What is ZEIT Finance?
Zeit.finance (“ZEIT”) is building a marketplace for Perpetual Prediction Vaults (PPVs) — tokenized, perpetual, yield‑bearing shares of diversified prediction‑market strategies (“worldviews”), starting with Polymarket exposure.
Prediction markets are excellent at answering one-off questions:
“What’s the probability that X happens by date Y?”
But they are harder to use for long‑term investing: markets expire, narratives fragment across many contracts, and staying exposed to a theme usually requires constant rolling and micromanagement.
ZEIT is the wrapper that turns prediction‑market exposure into an investable, composable asset class.
If Polymarket or general Prediction Markets is where odds live, ZEIT is where you can own a strategy built on those odds — as a simple token in your wallet.
Quick Overview
Zeit is a marketplace for Perpetual Prediction Vaults (PPVs).
Each PPV is an on‑chain vault that trades across many prediction markets to express a coherent theme or worldview (e.g., “Nothing Ever Happens,” “Post‑Work / Automation,” or “Status Quo Macro”).
Each vault issues an ERC‑20 “share token” with a real on‑chain NAV.
Your PPV token represents a proportional claim on the vault’s assets and PnL. As the vault’s portfolio moves, its net asset value (NAV) changes — and so does the value of your shares.
Perpetual exposure (no expiries for the user).
Individual markets resolve, but the vault keeps running. It rolls into new markets that fit its worldview so you can stay exposed without manually rotating between event contracts.
Buy, hold, trade — and eventually borrow against PPVs.
PPVs are designed to be wallet‑native and DeFi‑composable, so they can be traded like any ERC‑20 and used as collateral.
Built for both investors and strategy creators.
Investors get simple “one token = one worldview” exposure. Managers (individuals, funds, agents, AIs) get professional‑grade infrastructure: analytics, automation, and advanced execution tooling.
Designed to unlock a full “derivatives layer” on prediction markets.
Once prediction exposure exists as standardized vault tokens, you can build indices, tranches, structured products, and options on top — similar to how tokenized vault standards accelerated innovation across DeFi.
Understanding PPV Prices
On Polymarket, a single YES share priced at $0.18 roughly implies an 18% chance that the event resolves to YES. It’s a probability signal for one specific outcome on one specific market.
A PPV share is different:
It’s not “18% chance of X”.
It’s a claim on a whole portfolio of markets that the vault is trading.
Its price is denominated in assets (e.g. USDC), not in “probability points”.
The right mental model is much closer to a vault token / mutual fund share than a single prediction-market position.
PPV price = Price Per Share (PPS)
Every Zeit vault has:
A pool of assets and positions (YES/NO shares, idle collateral, etc.).
A total number of PPV shares outstanding.
From that, we define:
PPS (price per share) = vault NAV ÷ total shares
Where:
NAV (Net Asset Value) = the aggregated mark‑to‑market value of everything the vault owns (open positions + idle collateral − fees, in a common unit like USDC).
Total shares = the number of PPV tokens in existence.
If:
the vault is worth 100,000 USDC in total
and there are 50,000 PPV shares outstanding
then:
PPS = 100,000 / 50,000 = 2.00 USDC per share
One PPV token is economically equivalent to 2.00 USDC of exposure to that strategy.
Mental model: how PPS is formed
You can think about the PPV price in four simple steps:
Step 1 — The vault holds a portfolio
The vault isn’t “just” a pile of stablecoins. It holds:
Open positions in many prediction markets (YES/NO shares across Polymarket and, over time, other venues).
Idle collateral that hasn’t yet been deployed.
All of this lives inside the vault smart contract.
Step 2 — Positions are marked‑to‑market
At any given moment, each open position has a market price:
If a YES share on Polymarket is trading at $0.42, that’s what we use to value that position.
If a NO share is trading at $0.77, same idea.
As information changes and orderbooks move, these prices update — and so does the mark‑to‑market value of the vault’s positions.
Step 3 — Add everything up → NAV
We then conceptually sum up:
Value of all YES/NO shares (using current market prices)
Plus any idle collateral
Minus accumulated fees
This gives a single number in USDC terms:
NAV = “If we closed all positions at current prices, how much would the vault be worth?”
Step 4 — Divide NAV by shares → PPS
Finally:
PPS = NAV ÷ total shares
That PPS is the economic value of one PPV token. If PPS goes from 1.00 → 1.20, the vault has generated a +20% gross return (before any fees at the share holder’s level).
PPS, deposits and withdrawals
Zeit’s vaults follow a vault‑style “price per share” model (inspired by systems like Boring Vaults on Ethereum):
PPS tells you how much vault value one share represents.
