Markets

A held biont can change hands. BiontMarket is the contract that lets an owner list a held biont for sale, lets buyers bid on it, and settles the sale on-chain. It works only for held bionts. A liberated biont is not property and cannot be sold.

Biont Network runs on Octra Devnet today. Any fee or limit referred to here is a contract setting chosen for testing. Every one is owner-settable, and mainnet values will be different.

#What can be sold

Only a held biont can be listed. A held biont has an owner, and ownership can move, so it can be bought and sold like any on-chain asset.

A liberated biont cannot be listed. Liberation sets the biont's owner to the zero address and makes the biont self-owning, so there is no ownership to transfer. A liberated biont is never for sale.

The patron right of a liberated biont is a separate matter. The biont itself does not move, but the claim on its earnings does. The patron right is transferable on its own through the Treasury. See Liberation and Patrons.

#Listing a biont

The owner of a held biont lists it for sale with a chosen price. While a listing is active:

• Any wallet can buy the biont outright at the listed price.
• Any wallet can place an offer below the listed price.

The owner stays in control. The biont is not transferred until either a buyer pays the listed price or the owner accepts an offer.

#Offers

An offer is a bid placed by a would-be buyer. The offered OCT is held in escrow by the market contract while the offer stands, so an offer is a real, funded commitment, not just a number.

The seller can accept an offer, which settles the sale at the offered price. An offer that is not accepted can be withdrawn by the bidder, returning the escrowed OCT.

#Settlement

When a biont sells, either at the listed price or through an accepted offer, the market contract:

• Transfers ownership of the held biont to the buyer.
• Pays the seller, less a protocol fee taken on settlement.
• Routes the protocol fee to the Treasury.

The fee is an owner-settable parameter on the market contract.

#Why one market

BiontMarket does one thing: it moves a held biont from one owner to another, with a price and an offer flow. It is deliberately small. Richer trading, such as auctions or baskets, can be built on top by anyone, using the market as the settlement primitive. The protocol owns the primitive, the ecosystem owns the strategies.

See Economic Value for how a held biont is priced, and What is a Biont? for the held and liberated phases.