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Intention Exchange trades perpetual futures — contracts that track an asset’s price without ever expiring. You take a position, it gains or loses as the price moves, and you hold it as long as your collateral supports it. This section documents each mechanism precisely. This page is the map.

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What makes a perpetual different

A traditional futures contract has a settlement date, and that date is what forces its price back to the underlying. A perpetual has no such date, so it needs another mechanism: funding, a recurring payment between longs and shorts that makes the crowded side pay the other. Two more consequences follow from never expiring: You post margin, not the full value. A position’s notional far exceeds the collateral behind it. That is leverage, and it is why a position can be closed against your will. Your position is valued continuously. Not at the last trade, but at a mark price built to be hard to push. That number determines your unrealized profit and whether you keep the position.

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The life of a position

Margin mode · leverageper market · per account
Before you open
Initial margin checkedbefore the order is accepted
Order type · size · pricea limit rests, a market takes
To open
Matched against the bookprice first, then block position
Take-profit · stop-loss
add margin · modifyoptional, at any time
While you hold it
Marked continuously
funding settles on scheduleyour ratio moves with the mark price
You close or reverse itat a price you choose
It closes
Liquidation → insurance → ADLif net collateral falls below maintenance
You
The protocol
Before you open, two settings decide how your collateral behaves: margin mode — whether this position shares collateral with your others or holds its own — and leverage, which sets how much margin the position requires. To open, you submit an order. A limit order names a price and waits; a market order takes what the book offers now, bounded by slippage protection. If the order is large relative to the book, splitting it across time or price usually costs less than taking it in one go. While you hold it, the position is marked continuously, funding settles on schedule, and your margin ratio moves with the price. Protective orders — take-profit and stop-loss — can close it automatically at levels you set. It closes when you close it, or when the protocol does. If your margin is exhausted, liquidation takes over; in extreme conditions where the book and insurance fund cannot absorb the loss, auto-deleveraging reaches profitable positions on the other side.

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What is different here

Most of the above is true of any perpetual venue. Three things are not. Matching and clearing are chain execution. Orders match, margin is checked, and positions clear inside the protocol, over an ordering that consensus committed. There is no matching engine running elsewhere and reporting results. See the architecture. Priority inside a block is fixed by the protocol. Cancels execute before aggressive orders, and liquidations resolve before discretionary flow — regardless of who is closer to a validator. Latency stops deciding outcomes within a block. See Transaction sequencing. The prices that govern your position are certified in the block that uses them. There is no separate oracle cycle to race. See Index price.

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Where to start

Markets

What is listed, and the specification behind each contract.

Order types

Limit, market, time-in-force, and the flags that constrain an order.

Margin modes

Cross and isolated, one-way and hedge.

Liquidations

What is evaluated, when, and what happens first.
Perpetual futures are leveraged instruments. You can lose your entire margin, and in extreme conditions positions can be closed at prices well away from where you expected. Read Risk disclosures before trading with capital you cannot afford to lose.