COPPER ACADEMY

Copper (Cu) is one of the oldest metals known to humanity. It conducts electricity better than almost any other element, which is why it's inside every wire, motor, and circuit board on the planet.

It comes from mines in Chile, Peru, the Congo, and dozens of other countries. Global demand runs around 25 million tons per year and is rising fast — electric vehicles use 3-4x more copper than gas cars, and renewable energy infrastructure is copper-intensive.

Copper is priced per pound in the US market. As of mid-2026, it trades around $4-7 per pound depending on market conditions.

COMEX is the primary exchange for trading metals futures in the United States. It's part of the CME Group (Chicago Mercantile Exchange) — the world's largest derivatives marketplace.

Copper futures trade on COMEX Monday through Friday. The exchange is closed on US federal holidays like MLK Day, Presidents' Day, Memorial Day, July 4th, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. Some holidays have early closes at 12:00 PM CT — before our 1:00 PM pour time — so those days are treated as non-trading days too.

When you hear "the copper price," it usually refers to the COMEX front-month futures contract, which is the most actively traded.

Every trading day, you make one prediction: what will the copper price be at 1:00 PM Central Time? We call this "calling the spot."

The window — You can lock your guess anytime before 9:41 AM CT. Pick a price, hold the button to confirm, and you're locked in. No changes after that. The 9:41 cutoff is deliberate — it's a founder signature.

The pour — At 1:00 PM CT, the day settles. We use the Class A oracle, an on-chain price feed on Base, to determine the official copper price. Every settlement references its blockchain transaction hash, making results independently auditable.

The winner — The closest guess wins. If two players guess the same price, the one who locked first wins (your lock time is recorded server-side to the millisecond). Every guess within the hit threshold earns points, even if you're not the day's winner.

Your streak counts consecutive trading days where you locked a guess. Play every day and your streak grows. Miss a day and it starts to cool.

Grace period — Life happens. Your streak survives up to 2 consecutive missed trading days. On the first miss, your furnace visibly cools. On the second, you get a "streak at risk" warning. Miss a third day and your streak dies — that's the quench.

Weekends and COMEX holidays don't count. If the market is closed, your streak is safe. Void days (when the oracle is unavailable) also don't count against you.

The Copper Spot uses the Class A oracle — an on-chain copper price feed deployed on Base (an Ethereum L2). The oracle updates every 15 minutes during COMEX trading hours and hourly after hours.

Every price update is a blockchain transaction with a public hash. When we settle each day's pour, we record that transaction hash in our settlement log. Anyone can verify the price we used by looking up the transaction on Basescan.

If the oracle goes down at pour time, we wait up to 2 hours. If it's still unavailable, the day voids — no winner, no hits, and streaks freeze (a void day is not a missed day). We never use a fallback price source. Integrity over drama.

You can start playing immediately as a guest — no signup, no wallet, no friction. Your guest identity is stored in your browser and your full history accrues privately.

To appear on the public leaderboard and become eligible for prizes, connect your Farcaster account. Your entire guest history migrates intact — every guess, every streak day, every point.

A wallet is only needed for streak rescue (burning RWACu to save a dying streak) and prize eligibility. You never need a wallet just to play.