README

A Flarum 2 extension. Members back the new discussions they think will take off.

Every member gets free hype every day. No real money, nothing to buy. They spend it backing young discussions, and each discussion's hype price climbs as real conversation happens in it. When the market settles a few days later, backers earn in proportion to how much the discussion grew after they backed it, so the early, good calls pay most. A monthly leaderboard keeps score.

What members get

Hottest right now: every open market with its price, change, sparkline, backers and the time left, sorted by what's rising (or newest, highest price, closing soon).
Back it: a stake out of today's hype, with what it pays at 1.5×, 2× and 3× growth. You can't lose hype: a quiet discussion pays your stake back.
My portfolio: open calls with a sparkline each (your entry marked) and what they're worth now, plus every settled call.
Leaderboard: season profit, calls that paid off, best single call. Past seasons stay browsable.
A "Backed by 12" chip on discussion cards and a market bar under a young discussion's first post.
Alerts when a call pays off or settles flat.

How the price works

A discussion's price starts at 10 and follows its engagement during the market window (72 hours by default):

each member's first replies count (1, then ½, then ¼; nothing after three), plus 3 for every member who joined in,
likes count ½ each, at most three per member,
price = 10 × (1 + ln(1 + engagement / 4)), so a pile-on is worth less than a conversation.

A position pays stake × (price at settlement ÷ price when you backed), between 1× and 10×. By default nobody loses hype: a quiet discussion pays the stake back.

Losing hype is an option. Set Hype a quiet call loses (%) above 0 and a call that stays flat loses that share of its stake; it has to grow past it to profit (at 50%, a call breaks even at 1.5×). Each call keeps the rate it was made with, so changing the setting never changes calls already open. A called-off market always refunds every stake.

Anti-farming

Built so the only way to win is to spot good discussions early.

You can't back your own discussion, and its author's replies never count.
Backers' own replies and likes never count, for anyone: back it and then reply, or get a fellow backer to, and nothing moves. A later backer's earlier replies are taken out of everyone's numbers too.
Replies and likes from low-trust accounts don't count: unconfirmed email, fewer than 3 posts outside the discussion itself, or an account younger than 7 days when it acted.
Posts dated before the discussion started (merged in from elsewhere) don't count.
One-word replies, quote-only replies, hidden, private and unapproved posts don't count. Liking your own post doesn't count.
A market only pays once at least 2 different members (not the author or backers) took part.
The same members can lift one backer's calls only 5 times a season: a ring of friends taking turns stops paying.
Daily caps: 100 hype a day, 5–50 per discussion, 5 backs a day, one position per discussion (also a unique key).
Race-safe: backing locks the market and the member's day row and re-checks everything inside the transaction; prices are always computed by the server.
Settlement is server-side, idempotent and race-safe: the scheduler settles each market under a row lock exactly once; a late run lands on the same numbers (nothing after the settle time counts); season totals are recounted, never added to.
Moderators can call off a market that was gamed: every stake comes back flat. A discussion hidden, deleted or made private before it settles is called off automatically.

Each of these has an integration test.

With flarum/gdpr, a member's data export includes their calls and season totals, and erasing them removes those.

Settings

Admin → Hype Market: daily hype, how much a quiet call loses (0 by default), smallest and largest stake, backs per day, how long a discussion can be backed, when it settles, account age and post count before activity counts, members needed for a payout, monthly or manual seasons (with "End this season now"), and whether the scheduler is running. Permissions: view, back, call off markets.

The scheduler must run (php flarum schedule:run every minute from cron): it prices, settles and starts new seasons every five minutes.

Installation

composer require ernestdefoe/hype-market

Updating

composer update ernestdefoe/hype-market
php flarum migrate
php flarum cache:clear

More screenshots

ernestdefoe / hype-market

Package info

Security

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