Welcome to Alpha SDK
The Alpha SDK is a TypeScript library for interacting with Alpha Market — a decentralized prediction market platform built on Algorand. Build trading bots, manage positions, place orders, and read live orderbook data directly from the blockchain.What is Alpha Market?
Alpha Market is an on-chain prediction market where users can trade on the outcomes of future events. Every market has two outcome tokens (YES and NO), and prices reflect the probability of each outcome. All trading happens on-chain via smart contracts.What You Can Build
Trading Bots
Automated strategies that scan markets and execute trades based on your logic
Portfolio Managers
Track positions across multiple markets and manage risk
Market Makers
Provide liquidity by placing orders on both sides of the orderbook
Analytics Tools
Fetch orderbook data, market metrics, and trade history
Key Features
Full Trading Capabilities
- Limit orders — Set your price and wait for matches
- Market orders — Execute immediately against the orderbook
- Order management — Cancel or amend existing orders
- Position management — Split, merge, and claim tokens
On-Chain & API Access
- Works without an API key — Read markets and place orders directly from the blockchain
- Enhanced with API — Get richer market data including images, categories, volume, and liquidity rewards
- Real-time orderbook — Fetch live bids and asks from the chain
Developer-Friendly
- TypeScript native — Full type safety and IntelliSense support
- Simple setup — Just 3 dependencies and 5 lines of config
- Comprehensive examples — Runnable scripts for every major use case
- Production-ready — Built on
algosdkand AlgoKit Utils
Core Concepts
Markets
Each market represents a question with a binary outcome (YES or NO). Markets have:- Two outcome tokens (ASA assets on Algorand)
- A resolution date when the outcome is determined
- An on-chain orderbook managed by smart contracts
- Unique
marketAppIdfor identification
Orders
Orders sit on the orderbook and can be:- Buy orders (bids) — Offering USDC for outcome tokens
- Sell orders (asks) — Offering outcome tokens for USDC
- Limit orders — Posted at your specified price
- Market orders — Match immediately at the best available price
Positions
You can hold positions in:- USDC — The settlement currency (mainnet ASA ID:
31566704) - YES tokens — Pay out $1 if the market resolves YES
- NO tokens — Pay out $1 if the market resolves NO
- Split/Merge — Convert 1 USDC ↔ 1 YES + 1 NO at any time
Units & Conventions
All monetary values in the SDK use microunits (1 million microunits = $1.00 or 1 share):| Value | Microunits | Display |
|---|---|---|
| Price | 500_000 | $0.50 |
| Quantity | 2_000_000 | 2 shares |
| Fee | 70_000 | 7% |
- Position:
1= YES,0= NO - Side:
1= Buy,0= Sell
The SDK handles all transaction construction, fee calculation, and smart contract interaction automatically. You just call high-level methods like
createLimitOrder() or getOrderbook().Why Algorand?
Alpha Market runs on Algorand because it offers:- Fast finality — Blocks confirm in ~3 seconds
- Low fees — Pennies per transaction
- Native assets — Outcome tokens are first-class assets (ASAs)
- Smart contracts — Pure on-chain orderbook and matching
API Key (Optional)
An API key is not required to use the SDK. Without one, you can:- Fetch all live markets from the blockchain
- Place and cancel orders
- Read orderbooks
- Manage positions
- Market images and metadata
- Category and tag filtering
- Volume and probability data
- Liquidity reward markets
- Wallet order lookups across all markets
Next Steps
Installation
Install the SDK and dependencies
Quick Start
Build your first trading application in 5 minutes