How to tap
How to read the grid, what a box offers, and what happens between your tap and an accepted box.
The grid
The line on the left is the Strike mark price for the market you picked: BTC-USD, ETH-USD or SOL-USD, ending in a glowing dot at now. The pill at the top of the board shows the pair, the price and, above it, the Strike network it comes from. On the hosted app, practice uses Strike mainnet's public prices, so it reads "Strike mainnet prices". The current price is also on the price axis on the right, in a filled pill joined to the dot by a dashed line.
The line only joins prices that were actually recorded. If the feed drops out, the line breaks instead of guessing. It is drawn as a smooth curve, but only in a way that never shows a price outside the two recorded prices it joins, and that passes through the straight settlement line at every column boundary: a box the drawn line touches is exactly a box the outcome rules count as touched. guarantee
To the right of the dot is the grid of future boxes. A box is a price band during a time window.
Columns are 10-second windows on the clock
Every column is a window of exactly 10 seconds, and windows are aligned to the clock: they start at :00, :10, :20, :30, :40 and :50 of every minute. A box never slides while you look at it. guarantee
The server quotes 6 future columns, so you can call about a minute ahead. On a wide screen all six are on the board. A phone keeps the boxes large and shows about 45 seconds ahead: later columns slide in from the right as time passes, and a column is tappable once it is fully on the board. The time labels under the board are fixed steps from now (NOW, +10s, +20s… on a phone). The boxes list for the keyboard (Skip to boxes) reaches every quoted box, including the ones a phone does not show yet.
Rows are fixed price bands
Every row is a fixed band of price, aligned to round numbers:
| Market | One row |
|---|---|
| BTC-USD | $10 |
| ETH-USD | $0.50 |
| SOL-USD | $0.05 |
A BTC-USD row covers, for example, $84,020.00 to $84,030.00. The grid shows 11 rows, centred on the current price; it recentres smoothly when the price moves more than about a row and a half. Rows are at least 44 px tall: on a short screen, or in Live mode on a phone, the top and bottom rows are cut off evenly, and the boxes list still reaches them. A row cut off at the edge can be tapped only where it shows.
When the board recentres, one of your boxes can end up above or below what it shows. It never disappears silently: a small marker at that edge of its column points to it, with its stake and, where there is room, its state.
What a box shows
Every box that is on offer shows one number: its multiplier, rounded down to 0.1×, like 2.1× for 2.12×. It is never rounded up. If the price touches your box during its window, you get your stake times the exact multiplier back, stake included. Boxes nearer the dot are a little brighter.
Its chance (implied probability) is 90 % divided by the multiplier, rounded to 1 %: how likely the quote says a touch is, after the house edge. See Multipliers and the model. You can see it before you tap:
- Hover a box with a mouse: it shows the exact multiplier and its chance, like
2.12×and42% chance. - Press and hold a box on a phone: a preview above your finger shows the exact multiplier, its chance and what it pays at your stake, like
2.12× · 42% chanceandPays 21.20 if hit. Let go to call that box; slide off the grid to cancel. - Keyboard and screen readers: each box in the boxes list says its band, window, exact multiplier and chance.
- The legend at the bottom of the board always states the rule:
Chance = 90% ÷ exact multiplierand the 10 % house edge. - Board settings → Show chance on every box (the sliders button at the top of the board) puts the chance under every multiplier. It is off by default and remembered on this device.
Nothing opens when you tap. Once the server accepts it, the box turns into a solid card with your stake, and the line under the board shows the exact terms: 2.12× locked · 42% chance · 21.20 if hit. The receipt has them too.
Boxes that are not on offer
Some boxes show no number. Hover or press one to see why:
| Reason | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Too likely | The pricing gives it more than an 80 % chance. |
| Too unlikely | The pricing gives it less than a 10 % chance, so the multiplier would be above 9×. |
| Closed | Its window starts in less than 3 seconds, or has already started. |
| Warming up | The market has fewer than 60 recorded prices, so volatility isn't known yet. |
| Stale | No price has arrived for 3 seconds, or Strike's clock is more than 2 seconds out of step with ours. |
Strike's market around the grid
Next to the grid, the app shows Strike's own order book and market statistics for the market on the board, exactly as Strike sent them. None of it changes a box's multiplier, an outcome or a payout. guarantee
Order book bars
Thin bars beside the price axis on the right show the orders resting on Strike's order book inside each row's price band: asks just above the row's centre, bids just below. They grow from the right-hand edge of the board, outside the grid, so they never cover a box and can never be tapped. The rows holding the best bid and the best ask are brighter. Board settings → Show Strike order book switches them off (on by default, remembered on this device); the order book in the market sheet is always there.
