How Ledger settles predictions

What does "settled by reality" mean on Ledger?

A call on Ledger resolves because the event actually ended that way. Every market lands on one of four verdicts: won, lost, push, or pending. There is no fifth verdict and there is no house call. A push returns your Float. Pending means the result is not verified yet, and the market waits until it is.

Won and lost mean what they say. A push is a genuine tie: a drawn fight, a total landing exactly on the number, a shared finishing position. Pending is not a failure state. It is the honest gap between an event ending and its result being verified, and some markets sit in it for a while on purpose.

How do sports markets settle?

Sports markets grade against real finals from ESPN data. Moneylines, spreads, and totals settle on the final score. Player props settle on the real boxscore. The Short Game settles on period linescores (first five innings, first periods, first halves, and second halves). UFC fights grade off the dated scoreboard, golf and racing head-to-heads grade on finishing position, and tennis moneylines grade on the match winner.

The grader looks each game up by its event id on ESPN's summary endpoint, which keeps a game reachable long after it drops off the daily scoreboard. A market grades only once the game is final. If the feed reports the game still in progress, or the result cannot be read, the call stays pending and the grader tries again later.

Pending is not forever, though. A feed can drop a fixture, renumber an event, or simply stop answering about a game that did happen, and a call waiting on an answer that is never coming used to hold its Float indefinitely. So a call still unsettled three days after its result was due is voided as a push and the Float comes back (a week for golf and motor racing, whose events run across several days). A void is never scored as a loss, and it moves no hit rate: it is Ledger admitting it cannot verify something, which is our problem and should not be charged to you.

The Short Game, Ledger's shelf of quick markets, settles on slices of the same data: the first five innings of a baseball game, or the second half of a soccer or basketball game, read from the real linescores. UFC bouts live inside a card event, so they grade off the dated scoreboard, the one endpoint that actually reports bout winners. Golf and motor racing head-to-heads ask which of two named competitors finishes better in the field, and a genuinely shared finish grades as a push.

What happens on a push?

A push returns your Float, and the call counts as neither won nor lost. In a parlay, a pushed leg drops out of the multiplier and the remaining legs ride, which is the standard convention. If every leg of a parlay pushes, the whole slip is a wash and the Float comes back.

How do crypto markets settle?

Crypto markets settle on the real market price of the asset, read from a public price feed once the market's resolve date arrives. Ledger currently runs price markets on Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and Dogecoin. A price that lands exactly on the line grades as a push, and the Float comes back.

How do culture and world markets settle?

Culture and world markets settle through an automated, source-gated check of the public record, and never before their resolve date. That check, equipped with web search, looks for a reliable source that confirms the outcome. If it cannot find one, or is not confident enough to clear the gate, the market stays pending instead of guessing.

The check can answer three ways: side A happened, side B happened, or the market is a push because the event was split, voided, or canceled. Whatever it answers has to point at the record. A verdict without confident sourcing is discarded, and the market simply waits for the record to catch up. The check runs at spaced intervals rather than in a loop, because a real result, once final, never changes.

What happens when an outcome is ambiguous?

The market stays pending while the record is unclear, and it voids as a push if the record never clears. There is no human editorial desk adjudicating disputes yet. If you believe a call graded wrong, the corrections path is support: write to us and we will check the grade against this page.

That last part deserves plain language. The Terms say Ledger's determination of an outcome is final. That clause exists so a market cannot be argued into a different result than the one reality delivered. It is not a claim that we are above correction. The method is published here, and if a grade does not match it, we want to know. Reach us through support.

Why publish the methodology at all?

Because "trust us" is the sportsbook answer. Ledger's premise is that the fun of calling a game survives the removal of money, and that only works if the grading is worth trusting. Standing, the one thing you can earn here, is permanent and never goes down, and it is only worth keeping because it is earned against reality, by a method anyone can read.

When the method changes, this page changes with it.

Sports results are read from ESPN's public scoreboard, summary, and boxscore data. Crypto prices are read from a public market price feed. Culture and world settlements happen only after the resolve date, against the public record. No verdict on Ledger moves real money.