MetaFlux 101 — Start here
New to MetaFlux? This page assumes no prior knowledge of crypto or derivatives. By the end you will understand what MetaFlux is, what you can do on it today, and the few concepts worth knowing before your first trade.
What MetaFlux is
MetaFlux is an open, on-chain exchange — a marketplace where you can trade, running entirely on a public network rather than inside one company's private servers. Think of a traditional exchange as a single building with a locked back office: you have to trust whoever holds the keys. MetaFlux is more like a public ledger that everyone can read and that no single party controls. The rules are fixed in software, every trade is recorded in the open, and you keep custody of your own funds.
Because it lives on-chain, MetaFlux is transparent (anyone can verify what happened), open (anyone can connect, build on it, or list a market), and always on (it is run by many independent operators, not one company that can flip a switch). You connect with a crypto wallet, deposit funds, and trade — no account application, no gatekeeper.
What you can do today
- Trade perpetual futures. Take a position on whether an asset's price will go up or down, with optional leverage, without ever holding the asset itself. (More on what "perpetual" means below.)
- Trade spot. Buy and sell the assets themselves, settled against your balance (balance-only — no leverage yet).
- Hold two-way (hedge) positions — keep a long and a short position open in the same market at the same time. See hedge mode.
Also in preview on testnet:
- Supply idle USDC to Earn, a lending pool that pays the
interest spot-margin borrowers owe. It pays zero today — the borrow rate is
0and no pair is calibrated for borrowing, so a redemption returns the principal. Two governance votes change that. - Leveraged spot trading (spot margin), funded by Earn. See spot margin.
For the full list of trading products and their status — perpetuals, spot, spot margin, options, and the planned CDS track — see Products.
The handful of concepts to know
You do not need to be an expert to start, but a few ideas will make everything else click. Each links to a fuller explanation.
Perpetual vs. spot. Spot is the straightforward kind of trade: you swap one asset for another and own the result. A perpetual future ("perp") is a contract that tracks an asset's price so you can profit from its moves — up or down — without owning it, and with no expiry date, so the position stays open as long as you keep it healthy. Perps are how most leveraged trading happens on MetaFlux.
The order book. This is the live list of everyone's buy and sell offers for a market, sorted by price. When your buy offer meets someone's sell offer at the same price, a trade happens. A market order takes the best price available now; a limit order waits at a price you set. MetaFlux supports many order types on top of these basics.
Leverage & margin. Margin is the collateral you put up to back a position. Leverage lets that collateral control a larger position — 10x leverage means a $100 deposit can hold a $1,000 position. Leverage amplifies gains and losses, so it raises both in equal measure. How your collateral is shared or walled off between positions is your margin mode — see margin modes.
Liquidation. If a leveraged position moves against you far enough that your collateral can no longer cover it, the position is closed automatically to stop the loss from going further. This is liquidation. MetaFlux uses a gradual, tiered liquidation process — an early warning and partial steps rather than a single sudden wipeout — to give positions room to recover.
Funding rates. A perpetual has no expiry, so a small periodic payment keeps its price tethered to the real market price. When more traders are long, longs pay shorts; when more are short, shorts pay longs. This is the funding rate, and it is paid directly between traders, not to the exchange.
Mark price. Rather than trusting the last trade — which a single large or stray order could distort — MetaFlux values your positions against a manipulation-resistant reference called the mark price. It is what drives your margin, your liquidation level, and your unrealized profit and loss.
The short version: put up margin, optionally use leverage to size up, watch your position's health against the mark price, and avoid liquidation. The glossary defines every term you will meet.
What makes MetaFlux distinctive
- Fully on-chain and transparent. Every order, trade, and liquidation is recorded on a public ledger that anyone can verify. There is no hidden matching and no privileged view of the book — the same rules apply to everyone.
- Open and permissionless. Anyone can connect a wallet and trade, build tools and applications on top, or even list a new market — no approval required. See permissionless market deploy.
- Resilient by design. MetaFlux is validated by a distributed set of independent operators rather than a single company. There is no one switch to flip, no single point of failure, and no operator who can freeze your funds.
- Fast. MetaFlux is engineered for high throughput and low latency, so trading feels responsive even under heavy load.
The deeper edge is capability, not price: MetaFlux invests in advanced market microstructure, sophisticated risk and margin models, and a high-performance execution layer — so the platform can support strategies and protections that simpler venues cannot. You will see this throughout the concepts section.
How to get started
Just want to trade? Connect a supported wallet and start from the networks & chain IDs page to point your wallet at the right network and endpoints.
- Pick a network. Networks & chain IDs lists the testnet and mainnet endpoints and their chain IDs. Start on testnet if you want to practice with no real funds at risk.
- Building or running a bot? The developer integration quickstart walks you from deposit to trade to withdraw in a few minutes.
- Pick an SDK. Ready-made clients in TypeScript and Rust handle signing and the wire format for you.
Where to next
- Want the big picture first? The Architecture map names every component inside MetaFlux Core and links each to its deep dive.
- Browse the Concepts section for plain-language explanations of every core mechanism.
- New to derivatives terms? The Glossary defines them all.
- Ready to build? Head to the Integration guides.