👋Introduction to Perennial
Last updated
Last updated
Perennial is an hybrid intent/amm derivatives protocol which operates three-sided markets that offer users exposure to an oracle price feed.
Perennial is settlement layer for market isolated derivatives trades. Takers (traders) are able to submit offchain (Intent) or onchain (AMM) orders to gain exposure to a market's underlying oracle price. Regardless of order type, positions are settled to the specific market's "peer-to-pool" derivatives AMM, in exchange for funding & interest rates based on market skew & utilization.
Takers (Traders) deposit collateral & open a position to get leveraged exposure to different price feeds (long, short, and exotic payoffs). With Intent orders, a Taker's exposure is matched with an opposite order from a Maker before being settled to the market's AMM. For AMM orders, a Taker's exposure within a market is netted against in the opposite direction. Where a shortfall between Takers exists in a market, Liquidity Providers (LPs) capital earns fees for filling the shortfall in the market. LPs take on exposure relative to the amount required to fill the exposure mismatch between takers. On a continuous, on-going basis, takers & LPs settle up; the losing side of the trade pays the winning side.
Perennial markets are minimalist at their core, designed to be a low-level, unopinionated primitive that lays the basic infrastructure for layers of optimizations & abstractions further up the stack. Allowing any integrator to interface with Perennial at any level of the stack.
Some things that make Perennial stand out:
Hybrid Intent-AMM — traders can access deep pools of liquidity, while makers preserve capital efficiency and neutral exposure.
Cash-settled — trades settled in $USD, not crypto, in line the most popular crypto derivatives
Low fees — a hyperefficient protocol (in terms of mechanism design & capital efficiency) that minimizes fees for takers & makers
Native LP Leverage — LPs can provide capital at significant leverage (up to 50x) and can fully customize their risk exposure & hedging strategy (or lack thereof).
Designed for the needs of Developers — not just another trading protocol; Perennial is built to be a composable primitive (low fee, fully-on chain, easy to integrate)
Permissionless — Permissionless market creation, integration, and composability.
To dive in Deeper, see the Mechanism section, or choose a section below.