Deposits and withdrawals are processed at the current PPS during specific roll windows.
When new capital comes in or out, we want:
Fairness — everyone in that batch gets the same economic price.
No hidden dilution — new capital doesn’t magically create value; it just increases NAV and the number of shares proportionally.
Robustness in thin markets — Polymarket and other prediction markets can have relatively thin orderbooks; you don’t want each user’s deposit/withdraw getting a different, random fill depending on microstructure noise.
Example
Suppose:
Vault NAV = 75,000 USDC
Total shares = 50,000
So PPS = 1.50 USDC
Now a batch of users collectively deposits 30,000 USDC during a roll:
We keep PPS fixed at 1.50 for this roll.
New shares minted = 30,000 / 1.50 = 20,000.
New NAV = 75,000 + 30,000 = 105,000 USDC.
New total shares = 50,000 + 20,000 = 70,000.
PPS after the roll = 105,000 / 70,000 = 1.50 USDC (unchanged).
Deposits don’t change PPS (they just scale NAV and shares together) — returns come from the strategy’s performance, not from new money entering the vault.
Withdrawals work in the opposite direction:
Shares are burned at the current PPS.
NAV decreases by the corresponding amount.
The remaining PPS for other holders stays economically consistent.
Roll periods: when PPS is “officially” set
In practice, Zeit doesn’t constantly recompute and commit a new “official” PPS on every tiny market move.
Instead, vaults operate in discrete roll periods (e.g. daily or strategy‑specific cycles):
Between rolls
The strategy is trading and PnL is moving.
User intents (deposits/withdrawals) can be queued.
At a roll
The vault snapshots its portfolio using up‑to‑date market prices.
It computes NAV and then PPS = NAV ÷ total shares.
All queued deposits and withdrawals in that batch are executed at this PPS.
New capital is deployed and exiting capital is unwound as part of a coherent rebalance.
This gives you:
One fair PPS per batch, based on the same underlying state.
A clear mental model:
“My deposit gets priced at the next roll’s PPS. My shares then float with the strategy until I exit at some future PPS.”
Why PPVs look like DeFi vault shares (and not like event odds)
Because PPVs are defined in terms of NAV and PPS, they behave like DeFi vault tokens, not like raw event odds:
Each PPV share is a proportional claim on a changing pile of assets, not a binary “win/lose” ticket on a single market.
PPS naturally reflects:
Gains and losses from trading many prediction markets.
Accrued fees at the vault level.
Slippage and execution quality that the manager actually achieves.
Crucially, the risk profile is different from a single market:
A single YES/NO position can go to zero instantly when it resolves against you.
A vault holds a diversified, continuously rebalanced portfolio of markets and keeps rolling into new ones as old ones expire.
That makes the PPV closer to a perpetual, path‑dependent return stream than a one‑off binary outcome.
By wrapping this into a single ERC‑20 with a PPS time series, you get:
A continuous price process (PPS over time) instead of a scattered set of expiring contracts.
Something that looks and behaves like a tokenized fund share, which fits naturally into:
Lending protocols (PPVs as collateral).
Indices (baskets of worldviews).
Tranching / structured products (senior/junior slices of vault risk).
In summary:
Polymarket gives you odds on individual events. Zeit’s PPVs tokenize a strategy built on many events into a single vault share with a clean PPS, so you have one unified, stochastic underlying you can plug into modern risk models and derivatives math.
Making Money on Vaults
PPVs don’t remove risk — they make exposure easier to own and manage. You make (or lose) money when the vault’s NAV changes, which happens when the strategy’s positions perform.
Common return drivers include:
Being right about the world.
If a vault holds positions that are underpriced relative to true probabilities, NAV can rise as prices converge or as outcomes resolve.
Riding information re‑pricing.
Even before resolution, a vault can profit if odds move in its favor (because the mark‑to‑market value of its positions increases). A PPV holder doesn’t need to manage each underlying market — the vault does.
Diversification across a narrative, not a single bet.
Vaults can spread exposure across multiple related markets and timeframes, reducing reliance on one binary event and enabling portfolio‑style risk management.
Hedging and risk shaping.
Strategies can include hedges (e.g., pairing related markets or using “continuity” markets) to control drawdowns and make the payoff profile smoother or more convex, depending on the vault design.
Fees and incentives
No management fee
Performance fee with a high‑water mark → rewards vault managers only on new profits
Tiny per‑trade protocol fee → funds the ZEIT protocol whenever vaults trade (NOT ACTIVE NOW)
1. Performance fee with high‑water mark
Vault managers are paid only when they create new value for the vault.
