Product Overview

What DelfiN Is

DelfiN is an infrastructure layer for optimistic dispute resolution on Sui. The project closes the gap between on-chain business logic and off-chain facts: a protocol can fix rules in advance, accept a default answer, and route a dispute into a separate resolution mechanism when needed.

Practical value:

• avoid building a custom dispute and bond layer inside every protocol;
• formalize off-chain events and B2B obligations;
• drive outcomes to on-chain finalization through a single lifecycle.

The Gap It Solves

Sui already has a mature price oracle stack, but two pieces are still missing:

• a standardized dispute resolution layer;
• a mechanism for resolving factual events that originate off-chain.

Because of this, application protocols are forced to design their own enforcement logic. DelfiN acts as a shared primitive that absorbs this responsibility.

Architecture

The architecture is split into three layers.

1. Rulebook

Rulebook fixes:

• correctness conditions for a question;
• participant roles;
• time windows;
• economic parameters;
• the selected dispute resolution mechanism.

After creation, Rulebook becomes the instruction set for every question created in Oracle on top of it. All question objects are created only through Rulebook.

2. Oracle

Oracle:

• accepts a question from Asker;
• receives an answer from Answerer;
• opens the answer challenge window, which Disputer may use;
• pauses finalization when a dispute appears;
• distributes funds after the question is closed.

Oracle is not the final dispute arbiter. Its role is to handle question intake, answer publication, and routing to the dispute layer.

3. Court / Dispute Resolution

The dispute resolution layer:

• manages the challenge process;
• accepts evidence;
• issues the final ruling;
• returns the final outcome back to Oracle.

This layer is modular: a protocol can choose the specific resolution model and lock it into Rulebook.

In the current terminology, question and assertion refer to the same entity. DelfiN documentation uses question.

Why Sui

The choice of Sui is based on four properties:

• the object model: questions and disputes exist as independent on-chain objects;
• parallel execution: unrelated cases do not create a global bottleneck;
• predictable economics: the cost of challenge is known in advance;
• Move: strict ownership and resource typing reduce logical and financial risk.

What Protocols Gain

DelfiN is designed to unlock three categories of effects for the ecosystem:

• lower development complexity through a shared dispute primitive;
• new classes of applications that need to finalize event-driven obligations;
• more on-chain activity through repeated claim -> challenge -> finality cycles.

Base Process

The end-to-end sequence is:

1. A Rulebook is created.
2. A question is published in Oracle with Reward, an answer Schema, and Event time.
3. Answerer submits an answer and posts Bond Answerer.
4. The answer may be challenged during Liveness.
5. If there is no dispute, the question settles automatically.
6. If there is a dispute, Court reviews the case and finalizes the result.
7. The resulting outcome object becomes available to connected protocols.