What are perpetual futures?

A perpetual future, or “perp”, is a contract that lets you take a position on an asset’s price going up or down without owning the asset and without an expiry date. This guide explains how perps work on the on-chain exchange NyxGo connects you to, and what you take on when you trade them.

Futures without an expiry date

A traditional futures contract is an agreement to buy or sell an asset at a set price on a set date. When that date arrives, the contract settles. Traders who want to keep their exposure have to close the expiring contract and open a new one further out.

A perpetual future removes the expiry date. You can hold a position for minutes or for months, as long as your account has enough margin to support it. Two features make that work:

• Cash settlement in USDC. On NyxGo, your profit and loss is settled in USDC. You never receive or deliver the underlying coin. Your balance simply rises or falls as the price moves.
• Funding payments. Without an expiry date to pull the contract back toward the real asset’s price, perps use regular payments between longs and shorts to keep the two close. There is more on this below.

Going long and going short

When you go long, you gain if the price rises and lose if it falls. When you go short, it is the reverse: you gain if the price falls and lose if it rises. On a perp, shorting is as simple as going long. In NyxGo you choose Sell / Short instead of Buy / Long.

Here is a worked example, ignoring fees and funding:

Scenario	Long 10 coins at $100	Short 10 coins at $100
Position value at entry	$1,000	$1,000
Price rises to $110	+$100	−$100
Price falls to $90	−$100	+$100

Your profit or loss is the size of your position multiplied by how far the price moved: 10 coins × $10 = $100. Until you close the position, that figure is unrealized and moves with the market. When you close, it becomes realized and is added to or taken from your balance.

Margin and leverage

You don’t need $1,000 to open a $1,000 position. Instead, you post margin, which is collateral that backs the position, and use leverage to control a position larger than that margin.

With 5x leverage, $200 of margin backs the $1,000 position above. The $100 gain from the example is then a 50% return on your margin, and the $100 loss is 50% of it gone. For a given position size, leverage doesn’t change how many dollars you gain or lose when the price moves. It changes how much margin you put up, so each move is larger relative to that margin.

If losses eat far enough into your margin, the position is liquidated, which means it is closed automatically. Leverage and margin and Liquidation and how to avoid it cover this in detail.

Funding keeps the price anchored

A perp trades on its own order book, so its price can drift away from the price of the underlying asset. Funding pulls it back. Every hour on NyxGo, traders on one side of the market pay traders on the other:

• When the funding rate is positive, longs pay shorts.
• When the funding rate is negative, shorts pay longs.

The rate tends to rise when the perp trades above the underlying’s reference price and fall when it trades below. That makes the more crowded side pay to stay in, which gives other traders a reason to take the opposite side. Each hourly payment is usually small, but it adds up on positions you hold for days. Funding rates explained walks through the calculation.

Prices you’ll see on a perp market

Open any market in NyxGo, for example BTC, and the bar at the top of the trade screen shows several figures:

• Mark price, the large price next to the market name. The exchange uses the mark price for margining, liquidations and unrealized PnL. It combines the exchange’s own order book with perp prices from major centralized exchanges, which makes it harder to move than the last traded price.
• Oracle, a weighted median of prices from centralized exchanges, updated by the exchange’s validators roughly every three seconds and used to compute funding.
• 24h change, 24h volume and Open interest: how far the price has moved over the last day, how much has traded, and the value of positions currently open.
• Funding / Countdown: the current hourly funding rate and the time left until the next hourly payment.

The Markets page lists every perp available in NyxGo with its maximum leverage, price, 24h change, volume, open interest and hourly funding rate.

What you’re taking on

Keep in mind: Perpetual futures are high risk. Leverage magnifies gains and losses alike, and fast markets can move before you react, so a stop loss and sensible leverage do the reacting for you. Nothing in this guide is financial advice.

On top of the price moving against you, a perp position carries:

• Liquidation risk. If your margin falls below the required minimum, the position is closed for you, usually after much of its margin is used up. A stop loss set in advance lets you exit on your own terms first.
• Funding costs. If you’re on the paying side, funding is an ongoing cost for as long as you hold.
• Trading fees. The exchange charges a fee when an order fills, and the rate depends on whether your order added liquidity to the book or took it. When a NyxGo platform fee is active, it is shown before you enable trading and included in the fee estimate in the order form.
• Execution risk. In volatile markets, orders can fill at worse prices than the ones you saw when you clicked.

None of these risks is a reason to avoid learning how perps work. They are the reason to trade small, keep leverage modest and plan your exit before you enter. Risk management basics covers how.

Key takeaways

• A perpetual future tracks an asset’s price with no expiry date, and on NyxGo profit and loss settle in USDC.
• A long gains when the price rises and a short gains when it falls. Profit or loss equals position size multiplied by the price move.
• Leverage reduces the margin you post, not your exposure, so each price move is larger relative to your margin.
• Hourly funding payments between longs and shorts keep the perp price close to the underlying asset.
• The mark price, not the last trade, drives your margin, unrealized PnL and liquidation.