Architecture

Four moving parts, and a clear line between the one that holds your money and the ones that do not.

The pieces

When you place a trade, four systems are involved. The important thing is which of them can touch your funds, and the answer is only one: the on-chain program, and only in ways you signed for.

Click the diagram to open it full size.

Why self-custody is real here

Your margin lives in a margin account on Solana whose owner is your wallet address. The relayer builds transactions that touch it, but every one of those transactions needs your signature to be valid. There is no path by which Arqen withdraws your balance, because the on-chain program will not accept an instruction that tries.

The practical test: if Arqen’s servers went offline permanently, your funds would still be on Solana, still owned by you, and still withdrawable by interacting with the program directly.

Where the truth lives

Anything that affects money is on-chain. Everything the relayer stores is a convenience copy that can be rebuilt.

Anatomy of a trade

From click to open position, with the numbers you actually see.

Five steps, one signature

Opening a leveraged position on most venues means approving a token, bridging funds, holding the chain’s gas token, and signing several times. Here it is one signature.

Click the diagram to open it full size.

How a position is sized

Two numbers decide everything: how much margin you put up, and what leverage you choose.

With $20 of margin at 5× you control a $100 position. If the token rises 10%, that position is worth $110. You are up $10, which is a 50% gain on your margin. If it falls 10%, you are down $10, or half your margin. That is leverage in both directions.

Your first trade vs every trade after

The very first position also has to create your margin account and move your USDC into it. Arqen bundles all of that into the same single transaction, so it still costs you one signature. Later trades skip those steps because your collateral is already posted.

Closing

Closing is the same shape in reverse: one signature, gas sponsored. You can close the whole position or part of it. Your realised profit or loss settles in USDC into your account balance immediately, and the trade appears in your history with a link to the transaction on Solscan.

Margin & leverage

One balance, many positions, and the number that decides when it ends.

You have an account, not a market

You deposit once, into your own margin account. That single balance backs every position you hold, across every market. This is called cross-margin.

Your balance splits into two parts at any moment:

When a position is closed out

Arqen requires your equity (your balance plus any unrealised profit or loss) to stay above a maintenance floor of 5% of your notional. Fall below it and the position is liquidated.

That gives a simple rule of thumb for how far the price can move against you:

On a volatile small-cap token, a 5% move can happen in a minute. That is the honest cost of 10×.

Your loss is capped

Liquidation is deliberately triggered before your equity reaches zero, leaving a buffer. You cannot end a trade owing Arqen money. The most you can lose is what is in your account.

Marks, funding & the keeper

What keeps a contract with no expiry tethered to the real price.

The mark price

Arqen never holds the token you are trading. A market’s price is a mark, a number posted on-chain, read from live decentralised exchange prices and validated across sources. Your profit and loss is calculated against that mark and settled in USDC.

This is why any liquid token can be listed almost instantly: all that is needed is a dependable price feed and USDC backing, not an inventory of the token itself.

The keeper loop

A background process, the keeper, runs continuously. It posts fresh marks, charges funding, and closes positions that have fallen below their maintenance floor.

Click the diagram to open it full size.

Funding, in plain terms

A perp has no expiry date, so nothing naturally forces its price back to reality. Funding is that force. It is a small ongoing payment between the two sides of the market:

The rate grows with the size of the gap. It accrues continuously against your balance rather than in discrete hourly payments, so there is never a separate bill to settle. You simply see it in your account. The trade view shows the current rate as Funding / 1h.

Liquidation

What happens when a position runs out of room, and who absorbs the loss.

How it happens

Each time the keeper cranks your position it compares your equity against the maintenance floor. If you are below it, the engine closes as much size as it needs to to bring the account back to safety, often not the entire position.

Liquidation is permissionless: anyone can crank an underwater position, not just Arqen. A small liquidation fee of 5 bps is paid out of the position to whoever does it, which is what makes the system self-healing rather than dependent on one server staying up.

You always get a receipt

A forced close is written into your trade history like any other fill, labelled Liq, with the realised loss shown. A position can never simply vanish from your account without explanation.

Bad debt is walled off per market

In a fast crash a position can lose more than its margin before anyone can close it. That shortfall has to be absorbed by someone. On Arqen it is absorbed in a strict order, and it cannot cross market boundaries:

Creating a market

Paste a token address, seed the backing, own the market.

Why markets need backing

There is no order book here and no trader on the other side of your fill. The backing pool is your counterparty. When you win, the pool pays you; when you lose, the pool collects. A market therefore cannot exist until someone puts up capital to be that counterparty.

That person can be you. Whoever seeds a market owns it and can reclaim their backing later.

How to create one

Backing and capacity

Backing does not only enable a market, it sizes it. The exchange caps how much open interest a market may carry relative to the capital behind it, so a market can never write more risk than it can pay out.

The trade view shows this directly:

Reclaiming your backing

Owners can add backing at any time, and withdraw it when the market is flat, meaning when no positions are open against it. The restriction exists because that capital is what guarantees open positions can be paid out; releasing it early would strand traders.

Earn

Take the other side of the flow, and get paid for it.

How earning works

Depositing into a vault makes you part of the pool that is the counterparty to every trade in that market. Your return comes from two places:

Share price, not promises

When you deposit you receive shares at the current share price, which starts at $1.00. As the pool earns, the share price rises; when traders win, it falls. Your balance is simply your shares multiplied by the current price.

The advertised APR is not a projection or a token emission. It is measured from what actually happened:

Withdrawals cannot strand traders

You can withdraw the pool’s free liquidity at any time. Capital that is currently committed against open positions stays until those positions close. This gate is what guarantees a winning trader can always be paid.

Quick start

From an empty wallet to an open position.

What you need

Five steps

Wallet warnings

Some wallets show a caution banner for domains they have not seen before. This is an automated reputation score based on domain age, not a finding about Arqen. Always confirm you are on perps.arqen.trade before signing anything.

Fees & limits

Every cost, and every ceiling, in one place.

What you pay

A $100 position costs about one cent to open. The costs that actually matter at scale are price impact on thin markets and funding on a position held a long time.

Limits

Collateral

All margin, profit, loss and funding is denominated in USDC on Solana mainnet. You never need to hold SOL.

FAQ & glossary

Short answers, and the words this documentation uses.

Common questions

Do I need SOL?
No. Every network fee is paid by Arqen. You only need USDC.

Can Arqen take my money?
No. Your margin sits in an account owned by your wallet, and the on-chain program rejects any instruction that tries to move it without your signature.

Am I trading the real token?
No. You are trading a contract whose price tracks the token. Nobody holds the token, and settlement is in USDC. This is what makes listing any token possible.

Who is on the other side of my trade?
The market’s backing pool, not another trader. There is no order book.

Can I lose more than I deposit?
No. Liquidation is triggered before your equity reaches zero, and any shortfall is absorbed by that market’s backing and insurance.

Why is the maximum position so small?
Because that market’s backing is small. Capacity is tied to the capital standing behind the market, on purpose.

Why did my wallet warn me about this site?
Automated reputation scoring based on domain age. Verify you are on perps.arqen.trade and that the transaction you are signing matches what you asked for.

Glossary