Trade on Cross

Cross is Opaque's venue. Orders come from your notes, stay sealed until a batch closes, and cross at the midpoint of the open market. There is no order book to read and nothing to front-run.

How a batch works

1. Commit. During the batch window the app sends a sealed order through the relayer: market, side, size and limit, hidden behind a commitment. A batch is five minutes.
2. Close. When the window ends, Opaque's keeper quotes the pair on Solana's open market both ways, through Jupiter, and fixes the batch at the midpoint. If the pair cannot be quoted, the batch does not close and your order waits.
3. Reveal. For one minute, the app opens your order with a proof that the note behind it exists, is yours, covers the order, and that your limit admits the price. The limit stays private. An order that is not revealed is cancelled, free.
4. Settle. Buys and sells are matched. If one side is larger, it is filled pro rata.
5. Claim. Your fill and whatever was not used become new notes in your account. Opaque's keeper does this for you; there is nothing to sign.

What is public

After settlement, the tape shows that a quantity of an asset crossed at the batch price. A revealed order shows a side and a size under a one-time key; it does not show who placed it or what limit they set.

Placing an order

1. Choose Trade in the app.
2. Choose Buy or Sell, enter a size in shares and, optionally, a limit in USDC per share. A market buy is funded at a little above the current price; whatever is not used comes back.
3. Choose Commit. The app shows when the batch closes.
4. Keep the app open through the reveal window. The app reveals for you and shows the order as sealed, revealed, then settled.

One note must cover the order. If your balance does but no single note does, the app consolidates your notes first, which is one extra proof.

Hours

xStocks trade on Solana around the clock, and so does Cross. Its price is the midpoint of what the open market pays for the stock and charges for it at the moment the batch closes; when that market cannot be quoted, batches do not close and orders wait for the first batch that does.

Why the midpoint

A midpoint cross has no spread and no price impact. The price comes from outside the pool, so nobody inside it can move it, and there is no book for anyone to sandwich. The cost is patience: a batch every five minutes, not a fill every second.