Glossary.
Plain-English definitions for the terminology Aviax uses across product, docs, and partner conversations. Each entry includes how the term relates to what we do.
- Oracle
Oracle
- A trustless data feed that provides real-world signals to smart contracts or market settlement engines. The contract or market depends on the oracle for ground truth — what actually happened — without trusting any single party.
- Aviax is the oracle for aviation events. Live aircraft signal in, deterministic binary outcomes out.
- Prediction market
Prediction market
- A market where participants trade contracts that resolve based on the outcome of a real-world event. Prices reflect aggregated probability estimates. Polymarket and Kalshi are leading examples.
- Aviax is the oracle layer — the data plumbing — that prediction-market platforms plug into to settle flight contracts automatically.
- Binary market
Binary market
- A contract with two outcomes that pays $1 on yes and $0 on no. Prices between $0 and $1 imply the market's estimate of the probability that the event happens.
- Each Aviax flight outcome — delayed >15min, >30min, >60min, cancelled, diverted — is its own binary market. Five binaries per flight, 100,000+ flights per day.
- Parametric insurance
Parametric insurance
- Insurance that pays out automatically when a measurable parameter — temperature, rainfall, flight delay — is met, with no claim filing or adjuster review. The trigger is data, not a claim.
- Aviax oracles enable parametric travel insurance: a delay above the threshold automatically triggers payout against the same machine-readable signal that settles the prediction market.
- Settlement window
Settlement window
- The defined time range during which a contract's outcome is determined. A clear, narrow window prevents disputes about whether an event qualifies.
- Aviax settlement windows are deterministic and machine-readable. Contracts resolve automatically when the window closes against the aircraft signal — no manual adjudication.
- Aircraft telemetry
Aircraft telemetry
- Real-time signal data emitted by aircraft, including position, altitude, speed, heading, and status. The signal exists independent of airline operations databases.
- Aviax treats aircraft signal as the source of truth. No dependency on airline APIs, which are tuned for operations and have settlement-incompatible latency, gaps, and revisions.
- Multi-tier outcome
Multi-tier outcome
- A single real-world event that produces multiple binary contracts. Different thresholds, different payouts, different traders.
- Aviax computes five tiers per flight. Why five: the FAA on-time threshold is 15 minutes; insurance and refund conventions align with 30 and 60 minutes; cancelled and diverted are tail-risk outcomes priced separately.
- Latent hedging market
Latent hedging market
- Demand for risk transfer that exists in the economy but is currently un-tradable for lack of infrastructure. Travelers want delay protection. Travel companies want delay hedges. Without an oracle, neither can trade.
- Allied Market Research sizes travel-risk hedging plus parametric insurance at $30B+. Aviax makes the underlying contract type real-time tradable for the first time.
- Compounding detection lead
Compounding detection lead
- A data flywheel in which each settled outcome labels new training data for the detection model. The model gets better with every market that settles, so the accuracy lead compounds rather than decays.
- Aviax detection trains on an 8-year corpus of historical flight pattern data, plus every settlement we generate. Speed is a moat for six months. Data is a moat for six years.
- CFTC event contract
CFTC event contract
- A regulated US prediction-market structure overseen by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Designated Contract Market (DCM) status enables event contracts on yes/no real-world questions.
- Kalshi-class platforms are the canonical buyer for this regulated structure. Aviax's machine-resolvable settlement windows are designed to align with the deterministic resolution standards CFTC review prefers.
- On-chain prediction market
On-chain prediction market
- A crypto-native prediction market where contracts are minted, traded, and settled on a blockchain. Order matching happens on-chain or off-chain depending on the venue; settlement is always on-chain.
- Polymarket-class platforms are the canonical buyer. Aviax oracle outputs are designed to drive on-chain settlement contracts directly, without manual attestation.
- Liquidity per contract
Liquidity per contract
- The book depth available for a single binary market — how much notional can trade without moving price. The constraint on platform GMV is liquidity-per-contract × contract count.
- Aviax's $450M+ daily volume potential math is per-flight liquidity × US daily flight count. Order-of-magnitude sensitivity to per-contract book depth.
- Resolution lag
Resolution lag
- The time between an outcome occurring and the contract settling and paying out. High lag erodes trader confidence and ties up capital. Low lag lets capital recycle.
- Aviax targets near-zero resolution lag: outcomes verify against the deterministic window the moment the window closes. Settlement is automated.
- Flight delay categories
Flight delay categories
- Standard delay tiers used across airline operations and insurance. The FAA classifies a flight as on-time if it arrives within fifteen minutes of schedule. Refund and insurance tiers commonly align with thirty and sixty minutes. Severe delays cascade into cancellations and diversions.
- Aviax's five tiers (>15min, >30min, >60min, cancelled, diverted) match these industry conventions, so the resulting contracts are immediately interpretable to traders, regulators, and insurers.