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Perpetual Futures on Katana: Katana Perps Explained

Katana Perps is Katana’s core perpetual futures exchange (perps DEX). Traders can go long or short on crypto assets with leverage, while their collateral stays in smart contracts on Katana instead of being deposited with a centralized exchange.

Katana Perps is built by the team behind IDEX, bringing years of experience running non-custodial exchanges to Katana.

You can trade at perps.katana.network. To learn more about the launch, read Perpetual Futures on Katana: How Katana Perps Works.

How Do Onchain Perps Work on Katana?

A perpetual future (perp) is a contract that lets you trade on the price of an asset without owning it and without an expiry date. You can profit if the price moves in the direction you bet on, and leverage lets you open a larger position than your collateral alone would allow.

Katana Perps combines the speed of a centralized exchange with the safety of onchain custody:

  • Fast offchain matching: orders are matched in an offchain order book built for low-latency trading.
  • Onchain custody and settlement: your collateral stays in smart contracts on Katana, and trades are settled onchain.
  • No gas per order: you sign each order with your wallet instead of sending a transaction, so placing and managing orders doesn’t cost gas. Gas is generally only needed to deposit or withdraw.
  • Direct wallet exit: you can recover your funds straight from the smart contracts, without relying on the trading interface.

Trading Features

  • Markets: perpetual markets for major crypto assets and markets native to the Katana ecosystem, with more added over time.
  • Collateral: vbUSDC.
  • Cross-margin: your collateral is shared across all your open positions. This uses collateral more efficiently, but losses in one position reduce the margin available to the others.
  • Order types: market, limit, stop-loss, take-profit and conditional orders, with time-in-force options including GTC, post-only, IOC and FOK.

How Katana Perps Connects to Katana

Katana Perps is one of Katana’s core apps, so it is built into how the network works rather than being just another app deployed on it.

  • Vault Bridge: Katana Perps uses vbUSDC as collateral. vbUSDC is USDC bridged to Katana through Vault Bridge, where the underlying USDC keeps earning yield. See Vault Bridge.
  • Chain-Owned Liquidity: trading activity generates network revenue, and Katana returns net sequencer fees to DeFi on Katana through mechanisms such as Chain-Owned Liquidity and ecosystem incentives. See Chain-Owned Liquidity.
  • KAT incentives: Katana’s liquidity mining allocation sets aside 350 million KAT for perps, launchpad and yield apps. See Tokenomics & Schedules.
  • One ecosystem: alongside Sushi for spot trading and Morpho for lending, Katana Perps gives users leveraged trading without leaving Katana.

More Features

Trading Competitions

Katana Perps has historically run trading competitions every two weeks, with prize pools of $100,000 or more paid in vbUSDC. Prize pools typically grow as total trading volume during the competition rises.

These rewards are funded by real revenue rather than new token emissions: yield generated by Vault Bridge, along with Katana Perps’ own trading fees. This is Katana’s model in action. Bridged assets earn yield, and that yield flows back to the people using the network.

Competition rules, prize pools and eligibility change from round to round. See the Katana blog for the current competition and its details.

Points Program

Katana Perps has a Points Program that rewards meaningful participation, such as trading, sustained activity, contributing liquidity and referrals. The program’s structure, eligibility and rewards can change between seasons, so check the current Points Program for the latest details. See Katana Perps Points Program Season 0: The Forge for how the program started.

Trade on Mobile with Katana Perps Connect

Katana Perps Connect lets you trade from your phone while your main wallet stays connected on desktop. You pair your phone by scanning a QR code, which sets up a secure, time-limited session. You can then trade on mobile without exposing your main wallet or reconnecting it for every action.

Leveraged trading has risks

Leverage magnifies both gains and losses. If the market moves against you and your margin falls too low, your positions can be liquidated and you can lose your collateral. With cross-margin, a loss on one position can affect all your others. See Risk for more on the risks of using DeFi on Katana.

For Developers

Katana Perps provides APIs and developer tools for algorithmic trading, integrations, trading terminals and bots:

  • REST API for market data, account information and trading.
  • WebSocket API for real-time market and account data.
  • TypeScript/JavaScript SDK for authentication, EIP-712 wallet signatures, order management and real-time order book data.
  • Bokuto testnet sandbox for development and testing.
  • Builder codes let you build your own trading product on Katana Perps’ infrastructure and earn fees on the volume it generates. See Build Your Own Perp DEX: Builder Codes on Katana Perps.
Resource Link
Trade perps.katana.network
Documentation docs-perps.katana.network
API Documentation api-docs-v1-perps.katana.network
JavaScript SDK github.com/katanaperps/katana-perps-sdk-js
Smart Contracts github.com/katanaperps/katana-perps-contracts-niseko
Sandbox (Testnet) perps-sandbox.katana.network
Discord (#developers) discord.gg/katanaperps