Blocks
Six blocks, each with one concern. Each is a family: a plain contract for the first deployment, and variants built as the plain contract plus additions.
The vault — who holds what.
The vault records balances, and locks of assets held against a lien. Every fungible asset and every collateral leg used by every Gavel product sits in a vault; contracts above it refer to value rather than hold it.
A balance is free (the user can withdraw it), reserved (held for a contract the user approved) or locked (held against a lien).
What it guarantees: conservation — it records each asset only as it measures it entering; isolation — no position, lien or account can draw on another's value; exits — every user can always take back what is free to them, subject to the token itself, and a running pause can delay an auction's exits by its length, never remove them.
Status: Specified.
Obligation — who owes what to whom, and when.
One promise to pay one amount of one asset at one time. Obligations are created in sets that end together: one bullet loan, a series of instalments, coupons and a principal.
The creditor's side is a claim, held as units that can be split, sold and pledged. The debtor's side is the obligor position, a token held by whoever owes the set: transferring it transfers the debt and, where a lien secures the set, the equity in the collateral.
A set is active until it is paid (discharged) or breached. It is breached only after its due date and a grace period fixed at creation; a breached set is then settled through its lien, or paid late.
In the first deployment amounts are fixed: principal, with interest accruing evenly. Amounts resolved once from an auction price or another obligation's state, and obligations that come into force on an event or a holder's choice, belong to a variant, the contingent obligation.
Terms are never edited. A claim holder may release what it is owed, wholly or in part; to change terms, an obligation is released and a new one created.
Status: plain Obligation Specified.
Status: the contingent obligation Designed.
Lien — what makes a promise credible.
A lien binds one vault lock to one set of obligations. When every obligation is paid, anyone may release the collateral to the debtor; when the set is breached, anyone may enforce it.
In the first deployment the lien enforces by taking: the collateral passes in kind to the claim holders, pro rata by what each is owed at enforcement, whatever it is worth. Where the collateral includes enough of the loan's own asset to cover the debt, only what is owed is taken, and the rest is held for the borrower's position. Selling the collateral, paying the proceeds through a waterfall and returning a surplus from a sale belong to a variant, the full lien; a second charge belongs to another, the nested lien.
What it guarantees: resolution — every lien resolves within bounds fixed at creation, extended by any time spent paused.
Status: the plain Lien Specified.
Status: full and nested lien Designed.
SpotAuction — what a thing is worth.
Uniform-price batch clearing for one pair: the orders in a slot clear together at one price, which makes prices inherently MEV-resistant within each slot.
Anyone may submit a settlement. The keeper that does is paid from the price improvement the batch creates, capped; users are never worse off than the limits they placed.
Status: Specified.
An earlier version runs on the testnet.
PositionAuction — a market in claims and positions.
It exchanges claims, obligor positions and unique assets: a lender can sell all or part of a claim, a borrower the position with the collateral subject to the debt.
Status: Specified.
BOND — who can be trusted.
A public record of credit honoured: minted when interest is paid on secured loans, put at stake on one's own obligations and burned if they are not met. It carries no governance, fee or revenue right.
Status: Designed.