Skip to content
Get funded

Learn perps and prop trading

Short lessons in a fixed order, plus a glossary of key terms.

Start the first path

Learning paths

All five paths →

Index

Term index

Short, neutral definitions of the words the guides use. Where a guide explains the mechanism in full, the term links to it.

24 terms

Basis

The gap between a derivative's price and the spot price of the asset it tracks. On a perpetual, spot usually means the index price, and funding is what pulls the gap toward zero.

Consistency rule

A prop firm rule that checks how evenly profit is spread, typically by asking how much of the total survives once the single best day is removed. Depending on the rulebook, falling short can hold progression rather than end the account.

Read the guide →
Cross margin

A margin mode in which every open position draws on the same shared balance. It widens each position's buffer, but when a forced close does come, it can take more of the account with it.

Read the guide →
Daily drawdown

The decline allowed in a day-based window, measured from a reference point the rulebook sets, such as the day's starting balance or the highest closed balance of the last 24 hours. Whether it resets at a fixed time or rolls depends on the rulebook.

Read the guide →
Funding rate

A periodic payment between traders holding opposite sides of a perpetual contract, not a fee to the venue. When the perpetual trades above the index, longs pay shorts; below it, shorts pay longs.

Read the guide →
High-water mark

The highest balance an account has ever reached. It only moves up, so a loss limit anchored to it gets stricter in absolute terms as the balance climbs.

Read the guide →
Index price

A reference price combined from spot prices of the same asset on several external markets. You cannot trade it on the perp venue; it tells the venue what the asset is worth elsewhere.

Read the guide →
Isolated margin

A margin mode that limits a position's collateral to the margin you assign it, so a forced close can take that amount and no more.

Read the guide →
Leverage

The setting that decides how much of your own balance a position sets aside as margin. It adds no capital; it changes the buffer between your entry and a forced close.

Read the guide →
Limit order

An order that names the price: a ceiling for a buyer, a floor for a seller. It buys certainty of price and leaves the fill open.

Read the guide →
Liquidation

The forced close of a position by the venue once equity falls to the maintenance margin, because the remaining equity can no longer absorb further losses.

Liquidation price

The price at which a position's equity reaches the maintenance margin. Perp venues usually check it against the mark price, not the last trade.

Maintenance margin

The equity floor that keeps an open position alive. If equity falls to it, the venue closes the position.

Read the guide →
Maker / Taker

A maker order adds a new price to the book and waits; a taker order matches a price already there and fills at once. The fee category follows that behavior, not your intent.

Read the guide →
Mark price

The price perp venues usually use to value open positions and check margin. It starts from the index, reflects where the perpetual trades, and is smoothed so a single trade cannot move it.

Read the guide →
Open interest

The total number of derivative contracts currently open on a market. It changes only when positions open or close, which makes it a stock, while volume is a flow.

Read the guide →
Order book (CLOB)

A central limit order book holds resting buy and sell orders ranked by price and matches them by price-time priority. It does not set a price; it enforces the order in which orders fill.

Read the guide →
Perpetual future

A futures contract with no expiry date. Instead of a settlement date, a funding rate between longs and shorts keeps its price tied to spot.

Read the guide →
Proof of reserves

A snapshot showing that assets sat at given addresses at one moment. Without a matching disclosure of liabilities, it cannot show solvency.

Read the guide →
Risk-reward ratio

Compares the distance from your entry to the stop with the distance to the target. It describes the size of a win relative to a loss, not how often a plan wins.

Slippage

The gap between the price you expected and the price your order filled at. Nobody charges it: liquidity, volatility and order size drive it, and it can work in your favor.

Read the guide →
Stop-loss

A conditional instruction that waits for price to reach a trigger level, then sends an order. A stop-market buys certainty of execution, a stop-limit certainty of price.

Read the guide →
Tilt

A state in which your decisions follow your last result instead of your plan. It usually starts with one trigger and builds through revenge trades and growing size.

Read the guide →
Trailing drawdown

The decline measured from the account's highest-ever balance. The reference point only moves upward, so your room tightens with every new high.

Read the guide →
Contents

Start here

  • Path A · Perps Perpetual futures: how perps work The overview: eleven short chapters on perp mechanics, each with a path into the full guide.
  • Path B · Risk Leverage and margin: the basics Leverage does not lend you money. It changes how much of your own balance a position ties up, and how little room is left before a move closes it.
  • Path C · Prop trading How funded trading accounts actually work A funded account is not a loan and not a gift. It is a risk transfer you earn in stages, and each stage hands a different party the risk.
  • Path E · On-chain What is a block explorer? A public window onto a blockchain: how to read an explorer page, what each field proves, and what it cannot answer for you.

Perpetual futures mechanics

How a contract without an expiry date stays tied to spot, which of the prices on your screen actually judges your position, and what each order type costs you. Start here if you have traded spot and want the derivative side explained as mechanism, not jargon.

