Getting started
System components
Six moving parts, each with a job and a boundary. Knowing which is which is what makes a problem diagnosable.
Most confusion about a protocol comes from attributing a behaviour to the wrong layer. The table below is the map: what each component decides, and what it explicitly does not.
| Component | What it does | What it does not do |
|---|---|---|
| Unlockable app | Builds orders, renders markets and positions, reads indexed chain state. | It is not the source of prices or balances. |
| Split engine | Locks deposited tokens, mints and burns PT and YT, settles maturities. | It does not set the market price of either side. |
| PT and YT markets | Match buyers and sellers per token and per maturity, quoted in USDG. | They do not guarantee an exit price, or depth at one. |
| Dividend distributor | Tracks eligible cash distributions and credits them to YT holders. | It does not decide whether a company pays a dividend. |
| Unlockable vaults | Receive deposits and credit the matching account. | They do not custody positions once a split has happened. |
| Robinhood Chain | Executes and settles the contracts. ETH pays for gas. | It does not vouch for the safety of anything deployed on it. |
Why the separation matters#
The split is most useful when something looks wrong. A stale price is a data question. A missing balance is a vault question. A fill you did not expect is a market question. Each component can be inspected on its own, and the app links the canonical contract for every market, so the chain itself is always available as the final reference.