Benchmark governance

Cessation & fallback

What happens when a benchmark cannot be computed, and why the history stays published forever.

A benchmark can stop being computable — a venue delists a whole category, a resolution source disappears, liquidity falls below the floor and stays there. Users need to know in advance what happens, because the alternative is discovering it from a gap in a chart.

Insufficient data (temporary)

If a benchmark cannot meet its published minimum constituent count on a given day:

  • the settlement row is written with status: insufficient_data and no value;
  • yesterday's value is not carried forward. Filling a hole to keep a chart continuous is a fabricated print, and it is the single most tempting corrosive act available to an index;
  • the pages show the gap and say why.

Fallback

Where a benchmark has a defined fallback in its methodology — for example WETFED reverting to the nearest available meeting cycle when the constant-maturity bracket is incomplete — the fallback is published in that methodology document and its use is flagged on the settlement row. An unflagged fallback is indistinguishable from an ordinary print, which defeats the purpose.

Cessation

If a benchmark cannot be computed under its methodology for 20 consecutive settlement days, or if its underlying market structure has changed such that the methodology no longer measures what it claims:

  1. A cessation notice is published, with the reason and the last valid settlement.
  2. A 30-day notice period runs before the benchmark stops publishing, so anyone referencing it can transition.
  3. The full historical ledger remains published permanently, with its checksum chain intact. A ceased benchmark's history is still a record; deleting it would break every citation ever made and destroy the audit trail the record exists to be.
  4. Where a successor exists, the notice names it and states explicitly that the series are not continuous across the change.
The rest of the set
Methodology change & consultation
What counts as a material change, the 14-day consultation window, and why changes are prospective.
Data licence & rights
What the free tier grants, what attribution it requires, and what commercial use needs.
The loop architecture
The nine scheduled agents that cultivate indices, which one may publish, and the six mechanisms that assure accuracy.
The confirm gate
What human confirmation covers — merges only — and how to read the provisional and single-venue counts.
Restatement policy
The three narrow conditions under which a published value may be corrected — and the many under which it may not.
Conflicts & the conflict wall
The wall between index operations and the trading circuit, plus standing disclosures.
Data-error playbook
Detection, triage, quarantine — and the commitment to disclose errors nobody noticed.
Complaints & challenges
How to challenge a value, a rule, or a constituent. No account required.
Settlement-reference licensing
What licensing a benchmark to settle against requires — and why publication alone does not grant it. Reading a value is free; referencing it in something that settles is not the same act.
Determination, disruption & cessation
Written for contracts rather than charts: who determines a final value, the disruption fallback ladder, and why a refusal is not a cessation.
The independent committee seat
The seven-part independence test, published before a candidate exists; the power to block rather than comment; and what the administrator may do while the seat is vacant.
Incident process
Who is paged, what they do, and what gets published when the machinery fails — as distinct from a wrong value, which is the data-error playbook.
Finding — the WETX coverage breach, August 2026
Why WETX refused for five consecutive days, the change that caused it, and what is still not established. Published because an availability figure without the incidents behind it is a number nobody can check.