The vault tracks a high‑water mark (HWM): the highest PPS (price per share) it has ever reached at a fee checkpoint.
A performance fee is charged only on gains above that previous high.
If PPS dips and then recovers, no performance fee is taken until PPS actually exceeds the old HWM.
This means:
Managers don’t get paid twice for the same performance.
Managers are incentivized to grow PPS over the long run, not to churn risk.
Example:
Old HWM PPS: 1.20
PPS drops to 1.00 → no performance fee.
PPS rises from 1.00 → 1.25:
Only the move from 1.20 → 1.25 counts as “new performance”.
Performance fee applies only on that small slice of profit.
Paid in vault shares When a performance fee is due, it is paid in vault shares, not in raw USDC:
The vault mints a small amount of new PPV tokens to the manager.
Existing holders keep the same number of shares, but their percentage ownership of the vault decreases slightly (standard fund/LP dynamic).
The manager ends up holding the vault token itself, with the same upside/downside as everyone else.
Benefits:
Aligned incentives — managers win when the vault wins.
No forced selling just to pay fees in cash (important when underlying books are thin).
Clean accounting — the effect of fees is visible directly in PPS and share count.
2. Per‑trade protocol fee
Separately from manager rewards, the ZEIT protocol takes a very small fee on each trade the vault executes:
Every time a vault buys or sells in the underlying markets, a tiny fee (think basis points on notional) is applied. (NOT ACTIVE)
In summary:
There is no management fee eating into returns by default.
Vault managers earn a high‑water performance fee in vault shares, so they’re rewarded only when PPS makes new highs — and they stay exposed to the vault’s future.
The ZEIT protocol earns a tiny fee on each trade the vault executes, so the infrastructure can be sustainably funded without misaligning incentives.
The net effect is a fee model that is transparent, performance‑driven, and structurally aligned with long‑term PPV holders.
How accurate are Zeit vault prices?
Think of PPV pricing as “accuracy through transparency and execution‑awareness.”
A PPV’s value is an on‑chain NAV backed by live positions. That’s the core trust model: you can inspect the strategy, the holdings, and the track record, instead of trusting a black‑box “number.”
When evaluating a vault, look for:
On‑chain track record
NAV history, drawdowns, volatility, and how the strategy behaves across different market regimes.
Risk controls
Hedging logic, concentration limits, max notional per market, and whether the payoff profile actually matches your risk appetite.
Liquidity & mechanics
How deposits/withdrawals work (including batching and roll periods), what notice you have before a roll, and how easily you can exit.
Core KPIs (portfolio‑level)
TVL, turnover, net flows, Sharpe/volatility metrics, collateral usage %, vault growth and retention — all the usual portfolio analytics, but applied to a prediction‑market strategy.
Thin orderbooks and “paper price” vs executable price
Prediction markets often have thin CLOBs (central limit order books). If you just mark everything at the mid price, you get a nice‑looking paper NAV, but it might be hard to actually unwind the portfolio at that level without moving the market.
Zeit’s pricing tries to be explicit about this distinction:
Paper NAV
“What is the vault worth if I mark every position at the current mid price with zero impact?”
Executable NAV / impact‑aware NAV
“If I actually tried to sell (or buy back) these positions into the current orderbook, size by size, what average price would I get? What’s the implied price impact?”
When we compute PPS at a roll, we look at the live CLOBs and, for each position, estimate:
The quantity you could realistically execute
At which prices, across the top levels of the book
What the instant unwind price would be versus the idealized mid
This gives us an impact‑adjusted view of the portfolio, which we can then factor into how PPS is set for that roll. The goal is to avoid a situation where PPS looks great on paper but is silently leaning on liquidity that doesn’t actually exist.
Towards transparent, oracle‑grade pricing
Because the system is new, the plan is to be aggressively transparent about how PPS is computed:
Publish the pricing algorithm (how we read CLOBs, how we simulate execution, how we aggregate into NAV/PPS).
Publish frequent reports around each PPS calculation (per roll), so users and external reviewers can see:
Inputs (positions, orderbook snapshots, assumptions)
Outputs (NAV, PPS, impact metrics)
The long‑term vision is that a fair, execution‑aware PPS methodology can be:
Standardized and open‑sourced
Implemented by multiple independent instances — including oracles and external data providers
Used as a shared reference price for lending protocols, indices, and derivatives that build on top of PPVs
Zooming out: prediction markets can be remarkably good “real‑time probability machines.” Zeit’s ambition is to package that signal into perpetual, composable assets with a robust, impact‑aware price process — so you can invest in worldviews the way you invest in ETFs, indices, or vault tokens elsewhere in DeFi, and still apply modern risk management and derivatives math on top.
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