Ethernals Docs

Ethernals is a fully on-chain perpetual futures exchange built natively on Robinhood Chain. Trade crypto, tokenized equities, indices, and commodities with deep liquidity, sub-second matching, and complete self-custody.

Overview

Ethernals lets anyone open leveraged long or short positions on a wide range of markets without giving up custody of their funds. Orders match against a central limit order book, positions settle on Robinhood Chain, and every fill, funding payment, and liquidation is verifiable on-chain.

Why Robinhood Chain

Robinhood Chain is built around a single idea: bring the world's financial assets on-chain. Tokenized equities trade 24/7, serve as collateral, and plug directly into DeFi. Ethernals uses that infrastructure to offer perpetuals on both crypto and real-world assets in one venue, settled in the same account, with gas abstracted away so trading feels instant and free.

• Unified collateral. A single USDC margin account backs every market you trade.
• Zero gas trading. Order placement and cancellation are gasless; you only sign.
• Composable. Positions and receipts are on-chain objects other protocols can build on.

Getting Started

1. Open app.ethernals.org and connect a wallet on Robinhood Chain.
2. Deposit USDC to fund your margin account.
3. Pick a market, choose Long or Short, set size and leverage.
4. Place a market or limit order. Manage TP/SL from the position panel.

How Perpetuals Work

A perpetual future is a derivative that tracks the price of an underlying asset without an expiry date. Instead of settling on a fixed date, perpetuals use a funding mechanism to keep the contract price anchored to the underlying spot or index price. You post margin, take leveraged exposure, and your unrealized PnL updates continuously as the mark price moves.

Margining

Every position is backed by collateral in your margin account. Ethernals supports two modes:

Initial & maintenance margin

Initial margin is the collateral required to open a position and equals position value / leverage. Maintenance margin is the minimum equity a position must keep before it becomes eligible for liquidation. When your account equity falls below maintenance margin, the liquidation engine steps in.

Funding

Funding payments are exchanged directly between longs and shorts to keep the perpetual price aligned with the underlying. When the perpetual trades above the index, the funding rate is positive and longs pay shorts; when it trades below, shorts pay longs.

funding_payment = position_notional × funding_rate
funding_rate    = clamp( premium + interest , -cap , +cap )
premium         = (mark_price − index_price) / index_price

Funding accrues continuously and is settled on a fixed interval. You can see the live rate and next-funding countdown in the market header of the app.

Liquidations

If account equity drops below the maintenance margin requirement, the position is liquidated to protect the system from bad debt. Ethernals liquidates incrementally where possible, closing only enough of a position to restore a healthy margin ratio rather than the whole position at once.

• Liquidation price is shown before you confirm any order and updates live as you adjust size or leverage.
• A small liquidation fee funds the insurance vault, which backstops any residual bad debt.
• Lower leverage moves your liquidation price further from mark and reduces liquidation risk.

Order Types

Oracle & Mark Price

The index price is a robust aggregate of external reference prices, filtered to reject outliers and stale feeds. The mark price combines the index with the order book to produce a manipulation-resistant value used for unrealized PnL, margin, and liquidations. Using mark price rather than last-traded price prevents a single wick from triggering unfair liquidations.

Fees

Volume-based tiers lower taker fees and increase maker rebates as your 30-day traded volume grows.

Self-Custody

Ethernals is non-custodial. Your collateral is held in an on-chain margin contract that only you can withdraw from. Trading actions are authorized by your signature, and you can exit to your wallet at any time. No account freezes, no withdrawal approvals.

Risk

Leveraged trading carries significant risk. You can lose your entire margin, and in fast markets losses can exceed your initial deposit before a position is fully liquidated. Only trade with capital you can afford to lose, understand liquidation mechanics before sizing up, and use isolated margin to cap downside on speculative positions.

API & SDK

Everything available in the interface is available programmatically. Query markets, stream the order book over WebSocket, and sign and submit orders through the REST endpoint.

GET  https://api.ethernals.org/v1/markets
GET  https://api.ethernals.org/v1/orderbook?market=BTC-PERP
WS   wss://api.ethernals.org/v1/stream
POST https://api.ethernals.org/v1/order   (signed)

A TypeScript SDK and full endpoint reference are on the way. For integration questions, reach the team through the community channels.