Challenges and disputes

A challenge disputes one specific thing: a proposed source, an opening value, or a price update. Say exactly what is wrong and back it with public evidence. A challenge does not reopen the product definition, the bucket weights, or a market’s terms.

Challenge bonds are separate from futures positions and payouts. Amoeba’s zero trading-fee policy does not change them.

What you can challenge

Target	When	Typical problems
Source proposal	During the Challenge stage of Scramble	Wrong product or bucket, duplicate of another source, broken or unstable link, not a public repeatable price
Opening value	After it is submitted, for at least 300 Solana slots before it can be finalized	Wrong value, wrong variant or tier, archive does not match the source, wrong time
Price update	After it is revealed, for at least 24 hours, and no later than 24 hours after expiry	Misread price, wrong field, stale or out-of-window capture, value not shown in the archive

The web app’s challenge form offers these reasons: Wrong component, Source unavailable, Stale observation, Unsupported methodology, Duplicate source, and Other evidence conflict. A duplicate-source challenge must name the other source it duplicates, and both must be in the same bucket.

You cannot challenge your own proposal or update. An update challenge must include your corrected value and its own Wayback Machine capture, following the Evidence rules.

Bonds

All bonds are in USDC and are taken from your on-chain oracle collateral balance when you file.

• The challenge bond is a set percentage of the stake behind what you dispute, kept between a minimum and a maximum. These values are set for each month and bucket, and your bond must match the required amount exactly.

Before you file, check the required bond, the deadline, and the possible outcomes.

How a challenge is decided

First review by the operator

The operator reviews the challenge first, using the protocol’s oracle or admin key. It can:

• Uphold the original: the challenge is rejected.
• Uphold the challenge: for an update, the challenger’s corrected value is recorded instead.
• Mark it unresolved: the case goes to the council.

The operator cannot reject an update that nobody challenged. It can only accept it, and only after its 24-hour challenge period.

A source challenge that the operator has not reviewed by the time the Opening stage begins counts as rejected, and its bond goes to the proposer.

Council resolution

Unresolved cases, and settlement buckets without enough eligible sources, go to the five-seat council:

• Each seat casts one public ballot per round and cannot change it.
• Three matching ballots decide. If no choice reaches three, the case’s fallback applies.
• The ruling applies after the case’s deadline. Settlement cases of the launch month are the exception: they can apply as soon as three matching ballots are cast.
• If the council’s seats rotate, a new round starts with the current seats, earlier ballots stay on record, and the deadline does not move.

Case	Possible outcomes	Fallback without three matching votes
Source proposal	Keep the source, reject it, or merge it with the duplicate it was compared to	Keep the source
Opening value	Keep the opening, or accept the challenge, or reject the opening and deactivate the source	Reject the opening and deactivate the source
Price update	Accept the update, accept the challenger’s value, or reject both	Reject both and refund both bonds
Settlement bucket	Confirm the bucket’s measured median (from its sources’ recorded values), or keep its last accepted value	Keep its last accepted value

The council can only pick from these outcomes. It cannot enter a new price, change a payoff, or edit the frozen source list. Keeping a prior value creates no new observation and no update reward.

Where the bonds go

Result	Bonds
Your challenge wins	You receive your bond back plus the other side’s bond.
Your challenge loses	Your bond goes to the other side.
Both sides rejected, or the claim times out	Both bonds are refunded.

Nothing goes to a treasury or a reward pool. Once a case is closed, anyone can trigger the payout, which is credited to the winner’s oracle collateral balance.

Current availability

The web app’s Contribute tab lists the Petri commands for the current stage; the web app does not submit challenges, and the hosted backend does not prepare them. Petri (its mainnet release is coming) sends them from your terminal with petri oracle sources challenge, petri oracle prints challenge and petri oracle updates challenge, signed by your own wallet after you review them. See the Petri command reference.

An AI agent connected through Petri can help you research evidence, but it has no signing, funding, or broadcast tools. See Agent connection.