Withdrawals and settlement

It is the soonest your withdrawal can be paid if you ask now. For a House vault it is the next boundary, the close its epoch ends at. For Earn it is now, if the vault holds enough cash to pay you, and otherwise your place in the withdrawal queue. It is the earliest possible time, not a guarantee: a boundary can only be processed once the settlement price for it is final (see below).

A House vault runs in epochs. Deposits and withdrawals are queued during an epoch and all priced together at its boundary, which is a market close. Each vault's epoch length is fixed when it is created and can never change:

• Daily vaults end an epoch at every session close. A withdrawal you request during the day is priced at that day's close.
• Weekly vaults end an epoch at the last session close of the week, usually Friday's. A withdrawal requested on Monday waits for that close.

What to expect:

• You can request a withdrawal, or cancel one, at any time until the boundary is processed. Deposits are different: a deposit must be requested (or cancelled) before the close. From the close until the boundary is processed the vault refuses new deposits; request again after that and it is priced at the next boundary.
• You are paid in kind: your share of the vault's USDG and its Stock Token, pro rata, after any performance fee for the epoch. The performance fee is charged only on gain above the vault's previous high point, and the contract caps it at 20%.
• After the boundary, you claim what you are owed. Until you claim, you cannot place a new request in a later epoch.
• The boundary is processed only once the settlement price for that close is final. Anyone can process it. If the price takes longer to settle, your withdrawal waits with it.

Earn pays you straight away when it holds enough cash to cover your withdrawal. When it does not, your request is queued, never refused, and is paid first in, first out as cash comes back. Anyone can process the queue. A queued withdrawal is priced when it is paid, not when you asked, and you can cancel it while it waits.

• While the vault has an option position open, withdrawals go to the queue and the queue waits until the position is closed.
• Once anyone is queued, later withdrawals queue behind them, so nobody jumps the line.
• Earn can lend its idle USDG through a lending venue: the Steakhouse USDG vault on Morpho. The return from it is variable, comes from Morpho lending, and is not guaranteed. The vault starts with no venue connected, and while none is connected its idle USDG earns nothing. Money lent to the venue has to come back from it before it can be paid out, which is one reason a withdrawal can queue.
• The protocol takes a share of realised gain above the vault's previous high point (capped at 10% by the contract), never on a flat or losing period and never while the queue is open.

Options expire, and House vault epochs end, at 16:00 New York time on NYSE trading days. A daily expiry is every trading day; a weekly expiry is the last trading day of the week. Full-day market holidays are not trading days. On an early-close day (13:00) the expiry is still 16:00, so the settlement price is the average of the last prices before the early close.

The settlement price is an average over the 30 minutes before expiry, taken from each of the market's price sources. NVDA and SPCX each have two independent sources.

• Both sources agree: the price is final about two minutes after the close. This is the normal path.
• Only one source is usable: its price is proposed and becomes final after a waiting period (six hours by default; it can be set between 30 minutes and 24 hours). During that wait a guardian can veto it.
• Still not final after 48 hours: an administrator can set the price. If any source recorded a usable price, it must be set within a band around the recorded prices. If no source recorded a usable price at all, the contract does not bound it. This is one reason the launch markets have two sources.

The full list of what can go wrong is on the Risks page.

Settlement is cash value paid out of the collateral that backs the contract. Nothing is assigned and no one has to deliver anything. Once the price is final, anyone can settle the series and pay every holder.

• Puts are backed by USDG and pay out in USDG.
• Calls are backed by the Stock Token and pay out in it. By default an in-the-money call payout is converted to USDG, with a minimum price the conversion must meet; if it cannot convert, you are paid in the Stock Token instead. You can choose to always be paid in kind.
• Writers get back the collateral that was not paid to the holder, in the same asset they locked.
• New contracts cannot be opened in the last 30 minutes before expiry, the window the price is averaged over.

The mechanics, with worked examples, are on How it works.