Perps Overview

The Nad DEX Perps Engine

The Nad DEX Perpetuals Engine is a next-generation on-chain derivatives infrastructure built around a permissionless on-chain order book. It evolves beyond traditional AMM-based perp models by enabling:

  • Active market making via on-chain limit orders.

  • Transparent and deterministic trade execution.

  • Support for both professional market makers and passive liquidity providers.

All matching and settlement occur fully on-chain, with no centralized intermediaries or off-chain matching “backdoors”. The result is a transparent, auditable, and censorship-resistant perpetuals market.

Active Liquidity Through Orderbook Market Making

Makers can place native limit orders at discrete price points, similar to centralized order books:

  • Limit orders execute atomically once matched.

  • Makers can manage inventory and exposure dynamically.

  • Both algorithmic and manual market making strategies are supported.

Unified Liquidity Model

The Perps Engine unifies concentrated liquidity and limit orders via two main concepts:

  • Range – represents AMM-style liquidity over a price interval.

  • Order – represents discrete maker limit orders at a specific price.

Each price point is represented by a Pearl, a data structure containing both Range and Order information and indexed by price. Pearls collectively form the unified liquidity layer.

Execution priority:

  1. Orders at a given price are filled first.

  2. Range liquidity is then consumed to move to the next price.

This design:

  • Preserves maker-defined pricing priority.

  • Simplifies taker experience (one unified market).

  • Keeps gas costs roughly linear in price impact (ticks crossed).

Trade Execution Process (High Level)

1

Execute limit orders at current price P₀

  • Consume active limit orders at P₀ until the trade size S₀ is filled or order volume is exhausted.

  • If fully filled, the trade completes at P₀.

2

Consume Range liquidity to next price P₁

  • If remaining size S₁ exists, trade against Range liquidity bridging P₀ → P₁.

  • If still not filled, update the price to P₁, reduce size to S₂, and repeat the process.

All trades are executed atomically (either fully or not at all), ensuring predictable and consistent behavior.

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