Methodology

The Trust Index

One 0–100 answer to the question every prediction-market trader asks first: how much should I trust this market? Computed from order books, price history, settlement rules, and the market's information structure — never from vibes.

The scale

Every scored event gets a Trust Score from 0 to 100, read on five bands. The score is conservative by design: a market has to earn its way up.

Four questions, one number

The score blends four measured pillars. Three of them — the safety questions — form the Integrity axis (80% of the score); the fourth is the Trade quality axis (20%). Safety outweighs convenience on purpose: a market you can trade easily but can't trust is the worst kind.

Market integrity 30%

Can someone cause or influence the outcome they're trading?

Info fairness 30%

Can a small group know the outcome materially early?

Resolution quality 20%

Will settlement follow clean, objective rules?

Trade quality 20%

Can you actually get in and out near the screen price?

Blend, then cap

The pillars are blended by weight — and then hard caps apply. A great average can't paper over a disqualifying weakness:

  • Market integrity, Info fairness, or Resolution quality below 30 caps the total near 40–50.
  • A severe activity flag caps the total at 30. Trade quality lowers the blend but never caps it.

Screens, in plain language

Behind the Integrity pillars run individual screens — could a small group know this outcome early, can a participant trade a result they control, did prices move before the news, did one trade dominate the tape. Each screen reports in desk language, never pass/fail:

Flagged A screen found the thing it looks for.
Clear A screen ran and found nothing.
Unclear A screen ran but couldn't decide.

Screens that don't apply to a market's type say so, and screens whose data source isn't connected yet are reported as awaiting data — never silently counted as clean.

The honesty rules

  • We never guess. Missing data drops out of the weights and lowers stated confidence.
  • Priors say so. A pillar with no applicable screen is labeled a structural prior on the card.
  • One computation. Scored once, server-side. The report, the exports, and this page show the same payload.

The Trust Index appears on every Octagon market report where it can be computed.

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