Lock-In Bid
The first marketplace where every card has a story arc. A buyer commits, the market reacts, the protagonist sees it play out in public.
How it works in 60 seconds
Three steps. The buyer commits with a Stripe hold; the auction goes public; the highest bid wins, automatically.
Lock in a bid
Buyer bids 50–99% of comp. Stripe authorizes a hold. They're locked in — the only variable is whether they win at their price or get outbid.
Auction goes live
Duration is set by the bid percentage. Lower bids run longer. The system auto-posts to TikTok / IG / X / Facebook organically. Sellers can pay to amplify reach.
Highest bid wins
If outbid, prior holds release; new top bidder is locked in. At close, top hold captures, card ships. Reserve revealed. All on chain.
The bid-% duration mechanic
Lowballs need eyeballs. Fair bids don't. Drag the slider — the lower your bid as a percentage of comp, the longer the auction runs to give the market time to outbid you.
| Bid % of comp | Auction duration | Why |
|---|---|---|
| 90–99% | 24 hours | You're paying near comp. Quick resolution. |
| 80–89% | 2 days | Mild discount. Some market exposure needed. |
| 70–79% | 3 days | Discount range. Algorithm needs time to push. |
| 60–69% | 5 days | Aggressive. Full social burst window. |
| 50–59% | 7 days | Steal attempt. Market gets max chance to outbid. |
| Below 50% | Rejected | Not a serious offer. System rejects. |
The Stripe hold lifecycle
You're never billed for a bid you didn't win. Holds are placed on-bid, released on-outbid, captured at-close. Manual-capture PaymentIntent — same primitive as ToT.
The $10 trigger fee
- What it is: a commitment filter. Non-refundable on auction trigger.
- Why: if you don't have skin in the game, you don't get to summon a public event for 5 days.
- Loyalty waiver: waived for users with 3+ successful prior auctions.
- Risk surcharge: $20 for users with prior failed-hold incidents.
Three scenarios played out
Real auctions follow distinct shapes. Here are the three archetypes — the confident bidder, the unchallenged steal, and the seller's boost play.
Scenario 1 — The confident bidder
Scenario 2 — The unchallenged steal
Scenario 3 — The seller's boost play
Provably fair (try it yourself)
Two Solana memo transactions per auction make the system tamper-evident. The seller's reserve is committed to before bidding opens; the bid history is anchored as a Merkle root at close. Verify either, in your browser, right now.
What this proves in production: the seller anchors SHA-256(reserve || salt) on Solana memo before any bid is placed. At close, the seller publishes {reserve, salt}. Any bidder can recompute the hash + check the Solana txn was confirmed before the auction opened. The seller cannot change the reserve mid-auction without breaking the math.
The Showcase Wall
Live at auctions.slabtrack.io. The kinetic public face of the ecosystem. Countdowns ticking, watcher counts climbing, the whole grid refreshing every 30 seconds. This is the surface someone will screenshot.
The Provenance Trail (the third-visit detail)
Every closed auction becomes a permanent public artifact. Bid history graph, social impressions overlaid on the price curve, every Solana txn linked, the verify button armed. Casual users won't notice. Serious collectors will, on visit three, and it changes how they think about the platform.
$1,800 ┤ ◆ comp
$1,650 ┤ •─•─•─•─•─•── close
$1,500 ┤ ↑
$1,400 ┤ •─•─•─────── Trevor wins
$1,200 ┤ •─•─•──── ↑
$1,000 ┤ ↑ Mike re-bids
$0 └────────┴──────────┴──────────┴──────────┴─
Day 0 Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Day 5
(open) (Sarah) (Mike) (Trevor) (close)
FAQ
Why can't I walk away from a Lock-In Bid?
Because the auction is a public event with a deadline. If buyers could withdraw, every auction would have a "real" bid count of zero — sellers couldn't trust the market signal. The Stripe hold + trigger fee make commitment honest.
That said, you're never charged unless you win. If outbid, your hold releases automatically and the funds return to your card within 5–7 days. The only money you actually spend on a losing auction is the $10 trigger fee.
What if my card declines the Stripe hold?
The auction never goes live. Before opening a 7-day auction, the system runs a $1 test authorization to validate your card supports manual-capture. If it doesn't, you'll see: "Bid at least 60% of comp ($X) to open a 5-day auction your card can hold."
Some debit cards and prepaid cards reject 5–7 day holds. Use a credit card for the longer-tier auctions if you can.
How is this different from eBay?
Three differences:
1. Bid-% determines duration. On eBay, the seller picks the duration up front. On Lock-In Bid, the bidder's bid percentage sets the duration — lower bids run longer to give the market time to outbid.
2. Provably-fair reserve. The seller's reserve is anchored on Solana before bidding opens. They can't change it mid-auction. eBay reserves are honor-system; ours is cryptographic.
3. Automatic distribution. Every triggered auction posts to TikTok / IG / X / FB organically, with optional paid amplification. eBay does no marketing on your behalf.
What does the seller pay vs what does the platform pay?
The platform (free, automatic): Remotion render, organic posting via TikTok/IG/X/FB Content APIs, the auction page itself, the cron infrastructure, the Solana memo anchoring. None of this costs the seller.
The seller (optional, paid amplification): $35 per platform-boost. SlabTrack pays the platform's Ads API ~$30 for guaranteed paid impressions; keeps $5 as service margin. The seller decides which auctions are worth boosting.
The buyer: $10 trigger fee + the eventual capture amount if they win. That's it.
What's the anti-snipe rule?
If a bid lands within the final 60 seconds of an auction's closes_at, the close pushes 60 seconds further. This is the standard auction-platform pattern (eBay does it; Whatnot does it). Prevents griefing where someone waits until T-1 second to bid.
Auctions can theoretically extend indefinitely with constant late bidding, but in practice extensions converge fast because the bidders are racing each other.
Can the seller cancel an auction once it's live?
No — except via the operator panic-close tool, which is logged and audited. Once an auction opens with bids on it, the buyer's commitment is real and the seller's listing is real. Cancellation breaks both contracts.
If a card needs to come off (theft, damage, dispute), the operator can panic-close the auction. All holds release, the trigger fee refunds, and the auction is annotated as cancelled in the public record. Used rarely.
What happens if the reserve isn't met?
The auction closes as closed_no_meet_reserve. The top bidder's hold releases (no capture). The trigger fee is non-refundable (commitment was real even if reserve wasn't met). The reserve is revealed publicly so the bid pool can see what threshold they didn't clear.
Sellers who set unreasonable reserves get filtered fast — the public reveal creates accountability. Trigger fees on unmet-reserve auctions are kept by SlabTrack as overhead reimbursement.
Build status
Phase 0 (this page) is shipped. The remaining phases compose existing SlabTrack primitives — channel registry, sale-locks, Stripe singleton, Solana memo anchoring, Remotion render pipeline. Realistic ship: 7–10 weeks including operational firefighting.