Microtick (TICK) is a coin that offers short-term options and decentralized price oracles for DeFi DApps. It operates on a Cosmos-based chain and aims to provide a stable price discovery process that is less susceptible to price manipulation. Microtick creates a market microstructure that improves consensus price stability by combining cooperative quotes rather than traditional competitive market orders. The project is built on decentralized blockchain technology and utilizes game-theoretical principles, such as Schelling points, to achieve globally agreed-upon real-time consensus prices.

Microtick’s cooperative price discovery relies on short-term premium quotes known as “assert/insure” that work together to improve consensus price stability. Market makers compete to offer the lowest premiums to buyers based on future price movements. This decentralized and decoupled price discovery process allows anyone to make price assertions or take positions without requiring direct financial coupling to any underlying asset. Unlike other decentralized oracles, Microtick operates in real-time and offers a fully tradeable marketplace with rolling time windows and linear payouts derived solely from price movement. It also has the potential to operate across multiple chains in the future.

Microtick addresses the centralization inherent in traditional price discovery methods. By decoupling price discovery from order book trade execution, Microtick provides a global, real-time reference price for decentralized and private trades on underlying assets. This approach eliminates geographic or temporal proximity advantages in accuracy, reducing the risk of front running and other order execution problems. The project aims to offer better long-term benefits for on-chain trading by creating a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) operated by the community and owned by TICK token holders. Microtick invites participants to join as market makers, traders, or validators to contribute to the global network and benefit from accurate price assertions and real-time trading opportunities.