Glossary
Index of terminology and technical information related to the Vertex application.
Account Value / Equity: What your account is worth. Not to be confused with your Margin.
Account Value = Assets - Borrows +/- Unsettled USDC
Assets: Assets with a positive balance. You will earn interest on these automatically.
Borrows: Assets with a negative balance. You will pay interest on these automatically. You can repay them by depositing more or converting via the spot market, which you can do easily using the Repay Modal.
Unsettled USDC: Perpetual positions are periodically “settled” between sub-accounts, transferring USDC between different sub-accounts. Over the life of a trade:
PnL = Sum (settled USDC) + Sum (unsettled USDC)
Unsettled USDC is included in user health calculations but is not included in balances until settlement bots have made the transfer of tokens.
Available (Spot Trading): The current amount of an asset you can sell without borrowing. Note — if you have open sell orders or perp positions, this value will be less than your positive balance.
Available = balance - orders - margin consumed by liabilities and perp positions.
Balance (Spot Trading): Your total current +/- balance for that asset, including those in orders and being used by perp position margin.
Net Balances = Assets - Liabilities
Max with Borrow (Spot Trading): The maximum trade size, including any associated borrows, that you can place at a current time. If you are buying, this is denominated by the quote currency (USDC). If you are selling, it is denominated by the asset (e.g., ETH).
Max Position (Perpetual Trading): The Max Position size you can enter for a market given account buying power. This depends on your account’s Margin and if you are going long or short.
Available (Depositing): What you currently have available to deposit from your wallet into Vertex.
Available (Withdrawing): The amount of an asset available to withdraw from Vertex without borrowing or putting your account at risk of liquidation.
Open positions or liabilities affect the amount you can withdraw without borrowing. Assets contributing to your margin will be locked and unavailable to withdraw.
Average APR – Portfolio/Balances: This is the Net APR you are being paid (+) or paying (-) on your balances. All assets automatically earn interest, and all borrows automatically require interest payments. Deposit and borrow rates are visible on the front-end UI.
Funds Until Liquidation: The amount of Maintenance Health (quoted in $USD) until your account can be liquidated by liquidators.
Free Collateral (i.e., Initial Health): The amount of Initial Health (quoted in $USD) your account has remaining. Free Collateral is how much you have left to trade with. Once your Free Collateral reaches zero, your account goes into Maintenance Mode (Extreme Risk), and no new positions can be opened.
Free Collateral = total collateral value (initial weights) minus what’s being used by your margin (borrows/unsettled PnL) and perp positions.
Free Collateral is especially important when it comes to leveraged trading. Your Max Position is set based on your Free Collateral * Leverage. For example, If you have $100 of Free Collateral and set leverage to 5X, meaning your Max Position is $500.
Maintenance Health & Initial Health (Margin): Health is the amount of capital (quoted in $USD) your account has to trade with before it can be liquidated. You can think of Health as your Margin, and you have 2 different kinds:
- Initial
- Maintenance
Your Health is determined by giving each balance and position a Weighted Value. There are two types of weights:
- Initial
- Maintenance
The weights are set so that initial health is always less than maintenance health.
For more details on weighting, please refer to the section on health calculations. Once all of your Initial Health is depleted, your account goes into Maintenance Mode, which means no more risk can be taken.
The remaining Maintenance Health acts as a buffer for the user to de-risk before risking liquidation. Once all of the Maintenance Health is used, your account can be liquidated.
Maintenance Mode: This is the same as Extreme Risk. Your account goes into Maintenance Mode when it has depleted all of the initial health (quoted in $USD), meaning no more risk can be taken. You must de-risk by closing positions or depositing more assets to get out of Maintenance Mode/Extreme Risk.
Account Leverage: The formula for account leverage is as follows:
(assets + liabilities) / (assets - liabilities), using initial health
Trade Leverage (Perpetuals): Before placing a perp trade, you can adjust your leverage limit and, therefore, your Max Position. Leverage is based on your account’s current Free Collateral.
For example, if you have $100 of Free Collateral and set your Leverage at 5X, your Max Position size with asset weights included is $500. This doesn’t mean you need to place a trade for that amount if your free collateral does not allow you to do so — it just lets you set a limit on your Max Position. You can use the slider to enter a % of that Max Position size.
Margin Usage: This is the % of your Initial Margin (Health) currently used by open positions and liabilities.
Perpetual PnL: The total of all open Perpetual Position’s PnL.
Position PnL: The positions’ Profit or Loss, based on Average Entry (Avg Entry) and the current Oracle Price. PnL is a metric used to tell traders how their position is performing. It does not account for what’s been settled.
PnL can be broken down into two parts:
- 1.Unsettled
- 2.Settled
Settled PnL is added to your USDC balance, whereby Unsettled is yet to be realized. Perpetual Settlements are when losers pay the winners and are handled continuously and autonomously throughout the life of the position by the Vertex smart contracts.
Settled PnL: The amount of a Positions PnL settled during the position’s life. Negative PnL pays (settled) Positive PnL positions and is performed using USDC.
Size – Perpetual Position: The underlying amount (quoted in $USD) of an asset the perpetual position resembles.
Notional – Perpetual Position: The $USD value of the perpetual position is based on the size of the position and the current Oracle Price. The Notional Value doesn’t contribute to your Account Value.
