How it Works

To truly understand how the protocol and platform works, one needs to understand what's happening under the hood. Here we will do our best to break down each interaction an entity may make with the protocol and what's happening.
NOTE: Options contracts are NOT automatically exercised upon expiration for our users. If you have an open position, you will have to exercise it manually. 
NOTE: As an open source protocol, anyone can fork and/or use the American v1 code. Usage of this protocol does not constitute any sort of affiliation or partnership with PsyOptions.
Under the Hood
At the protocol level, there is no concept of Call vs Put. The astute reader will recognize that if you parameterize the underlying and quote asset for options, the function of the Call and Put has an inverse relationship to the assets. More plainly, the protocol does not have an instruction to mint a Put, only an instruction to mint a Call.
The Put is created by using the reciprocal asset pair. So a Put for SOL/USDC would simply be a call for USDC/SOL.
Initialize a New Options Market
The protocol is designed to be a primitive, so it makes very little assumptions about options, how they should be traded, priced, etc. The protocol itself also makes no assumptions on what assets should have options and which should not. It has been built with various use cases in mind, like writing contracts on NFTs, tokenized property deeds, tokenized stocks...anything that can be represented as an SPL Token can have an option market. Whether or not there be liquidity on those markets is a topic for another discussion.
Option markets themselves are completely open and permissionless. If there are a pair of assets you want to write options on, you can create that market! To do so you need to use the InitializeMarket instruction. Each market is governed by specific parameters that determine its fungibility. Those parameters include:
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pub struct OptionMarket { 
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...    
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/// The SPL Token Address that is held in the program's pool when an option is written    
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pub underlying_asset_mint: Pubkey,
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/// The SPL Token Address that denominates the strike price
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pub quote_asset_mint: Pubkey,    
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/// The amount of the **underlying asset** that derives a single option
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pub underlying_amount_per_contract: u64,    
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/// The amount of **quote asset** that must be transfered when an option is exercised    
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pub quote_amount_per_contract: u64,    
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/// The Unix timestamp **in seconds** at which the contracts in this market expire    
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pub expiration_unix_timestamp: UnixTimestamp,  
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...
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}
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It is important to note that the protocol uses deterministic addressing of markets, based on the unique parameters, so there can never be two of the exact same market. This was a conscious decision of V1 to reduce the chance of fragmented liquidity.
Creating a new market is extremely cheap and easy! When a new market is initialized a few things happen. The most important are the creation of the Underlying Asset Pool and the Quote Asset Pool for that market. These pools are unique to and owned by each individual market. When someone mints an option contract, their collateral is stored in these pools, more on that next.
Minting an Option
Without a doubt, the most important and widely used instruction of the protocol. When you want to mint a contract for a given market you need the MintCoveredCall instruction. It is extremely important to note that although this instruction contains the phrase Covered Call in the V1 protocol, all contracts can be considered covered calls. PUTs are simply the reciprocal of a CALL, and all of V1's markets require 100% collateral upfront. More can be read here.​
To mint a contract, the contract writer must put up 100% of the underlying_amount_per_contract plus a 5bps minting fee. This small fee will go to the PsyOptions treasury and will be adjustable (or removable) via governance. So the total underlying assets required to mint 1 contract is:
underlying_assets_required = underlying_amount_per_contract + (underlying_amount_per_contract * 0.0005)
These underlying assets are then stored in the option markets' Underlying Asset Pool. If the transfer to the pool succeeds (i.e. enough underlying was posted), then the protocol mints the user 2 tokens, the OptionToken and the WriterToken.
The OptionToken is the actual contract, which gives the holder the right but not the obligation to swap the quote assets for the underlying assets at the agreed upon strike price. The OptionToken is an SPL Token, so it can be transferred or traded on any venue that has SPL Token support.
The WriterToken denotes the holder is short the option or wrote the contract. Lets break that statement down into more logical terms. Given this is an American style contract the OptionToken holder can exercise at any point in time prior to expiration. So at any point (pre or post expiration) the WriterToken gives the holder the ability to claim the quote_amount_per_contract should anyone exercise and the Quote Asset Pool contains enough of a balance. Post expiration, the WriterToken gives the holder the ability to claim the underlying_amount_per_contract back from the Underlying Asset Pool.
So to generate yield from writing a contract, you would sell the OptionToken. That could be done OTC and transferred, on a Serum market, or any other venue that creates and exchange for a market's SPLs.\
Exercising a Contract
With the OptionToken we have the ability to exercise the contract with the use of the ExerciseCoveredCall instruction. To exercise we must post the OptionToken held and the quote_amount_per_contract plus a 5bps fee. This small fee will got to the PsyOptions treasury and will be adjustable (or removable) via governance. So the total quote asset that must be posted is
quote_assets_required = quote_amount_per_contract + (quote_amount_per_contract * 0.0005)
With the correct amount posted, the protocol burns the OptionToken, transfers quote_amount_per_contract to the market's Quote Asset Pool, and transfers underlying_amount_per_contract to the exerciser's address.
Now that someone has exercised, we'll cover how a contract writer can claim those assets.
Extracting Assets From an Exercised Contract
The composability of PsyOptions American V1 provides many use cases outside of pure volatility trading, portfolio hedging, etc where exercising early will most certainly happen. Let's take protocol XYZ that is running a liquidity mining program that incentivized new liquidity providers with At The Money (ATM) contracts that expire in 10 years. As long as project XYZ continues to grow, these contract holders will most certainly exercise early.
Now when that early exercise occurs, the contract writer is able to claim the quote assets as soon as they are available. To do so, the contract writer must use the ExchangeWriterTokenForQuote instruction. The user must post the WriterToken. The protocol will burn the WriterToken and transfer the quote_amount_per_contract to the writer's wallet.
A few items to note:
1.This instruction can be called at any point in time, so long as there are enough quote assets in the Quote Asset Pool.
2.This instruction acts on a first come, first serve basis. All OptionTokens and WriterTokens for a given market are respectively fungible (i.e. Any OptionToken is the same as another for the given market. The same is true for the WriterToken.). So as soon as someone exercises an OptionContract anyone holding a WriterToken for that market has a claim on the quote assets.
Getting Your Underlying Back After Expiration
After expiration, a contract writer has a claim on their original underlying assets that they posted to write the contract. Only after expiration can a WriterToken sent to the protocol be burned in exchange for the underlying_amount_per_contract. This is done through the ClosePostExpiration instruction.
Closing a Position Pre-Expiration
What happens if you wrote too many contracts at once? Or your exposure has changed and you need to close your position? This is where the ClosePosition instruction comes in. This instruction requires you to have both the OptionToken and the WriterToken. At any point (pre or post expiration) if a wallet calls this instruction with the correct token pair preset, it will receive the underlying_amount_per_contract. The protocol checks and burns both tokens and then transfers the underlying assets from the pool to the wallet.
Glossary
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How it Works
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Contents
Under the Hood
Initialize a New Options Market
Minting an Option
Exercising a Contract
Extracting Assets From an Exercised Contract
Getting Your Underlying Back After Expiration
Closing a Position Pre-Expiration