Glossary
| Term | Meaning |
|---|
| Control plane | Chainlink-operated services that maintain the catalog, schedule checks, and monitor resolution. They never decide an outcome. |
| Coverage | The events and markets Chainlink resolves, usually configured per season, tournament, or competition. |
| Delivery | Sending a market's outcome to a prediction market's platform or contract, as agreed with Chainlink. |
| DON | Decentralized oracle network: the Chainlink nodes that run the resolution workflow. See CRE. |
| Event | A real-world occurrence with a verifiable result, such as a game or a rate decision. One event can carry many markets. |
| Event status | The event_status field: where an event and its markets are in their lifecycle. See Market lifecycle. |
| Evidence provider | An independent data source that supplies the facts used to decide an outcome. |
| Fail closed | Delivering no outcome when evidence is missing, late, or contradictory. The event reports unsafe. A fail-closed market is never resolved as NO. |
| Grouping | The league or competition an event belongs to, such as mlb. |
| Market | One yes/no question about an event, such as "Will New York Yankees win?". The unit Chainlink resolves. |
| Market Registry | Chainlink's catalog of the events and markets it can resolve, read through the Market Registry API. |
| Outcome | The result of a market: YES, NO, or PUSH for a tie that pays out 50/50. |
| Prediction market | The platform or protocol where traders take positions. It lists markets and settles positions. |
| Provider agreement | The requirement that independent providers report the same final value for each fact a market needs. |
| Quorum | The minimum number of agreeing providers a market requires. |
| Resolution | Determining a market's outcome from provider evidence. |
| Resolution criteria | The resolution_criteria field: a one-sentence display summary of how a market resolves. Not a complete rulebook. |
| Settlement | A prediction market applying an outcome to its traders' positions. |
| Slug | The stable identifier of an event or market, such as cl-sports-baseball-mlb-260820-nyan-winner-nyan. |
| Trust plane | The CRE workflow on the DON. The only component that can decide an outcome. |