  1. Perpetual futures: how perps work The overview: eleven short chapters on perp mechanics, each with a path into the full guide.
  2. Funding rates in perpetual futures, explained Perpetual futures never expire, so the funding rate keeps their price tied to spot: a payment between traders, not a fee to the exchange.
  3. Mark price vs. index price A perp screen shows more than one price, and the one that decides your liquidation is usually not the last trade.
  4. Open interest: what it tells you Open interest is not volume. What it actually counts, how to read it next to funding, and why a leveraged account reads it differently.
  5. What is a central limit order book (CLOB)? Every trade needs a way to match a buyer with a seller, and that mechanism shapes the fill you get.
  6. Market order vs limit order A market order buys you a fill and leaves the price open. A limit order buys you a price and leaves the fill open.
  7. Maker vs taker fees The same size on the same market can cost a different fee, depending on how the order reached the book. One of the few costs you control.
  8. Slippage: why your fill is not your quote The gap between the price you see and the price you get is not a glitch. It is a structural feature of how prices form.

Leverage and risk

Leverage changes your buffer, not your capital. This path follows one position from the margin it ties up to the point where the venue closes it, then to the limits that measure your whole account.

  1. Leverage and margin: the basics Leverage does not lend you money. It changes how much of your own balance a position ties up, and how little room is left before a move closes it.
  2. Isolated vs cross margin Leverage decides how much balance a position needs. Margin mode decides which balance that is: one walled-off slice, or the whole account.
  3. Stop-loss orders: types, placement, mistakes A stop-loss only works if its logic matches the volatility around it and the loss limits underneath it. Mechanics first, no signals.
  4. What is a drawdown? Maximum, daily, trailing and floating drawdown describe different things. Confusing them is how traders misjudge the room they have left.
  5. High-water mark: what it is and where it shows up A high-water mark only moves in one direction, and that single fact changes how a risk limit behaves.

How prop trading works

What a funded account is under the marketing: who carries the risk at each stage, what the rules actually measure, and how to read an offer before and after you sign up. Every model in this path is explained as an industry category, provider-neutral.

  1. How funded trading accounts actually work A funded account is not a loan and not a gift. It is a risk transfer you earn in stages, and each stage hands a different party the risk.
  2. Why prop firms make you pass a challenge first Evaluations exist because a firm cannot tell a skilled trader from a lucky one for free.
  3. Prop firm rules, decoded A rulebook is a risk contract. The taxonomy of targets, drawdowns and consistency rules, and how they interact.
  4. Prop firm scaling plans A scaling plan is a conditional ladder: every step has to be earned, and every step changes what a breach costs you.
  5. Instant funding at prop firms: an industry model Instant funding removes one specific gate, and whatever risk that gate used to filter out gets priced back into the offer somewhere else.
  6. Prop firm warning signs after you sign up The warning signs that matter most show up in the gap between the written rules and the way they get applied.
  7. Prop trading for crypto natives The same perp market under a different contract: someone else's capital, someone else's limits, a different cost of being wrong.
  8. Trading a challenge in a market that never closes No opening bell, no weekend close. What “daily” means, how weekends behave, and which closed-market habits you can leave behind.

Process and psychology

The part no rulebook writes for you: recording what you actually did, catching the moment your decisions stop following your plan, and knowing what changes when software makes the decisions.

  1. A trading journal that actually gets used A journal dies when it tracks the wrong things. A small set of fields and one fixed rhythm.
  2. Tilt in trading Tilt is the point where your decisions stop following your plan and start following your last trade, and the brakes that work when willpower does not.
  3. Agentic trading explained What separates an agent from a bot, and what changes the moment one of them starts trading on your account.

Verifying on-chain

Trust gets replaced by things you can check yourself. What a reserves snapshot proves, how to read a chain without asking anyone, and what a verification layer is for.

  1. Proof of reserves: what it actually proves What a proof of reserves checks, the gap it leaves open, and the questions worth asking before you treat one as an answer.
  2. What is a block explorer? A public window onto a blockchain: how to read an explorer page, what each field proves, and what it cannot answer for you.
  3. Why we chose ROFL ROFL (Runtime Offchain Logic) is Oasis Network's verifiable compute framework.
  4. Why transparency matters The case for open numbers and open mechanics in prop trading.

Questions, answered.

Start with Path A, Perpetual futures mechanics. It opens with the overview of how perps work and then covers funding rates, mark and index price, open interest, order books, order types, fees and slippage. If you already know the derivative side, Path B follows one position from the margin it ties up to the point where the venue closes it, then to the limits that measure a whole account.

Path A starts with the mechanics, so you can begin there. The guides explain each term as a mechanism, and the term index defines the words they use. Path A is written for readers who have traded spot and want the derivative side explained. Path C explains how prop trading works as an industry category.

Ready to take a challenge?

Pass the evaluation and trade funded on a prop firm built by traders, for traders.
Get fundedRead the rulebook

Ready to trade with our capital?

Pass the evaluation and trade funded on a prop firm built by traders, for traders.

Get Funded

Trading calculators for crypto perps

Each calculator answers one question a perpetual futures trader asks before, during or after a trade.

All calculators →