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How a round runs

A round is a timed contest that adds the next coin to the chain. It opens when the first coin is entered. Every candidate trades against the head coin, the newest coin in the chain.
1

Registration

Anyone can enter a coin, at no cost beyond gas. Its pool opens the moment it is created. Registration takes the first fifth of the round, from 3 minutes to 1 hour.
2

Trading

The first two rounds last ten minutes from the first entry: 3 minutes of registration, then 7 minutes of trading on the round clock. The round length doubles every two rounds until it reaches 12 hours. The round clock starts when registration closes. When trading lasts an hour or more, from round 7, a coin can still enter during the first third of trading, and its pool opens when it enters.
3

The end

Each round has a public planned end. The real end is a random moment in the last 3 minutes before it, or in the last quarter of trading on the two ten-minute rounds. That moment comes from drand, a public source of random numbers, and is checked on-chain. Only trades made before the planned end count.
4

Scores and the result

Once the real end is settled, each candidate’s score is submitted on-chain. The winner is announced as soon as every score is in, and at most 5 minutes after the end is settled. The candidate with the highest score becomes the new head coin.
A coin trades from the moment it is created, so it can gather holders while registration is still open. The round still decides which coin joins the chain, and every candidate is scored over the same minutes. Trading before the round clock starts is not scored, but money that stays in a pool from then on counts like money added at the start.

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Scoring

Buying a candidate raises its score, and selling lowers it. The score is the average amount of money in the candidate’s pool during the closing window, shown as the market cap that money supports. That window is the last 15 minutes before the real end, starting no earlier than the round clock, so on the ten-minute rounds it covers the whole of trading. It is the same for every candidate, whenever it entered. Either edge of that window lands to within a few seconds, not the exact instant, when trades on both sides of it happen close together.

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After the round

The winner becomes the new head coin. Its number and parent are written on-chain. Every candidate in the next round is priced in it, and its creator gets half of the creator share on that round’s candidate trades. From then on, it earns its part of the chain share, the part of each fee locked into the chain, from every later coin. Every other candidate keeps its pool and trades forever against the coin it was paired with. Its creator keeps the full creator share on its trades after the round.