Average Entry / Oracle (Perpetual Position): Your perpetual position's average executed entry price. The current Oracle Price of the perpetual contract. Together, these contribute to calculating your Unrealized PnL.
Extreme Risk: Also known as Maintenance Mode. Extreme Risk means your Initial Health is < $0, and you can’t take on any more risk. It is the last 10% on the Health Bar. During Extreme Risk, you must de-risk by depositing more funds and/or closing positions. If you don’t do so quickly, you risk liquidation.
Initial Margin Usage: >100%
High Risk: High Risk makes up the next 10% of the Health Bar after Extreme Risk. You can still enter new positions at this point, but it is a warning to be cautious.
Initial Margin Usage: 88.88% → 99.99%
Medium Risk: Medium Risk makes up the next 20% of the Health Bar after High Risk. Medium Risk doesn’t come with any major warnings, and it’s a metric to gauge your Initial Health. Medium risk occurs when:
Initial Margin Usage: 66.66% → 88.88%
Low Risk: Low-risk state is the last 60% of the health bar (left to right).
Initial Margin Usage: 0% → 66.66%
Liquidation: When an account’s maintenance health drops below $0, a liquidator can take liquidation action against that account. Learn more about Liquidations here.
Liquidation Type: There are 3 types of liquidations:
- 1.Perpetual Position
- 2.Balance
- 3.Spread (Perpetual Position + Balance)
Perpetual Position occurs when just a perpetual position is liquidated.
Balance occurs when a borrow is liquidated.
Perpetual Position + Balance occurs when both a perpetual position and spot balances are liquidated. The underlying asset must be the same. For example, a borrow of spot BTC and a short BTC-PERP.
Liquidation Payment: To liquidate a position, there must be a payment between the liquidator and the position holder. This is known as a Payment and is done in the quote currency USDC.
For perpetual liquidations, users should expect to see a (+) USDC payment. They will see a (-) USDC payment for borrowers since they need to pay the user for buying their borrow.
Total Liquidation Value: The total net loss denominated in USD from the liquidation event. This is calculated using the Mark price for perp positions and the oracle price for balances. It’s expressed as Net because it also considers the liquidation payments made.
Perpetual Settlements: Perpetual Positions PnL is settled, meaning losers pay winners continuously throughout the position’s life and completely once the position is fully closed.
Settlements are paid in USDC. Settlements are done by the clearinghouse bots and handled on the backend – they will not change the Positions PnL metric.
Unsettled USDC: This portion of your Perp Positions PnL has yet to be settled, either as a payment to someone (if you are negative) or a payment to you (if you are positive) made in USDC.
Unsettled USDC contributes to your health and is weighted 1:1 with USDC.
Amount Settled (Settled USDC): This is the amount of a Perp Position PnL that has been settled into USDC.
Health Check: Health Check is a dynamic tool to help you manage risk before performing specific actions, such as withdrawing or entering a trade. When expanded, it will display your Equity, Funds Until Liquidation, Margin Usage, and Leverage.
After inputting the details of your action, these metrics will show the change if you were to proceed. Check out the Tutorial on Health Check here.
Mark Price (Perpetuals): The TWAP of the orderbook price of the perpetual contract based on Stork Oracle (see Oracle Prices) – used for Funding Rate calculations. The difference between the Mark and Index price is used to calculate funding rates.
Index Price (Perpetuals): The price of the underlying spot asset from other exchanges based on Stork Oracle – used to calculate spot asset values, the funding payments for perps, and liquidations.
Oracle Price: The oracle price of the underlying spot asset from other exchanges based on Stork Oracle; used to calculate spot asset values, the funding payments for perps, and liquidations.
Orderbook Price: The mid-market price from the Vertex sequencer orderbook – is used for trade execution and funding.
24-Hour (24H) Change: The increase or decrease in the orderbook price over the past 24 hours.
Open Interest: The total outstanding perpetual contracts denominated by the underlying asset for that market.
Predicted Funding Rate: Funding payments are made every 1 hour. The predicted funding rate is what the payment would be based on the average difference in the orderbook and index prices between the last funding payment and now.
Maker Fee: Fee charged to a user when the user’s limit order is filled (e.g., ‘makes’ liquidity). For more details, refer to the Fees section.
Taker Fee: Fee charged when a user trades against liquidity on the orderbook. (e.g., 'takes' liquidity). For more details, refer to the Fees section.
Impermanent Loss: Impermanent loss is a phenomenon experienced by liquidity providers (LPs) in an Automated Market Maker (AMM) system that occurs when the price of the two assets in a liquidity pool changes relative to each other. When an LP provides liquidity to a pool, they receive pool tokens in proportion to its contribution to the pool. LPs earn returns from trading fees generated by the pool, and the value of their pool tokens also fluctuates based on the price of the assets in the pool.
However, if the price of the two assets in the pool changes significantly, the value of the LP's holdings can become imbalanced relative to what they would have earned if they had simply held the assets themselves. This is because the LP has effectively been selling the asset that has increased in price and buying the asset that has decreased in price, leading to a loss in value relative to holding the assets separately.
This loss is termed "impermanent" because it disappears when the price of the assets in the pool returns to its original state. In other words, the LP will only experience permanent loss if they withdraw their liquidity from the pool when the prices of the assets are imbalanced.