- Length follows a fixed scale of the resting value (size × price), the same on every screen: $10 or less is the shortest stub, $1,000,000 or more is a full bar. It is never scaled to the biggest row, so a thin book looks thin. A row with no resting orders draws nothing.
- Freshness. The server keeps a copy of Strike's book. Strike's live updates keep the 20 best levels on each side current, and the whole book is read again every 2 seconds. When the copy isn't current (the whole book hasn't been read again for 20 seconds, or it is being rebuilt after a reconnect), or the app has lost its connection, the bars turn grey, the top of the price axis says "Paused", and the app says "Order book paused" (in the market strip on wider screens, to screen readers on phones).
Market strip
On screens 640 px and wider, a strip in the board's header, next to the price, shows the market's 24 h change, high and low, the funding rate (per funding interval) and the time to the next funding, the 24 h volume, the open interest, and how far the mark price is from the index price, each with its label, as many as fit. On a phone the board keeps its header to the price: every value is one tap away in the market sheet. Anything Strike hasn't sent yet shows as "—", never as zero.
Market sheet
Tap the price pill at the top of the board (the coin, the network and the price, with an arrow) to open the full details:
- every statistic above, plus the last trade price, the 24 h volume in dollars, and the mark and index prices;
- the latest public trades, newest first: time, buy or sell, price and size (up to 20);
- the order book by row, as text: the resting bid and ask size in each row the board shows, with the best bid and best ask marked. This is the same data as the bars, readable with a keyboard or a screen reader.
In Live mode the board shows the market Live orders execute on. When that is a different Strike network, the bars show that network's book, and the strip and sheet say so instead of showing the practice network's statistics.
The cutoff
A box can be accepted only until 3 seconds before its window starts. After that it is closed. A window that has started can never be entered. guarantee
So the earliest box you can tap starts between 3 and 13 seconds from now. The server's clock decides, not your phone's. If your tap arrives after the cutoff, it is rejected as Box closed. A new tap after the cutoff is rejected too; a retry of a tap the server already accepted (same request, same key) still returns that accepted box.
Stake chips
Pick a stake chip before you tap. Each tap stakes 1 to 100 credits. The stake is part of the tap, so check the chip before you tap a box.
The tap, step by step
- You tap. The app sends the box, the multiplier you saw, the quote it came from, your stake and a unique key for this tap.
- The server checks the quote is genuine and no more than 3 seconds old, the box is still open, the price feed is live, and your stake and limits are fine.
- It prices the box again with the latest price, the same way the quote was priced. If the multiplier has dropped by more than 3 % from what you saw, or the box has become too likely to be offered, it rejects the tap as Price moved and shows you the fresh multiplier when there is one. Tap again if you still want it.
- If everything passes, your stake moves from available to in play and the box is Accepted, at the multiplier you saw. Never repriced, up or down, after that. guarantee
Tapping the same box twice by accident? Each tap carries its own key. If the same tap is sent twice, for example on a flaky connection, the server returns the first result and does nothing twice. guarantee
Taps are never queued. If the app can't reach the server, the tap shows as failed, and nothing is sent later behind your back.
Tips
- Boxes near the price are likely and pay little. Boxes far away are unlikely and pay more. The chance (90 % ÷ the multiplier) tells you which is which.
- Near boxes are priced conservatively: the quote takes the higher of a random-walk model and what recent real prices did, so over many taps near boxes return less than the nominal 90 %. See Fairness and calibration.
- Later columns give the price more time to move, so their numbers differ from the near columns for the same row.
- Watch for the stale banner. While it shows, nothing can be tapped.
Next
- Outcomes and settlement: exactly what counts as a touch.
- States you will see: every state and every rejection.