Policy & Regulation
Brierly is the independent settlement-integrity layer for event markets — the firm that grades the contract, not the trade. A public-interest-determination regime needs a grader that is not the venue: a market that lists its own contracts also wrote the language those contracts would be graded on. This page collects Brierly's regulatory filings and the principles we argue a settlement-integrity standard should require.
Filings & comments
Comment on Proposed Rule — Prediction Markets; Public Interest Determinations (RIN 3038-AF65; 91 FR 35806)Draft — for counsel review
An independent, methodology-public settlement-risk standard would let public-interest determinations turn on whether a contract is resolvable, not on what it is about. Grounded in the coded record of 2025–26 event-market settlement disputes.
Prediction Markets; Public Interest Determinations · RIN 3038-AF65 · 91 FR 35806 (published June 12, 2026) · comments due July 27, 2026
Comments are filed by the firm, with counsel, on regulations.gov under the docket for RIN 3038-AF65. Brierly hosts and publicizes the comment; the firm files it, with counsel, on regulations.gov.
Why independence
Independence is the product, not a feature of it. A venue grading its own listings is structurally conflicted — it wrote the language it would be grading — and venue self-policing covers conduct (surveillance, manipulation), not contract language. The precedent is ordinary: issuers tolerate auditors and ratings agencies because independent verification is what lets the next, more conservative pool of capital participate. Solidus and Eventus watch the order flow; Brierly grades the contract. The layers are complements, and only one of them can credibly come from a party with no listings to defend.
The long form of this argument lives on About (the firm's operating principles) and in the independence policy.
What a settlement-integrity standard should require
five drafting requirements, each scored by the published RuleScore methodology
Settlement should key on a single, named, official record — a government release, a governing body's published result, a designated index — not on “consensus of credible reporting” or a requirement that two parties both confirm. The most expensive disputes in the record are source disputes: a contract that settles on what the press prints, or on a confirmation one party never gives, has no canonical answer.
Each load-bearing word — “suit,” “invasion,” “ban,” “perform,” “meet,” “mention” — should be defined in the contract, for the purposes of that contract. Undefined operative terms are the single largest dispute family in the coded record.
A hard cutoff with a timezone, and a clear answer to whether settlement turns on when the event occurred or when it was disclosed. Event-time-versus-disclosure-time ambiguity has flipped nine-figure markets.
For any numeric threshold: explicit boundary handling (“at or above”), a rounding rule, and — for revision-prone figures like viewership, CPI, or GDP — a controlling-print rule stating that the first official figure controls and later revisions do not.
An exhaustive statement of what happens on a tie, cancellation, or postponement, and a time-boxed, rules-bound dispute process — not unilateral “sole discretion” or retroactive “market context.” Discretionary adjudication is where contested settlements are decided after the fact.
The comment above is a working
DRAFT for counsel review — not yet filed, and not legal advice. It is grounded entirely in Brierly's public
dispute database and methodology; the firm files the final comment, with counsel, on regulations.gov.