Glossary
The terms ARBHUB uses, defined the way ARBHUB uses them.
Terms
- Perp (perpetual future)
- A futures contract with no expiry. Its price is tied to the underlying via the funding mechanism instead of settlement at a date.
- Funding rate
- The periodic payment between longs and shorts that keeps a perp near its index. Positive: longs pay shorts. Negative: shorts pay longs. Set per venue, per contract.
- Funding interval
- How often funding settles — 1h, 4h or 8h depending on the contract. ARBHUB normalizes all rates to /8h for comparison; cash moves on the native clock.
- Basis
- The price difference between two markets for the same asset, in percent of mid. On ARBHUB:
(priceShort - priceLong) / mid × 100; positive means the long leg is more expensive — an adverse entry. - Mark price
- The venue's smoothed price used for margin and liquidation math, typically anchored to the index rather than the venue's own last trade.
- Index price
- A composite spot price aggregated from several exchanges; the reference a perp's premium and funding are computed against.
- Notional
- Position size in quote currency: contracts × price. Fees, slippage and funding all scale with notional, which is why the Spread page asks for it once and reprices everything.
- Open interest (OI)
- Total outstanding contracts on a market. Rising OI during a price gap means new positioning, not closing flow — context for whether a dislocation is being pushed or unwound.
- Maker / taker
- A maker order rests on the book; a taker order crosses it. Venues charge takers more (often 0.05-0.06% on perps) and makers little or nothing — four taker fills is the default cost model for a two-leg round trip.
- Settlement
- The moment funding is exchanged. Whoever holds the position at the settlement timestamp pays or receives the full interval's rate.
- Cross / isolated margin
- Cross backs all positions with the whole account balance; isolated caps a position's risk at its own margin. Cross survives spikes better; isolated contains damage per position.
- VWAP
- Volume-weighted average price. On ARBHUB: the average fill price your notional would get walking the live book — the honest execution price, unlike mid.
- Slippage
- The difference between mid and your VWAP at size. Grows with notional and shrinks with depth; quoted on the Spread page as
effective @ notional. - Spread (funding spread)
- The difference between two venues' funding rates for the same asset, normalized per 8h:
fr8(short) - fr8(long). The matrix's ranking metric. - ADL (auto-deleveraging)
- A venue force-closing profitable positions to cover a bankrupt counterparty when the insurance fund cannot. Can remove one leg of a hedge without warning. See ADL & exchange actions.