tokens and listings
Markets can run on any token with a live exchange price. Operators open markets on trending and established tokens, and new listings are found automatically. A listing tracker reads new-listing announcements and watches exchanges for new USDT trading pairs. Supported venues include Binance, Bybit, OKX, Bitget, KuCoin, MEXC and Gate. New pairs land in a review queue with their exchanges, links and a suggested schedule; operators can schedule a market to open automatically once the token is trading. Each new market is posted to the Telegram channel with a banner, a reminder in its last hour and its result.
7Accounts and wallets
- Three ways in. Google, a one-time email code, or Sign-In With Solana. They lead to the same account when they share an email.
- Firstprint wallets. Players who sign up without a wallet get one made for them: a Solana keypair whose secret key is sealed with AES-256-GCM and never stored in plain text. No seed phrase, no extension.
- Own wallets. Phantom, Solflare, Backpack and any Wallet Standard wallet can be linked by signing a message.
- 1,000 starting points, plus a daily streak (50 points on day 1, 25 more each day, up to 200 a day from day 7), X tasks and referrals.
8The on-chain layer
Firstprint records play on Solana’s test network so the economy is transparent and ready for a value-backed future.
- TestFPT. A Token-2022 token on Solana testnet. Starting points, rewards and daily streak points are minted to the player’s wallet.
- Predictions as transfers. For Firstprint-wallet players, every stake is a TestFPT transfer from their wallet to the market escrow, and every payout or refund a transfer back, each carrying a memo such as
firstprint:stake:<market>:<outcome>. - Fees paid by Firstprint. The server signs and pays every network fee, so players don’t need SOL. Rewards are sent by themselves to the player’s Firstprint wallet or first linked wallet, with no claim step. If sending is paused (the server is low on test SOL), a claim chip lets the player claim by signing.
- Exactly once. Each transaction is recorded before it is sent and only retried after its blockhash has expired, so nothing is minted or moved twice.
- On-chain pools. A Solana program for USDC prediction pools with oracle settlement exists as a devnet prototype. It is unaudited and not in use.
TestFPT is a test token on a test network. It has no monetary value and can’t be bought or sold.
9Growth loops
- Shareable PnL cards. Every settled prediction has an image card and link with a preview made for X.
- Daily streaks bring players back every day.
- Referrals reward the inviter (200 points, up to 25 friends) once the friend’s predictions on three different markets have settled.
- Telegram channel posts every new market, its last hour and its result.
- Leaderboards by day, week, month and all time, a Results list of every settled token, and public profiles.
10Economics
Firstprint earns before any real-money market exists:
| Stream | Who pays | Stage |
|---|---|---|
| Featured markets and launch promotion | Projects, exchanges | Now |
| Exchange referral share | Exchanges | Now |
| Market sentiment data API | Funds, market makers, researchers | Now |
| Pro membership | Players | Next |
| Sponsored tournaments | Partners | Next |
| 4% fee on value-backed pools, shared with market creators | Pools | Later, where permitted |
11The FPT token
A future FPT token would align players, market creators and the protocol: rewards for play, a bond for creating markets, a share of fees through buy-backs, and a say in which tokens get markets and which parameters the protocol uses. The full proposal, with supply, allocation and vesting, is on the tokenomics page. It is a draft: no token has been issued and none is for sale.
12Roadmap
- Now: points markets on new listings, trending tokens and established tokens; TestFPT on testnet with fees paid by Firstprint; streaks, referrals, tasks, PnL cards and Telegram alerts.
- Next: user-created markets with a creator fee share; exchange and project partnerships; a sentiment data API; Pro membership; sponsored tournaments.
- Later: value-backed markets with on-chain pools and oracle settlement, only where licensed and permitted; the FPT token.
13Risks and disclaimers
- Firstprint is a free game today. Points and TestFPT have no cash value and can’t be bought, sold or withdrawn as money.
- Real-value prediction markets are regulated differently in different countries and may be treated as gambling or derivatives. Firstprint will only offer them where it is licensed and allowed.
- Price and listing data comes from third-party exchanges, which can be wrong, delayed or unavailable.
- Smart contracts and custodial wallets carry technical risk. The on-chain pool program is an unaudited prototype.
- This paper describes plans that may change. It is not financial advice and not an offer to sell or a solicitation to buy any token or security.
See also the player docs, the terms of use and privacy policy.