Wall Street sleeps 81% of the week. Ballast keeps the watch.
A credit line on your tokenized stocks. Before every close, an agent moves your loan into a state that survives the gap. While the market is shut, a contract on BNB Chain lets it only reduce risk.
Open a credit lineTurn the wheel to any hour. Each star is a Lista liquidation between 18 June and 22 September; hollow rings are tripwire tests. The further out, the more dollars. The weekend sky is empty.
Where the money is actually lost
We read every Liquidate event on Lista's bStock markets from 18 June to 22 September 2026: 121 in all. The risk builds up while New York is closed. The money is lost in the first 90 minutes after it opens.
The clock and the money don't line up
Share of the clock each session takes, against its share of liquidated dollars. All 120 bStock-collateral liquidations, 18 June to 22 September.
How far prices jump at the reopen
Worst 1% of downward gaps from the close to the next open, 36 names, 6.3 years. Ballast sizes each loan for the gap ahead.
Three moves around every close
The agent works to New York's clock. The contract decides what it is allowed to do at each hour.
1Shield before the close
From 3:00 PM New York time the agent repays part of the loan, until it would survive the worst 1% gap for the window ahead: 4.4% overnight, 5.5% over a weekend, 17.9% before earnings.
The agent acts. The contract checks that each move lowers risk.
2Refuse while closed
From 4:00 PM until the next open, the contract rejects every attempt by the agent to add risk: it cannot restore the loan early, and it can never borrow to itself or move collateral out. Repaying from your cushion still goes through.
Enforced on-chain for the agent. Your own wallet keeps full control of the loan.
3Restore after the open settles
At 11:00 AM, after the first 90 minutes when most of the money is lost, the agent restores the loan to its size before the shield, if the reference price has caught up.
Only after the session opens. Never during the dark hours.
What a refusal looks like
Say the agent, or anyone holding its key, tries to restore the full loan on a Saturday afternoon. The transaction reverts and your loan stays at its weekend size; the only cost is the caller's gas.
Refusals the agent runs into are listed in your dashboard; one that was actually sent links to its reverted transaction.
- When
- Saturday 10 Oct, 14:02 New York
- Call
- restore(2,400 USD1)
- Result
- Reverted: RestoreRefused(NOT_REGULAR)next open Mon 12 Oct 09:30 ET
- Loan
- Stays at 41% loan-to-value, ready for a 5.5% gap
- Cost
- 0.00004 BNB in gas
The Session Oracle admits what it doesn't know
Over a weekend, the last real New York price gets older by the hour. The Session Oracle publishes a reference price together with how far it might be off. That band widens while the market sleeps.
- Three venues, one referencePer-share prices from Binance bStocks, Ondo and xStocks, cleaned of share multipliers and blended into one reference.
- A band that grows with the darkAt the close the band is the stock's measured p99 gap for the night, weekend or holiday ahead. It widens by that much again for every day the market stays shut, up to three times, and goes back to zero at the open.
- The age is shown, never hiddenEvery reading carries the time since New York's last close. Ballast sizes your loan for the far edge of the band, not for the middle.
- Why it worksAcross 597 weekends, the Saturday and Sunday bStock price says almost nothing about Monday's open (R² at most 0.2) until US overnight venues reopen on Sunday evening. By 09:00 ET Monday it tracks the open with a correlation of 0.97. The dark hours are mostly noise, so Ballast does not let them add risk.
The band Ballast enforces on-chain: it starts at the measured p99 gap and widens for every day the market stays shut, up to 3x. Shown for NVDA; each stock carries its own measured gaps.
Guardians are paid only if your loan survives
The agent that shields your loan takes it on as a job. Its fee sits in escrow under ERC-8183 and is released only if the loan is still standing when the window ends. If the loan is liquidated, the fee goes back to you. Each guardian has an ERC-8004 identity, so its record follows it from job to job.
Fri 16:00 to Mon 11:005.5%6.00 USD1Mon 11:00Survived, fee released to guardian
Wed 16:00 to Thu 11:0017.9%9.50 USD1Thu 11:00Survived, fee released to guardian
Tue 16:00 to Wed 11:004.4%2.00 USD1Wed 11:00Liquidated at 09:41, fee refunded to borrower
Example jobs, shown to explain the flow.
Guardian 318 Example
Registered on the ERC-8004 identity registry. Its outcomes are written to the reputation registry after every window, so you can pick a guardian by its record, not its claims.
What Ballast can't do
It sizes for the 99th percentile, not the worst case
One closure in a hundred gaps further than the band. Earnings gaps reach 17.9%, and a loan shielded for 4.4% won't survive one if the earnings date is missed.
It doesn't stop Lista or Venus
The contract limits what the agent can do with your loan. It does not limit you, and liquidations are still run by the lending market's own rules and prices.
Shielding has a cost
A smaller loan overnight means less borrowed for those hours. Restoring needs a transaction after the open, and prices may have moved by then.
The evidence is young
Three months of one lending market: 121 liquidations, 33 of them from real borrowers. Venus seized no bStock collateral in the same period. We will keep publishing as the sample grows.
The oracle band is a rule, not a forecast
It starts from p99 gaps measured over 6.3 years of the underlying stocks and widens on a fixed schedule. It is not a guarantee, and it says so on every reading.
This is new code
Ballast's contracts have not been audited yet. Start with an amount you are prepared to lose.
Borrow through the dark hours
Pick a stock, open a credit line, and let the agent take the watch at every close.
Open a credit line