How YES and NO Contracts Resolve
YES and NO settle from written contract terms: the condition, deadline, time zone, resolution source, and the rules for messy edge cases.
By Sloppy Stakes EditorialPublished 10 min read
What you'll be able to do
- Extract the terms that control a YES/NO settlement.
- Identify deadline, time-zone, source, and revision risks.
- Explain why similar headlines can produce different payouts.
Before you start
- A basic understanding of binary event contracts.
What this guide won't do
- This is a general reading method; the governing rules for each specific market control.
- It does not predict how a venue will decide an unaddressed dispute.
Last reviewed 16 August 2026
A YES/NO contract resolves by applying its written rules to an identified source after a specified deadline. YES and NO are labels for payout conditions, not informal judgements about what “basically happened.” The rules decide which evidence counts, when it counts, and what happens when reality does not fit neatly.
Fact: official platform guidance directs users to the market rules, resolution source, and timing rather than relying on the headline alone.
Start with the contract wording
Read the rule as if you expected a dispute. Identify the subject, required action or threshold, geographic scope, observation window, unit, deadline, time zone, resolution source, and any fallback. Small words—official, announced, enacted, certified, unconditional—can change the payoff.
A contract asking whether a bill “passes” may require passage by both chambers, enactment into law, or only one recorded vote. Those are different predicates. A news headline can answer the casual question while leaving the contract unresolved.
Deadlines and time zones are part of the payoff
“By Friday” is incomplete without a time and zone. A filing at 11:30 p.m. Pacific Friday is already Saturday in UTC. A market may use the venue's default time zone, the source's reporting period, or a time explicitly written in the rules. Never silently translate the deadline from memory.
The resolution source controls the evidence
A contract may name an agency release, election authority, league, court docket, weather station, corporate filing, or another published source. That source may update slowly or revise its data. The contract can also provide a fallback if the primary source disappears or fails to report.
Do not replace the named source with a more convenient one merely because it looks authoritative. A different source can use different definitions, timestamps, or revision practices.
Who decides, and how long it takes
Venues decide outcomes in different ways, and the difference matters when a result is contested. On one model the exchange itself determines the outcome from the contract's own rules and the source named in its terms, and that determination can take from about an hour to more than twelve hours after close, depending on when the source publishes. On another model resolution runs through an optimistic oracle: someone proposes an outcome by posting a bond, and the proposal sits in a challenge window during which it can be disputed before it stands.
Neither path is instant, and neither is a judgement about what the headline felt like. A market still sitting open after the event tells you nothing about the outcome: platform guidance states that a market remaining open or undetermined is not an indication that the resolution criteria were or were not met. If you are watching an unresolved market, you are watching the settlement process, not the answer.
Fact: published venue documentation describes both exchange-determined resolution with a post-close determination window and oracle-based resolution with a bonded proposal and a dispute window.
Edge cases need rules, not intuition
| Edge case | What to inspect |
|---|---|
| Cancellation | Does the contract void, resolve NO, use a fallback outcome, or wait? |
| Postponement | Is there a new deadline, a grace period, or a fixed original window? |
| Recount or appeal | Which certification or decision is final, and when? |
| Data revision | Does the first release count, or the value as of a later date? |
| Ambiguous wording | Who interprets the rule, and what dispute process applies? |
| Source unavailable | Is a substitute source named, or can the market remain unresolved? |
UnknownUnknown: no universal rule determines how every venue handles cancellation, postponement, revisions, or ambiguity.
Why similar-looking contracts can pay differently
Consider two fully synthetic contracts about the same merger. Contract A pays YES if a regulator announces unconditional clearance by 5:00 p.m. Eastern on June 30. Contract B pays YES if any clearance, including conditional clearance, is published by 11:59 p.m. UTC on July 1. A conditional decision released late on June 30 can settle A as NO and B as YES.
The headlines may both say “Will the merger be cleared?” The payoffs are not equivalent. A price comparison that ignores the condition, cutoff, time zone, and source is comparing different claims.
A resolution checklist
- Copy the exact rule text and record when you checked it.
- Extract the subject, predicate, threshold, deadline, time zone, and unit.
- Name the primary resolution source and any fallback.
- Record cancellation, postponement, revision, and dispute provisions.
- Check whether the rule changed after the market opened and how amendments are logged.
- For cross-platform comparisons, prove the two payoff trees match in every reachable case.
How AI was used here
AI assisted with authoritative-source discovery, structural outlining, cross-link planning, and first-draft prose. Every claim and sentence remains subject to Jordan's independent editorial review.
Contract rulesMarket mechanics
Sources
- Resolution primaryPolymarket · Official description of market rules, resolution sources, end dates, and edge cases.
- Market Rules primaryKalshi · Official guide to reading market rules and understanding settlement criteria.
- Kalshi Rulebook primaryKalshi · Official exchange rule materials. Referenced for the principle that governing rules and settlement procedures control.
- RFC 3339: Date and Time on the Internet: Timestamps primaryInternet Engineering Task Force · Internet standard profile used here as the recommended portable timestamp representation.
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