RWA Perpetuals
This documentation covers RWA perpetuals, or perpetual futures for real world assets like stocks, commodities, ETFs, and indices. RWA perps largely mirror crypto perps (e.g., cross margin, 24/7 trading). This page highlights only the differences. For all unlisted mechanics, assume standard crypto perp behavior outlined elsewhere in the documentation.
Index Prices
The index price represents the real-time price of the underlying market, and is sourced from the Variational Oracle. The underlying market may be a spot asset, a future, or an index.
ANTHROPIC
Anthropic PBC Estimated share count: 1 billion shares
BZ
Brent Crude Oil futures
CL
WTI Crude Oil futures
COPPER
COMEX High Grade Copper futures
EWJ
iShares MSCI Japan ETF
EWY
iShares MSCI South Korea ETF
INTC
Intel Corp. Common Stock (Nasdaq: INTC)
NATGAS
Henry Hub Natural Gas futures
OPENAI
OpenAI Group PBC Estimated share count: 1 billion shares
QNTX
Quantinuum Inc. Estimated share count: 253.9 million shares
QQQ
Invesco QQQ Trust
SOXL
Direxion Daily Semiconductor Bull 3X ETF (NYSE Arca: SOXL)
SPCX
Space Exploration Technologies Corp. Estimated share count: 11.87 billion shares
TSLA
Tesla Inc. Common Stock (Nasdaq:TSLA)
TSM
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Ltd ADR (NYSE: TSM)
US500
An ETF composed of a basket of the leading 500 US stocks
XAG
Silver spot price
XAU
Gold spot price
XPD
Palladium spot price
XPT
Platinum spot price
Roll Mechanism
When the underlying index are dated futures, the index price is computed of a combination of two different futures contracts, and at certain days of the month, the index price rolls to the next dated future contract. The daily shifting of weights occurs during the market's end of day maintenance hour (typically beginning at 17:00 ET).
Continuous Month Roll
Applicable to energy commodities (like Crude Oil and Natural Gas) where liquidity is excellent across consecutive calendar months.
Roll window: The 5th to the 9th trading day of the same calendar month as the near-month contract's LTD.
Example: WTI Crude rolling from May to June
(Assuming the May contract's LTD is April 20th, the roll occurs in April)
Trading Calendar Window
Near Weight (May)
Far Weight (June)
Index Price Composition
Before April 8
1.0
0.0
100% Pegged to May
April 8 (Maintenance Hour)
0.8
0.2
Roll Phase 1
April 9 (Maintenance Hour)
0.6
0.4
Roll Phase 2
April 10 (Maintenance Hour)
0.4
0.6
Roll Phase 3
April 13 (Maintenance Hour)
0.2
0.8
Roll Phase 4
April 14 (Maintenance Hour)
0.0
1.0
Roll Complete
After April 14
0.0
1.0
100% Pegged to June
Jump Month Roll
Applicable to metals and agricultural commodities (like Metals and Agriculture) where liquidity is concentrated in specific quarterly or bi-monthly cycles.
Roll window: The 5th to the 9th trading day of the calendar month prior to the near-month contract's LTD.
Example: Copper rolling from May to July
(Assuming the May contract's LTD is May 27th, the roll occurs in the prior month: April)
Trading Calendar Window
Near Weight (May)
Far Weight (July)
Index Price Composition
Before April 8
1.0
0.0
100% Pegged to May
April 8 (Maintenance Hour)
0.8
0.2
Roll Phase 1
April 9 (Maintenance Hour)
0.6
0.4
Roll Phase 2
April 10 (Maintenance Hour)
0.4
0.6
Roll Phase 3
April 13 (Maintenance Hour)
0.2
0.8
Roll Phase 4
April 14 (Maintenance Hour)
0.0
1.0
Roll Complete
After April 14
0.0
1.0
100% Pegged to July
Index Smoothing
The underlying market may have non 24/7 trading hours. During the off hours, the index is smoothed as follows:
Standard Mode (Regular Hour): The index is updated every second as a weighted average of all constituents.
Fast-Decay EWMA Mode (Pre-Market and After-Hours): The weighted average index is smoothed using an exponentially weighted moving average (EWMA) to adapt to lower liquidity and higher volatility in extended hours.
Slow-Decay EWMA Mode (Overnight): The index is smoothed more gradually to ensure stable and continuous pricing during overnight sessions when liquidity is limited.
Fixed Mode (Daily Maintenance, Holidays and Weekends):
Fixed Mode is applied on Equity-based RWA Perps.
No recalculation occurs, the Price Index remains fixed at the last available value.
Orderbook EWMA Mode (Daily Maintenance, Holidays and Weekends):
Orderbook EWMA Mode is active on Commodity-based RWA perps.
Instead of using prices from vendors, index price uses Impact Mid Price derived from the orderbook as index price, where Impact Mid Price is the average of Impact Bid Price and Impact Ask Price.
The index is also smoothed using an exponentially weighted moving average (EWMA).
Also the movement of index price is limited within the orderbook EWMA mode.
Funding
For the most part, funding works the same way as crypto perpetuals, with two key differences. First, the interest rate is set to 0%. Second, the funding formula is slightly adjusted as follows:
Funding Rate (F) = Average Premium Index (P) + clamp (interest rate - Average Premium Index (P), -0.0005, 0.0005) / (8 / N)
where N is the funding interval in hours.
Dividend Funding
Some underlyings, such as stocks and ETFs, pay dividends to their shareholders. To account for this, holders of the perpetual future will receive a special funding payment according to the procedure below.
Generally speaking, short holders will pay long holders, and this will be represented as a negative funding rate.
The dividend adjustment process spans from the previous business day (ex_date - 1) to the morning of the ex-dividend date (ex_date). Because the perpetual contract trades 24/7, ex_date - 1 specifically refers to the last traditional market business day prior to the ex-dividend date.
*All times are in Eastern Time (ET).
ex_date - 1
15:30
The funding interval is modified to 1 hour (takes effect at 16:00).
ex_date - 1
18:00
The contract is placed into reduce_only mode.
ex_date - 1
20:00
Special Dividend Funding is executed immediately following standard funding.
ex_date - 1
Post-Funding
reduce_only mode is disabled.
ex_date
00:00
The funding interval is restored to its standard duration (takes effect at 00:01).
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