01 · Overview
Overview
Temporal is a perp exchange that also trades perpetual options. You can buy or sell a single option, or put a floor under a leveraged perp: a put struck at a price you choose, paid for by a call sold above a target you choose. The options never expire. Instead they roll, and the cost of the roll is called funding.
The floor is the risk#
A perpetual future (a perp) is a leveraged position with no expiry. When the account's equity falls to its maintenance requirement, the venue closes it out. For one perp on one asset that boundary is a price — the liquidation floor. Temporal moves it, not by adding margin and not by cutting size, but by trading part of your payoff for protection underneath.
Perpetual options that roll#
An option here has a decay, its mean life in months. Any length the makers quote is allowed, fractions included (0.25 months, 2.5, 11.6). Its price is intrinsic (what it would pay today, fixed by the contract) plus extrinsic (the market's price for what it might pay later). Holding it costs funding: the extrinsic at the oracle's relevant side and the leg's own decay is the cost of rolling the claim; a long pays it and a short receives it. The size never changes.
PROTECT buys the floor#
PROTECT opens a perp and buys a put struck at the floor you type, in dollars, paid for by selling a call near the target return you type. The venue solves both strikes and both decays; you never type them. It works on long and short perps. It opens as one request: the perp and its options open together, or nothing opens. Details are in section 3.
Who it's for#
A trader who wants an option, or who holds a leveraged perp and wants the floor further away or to be paid for capping the upside. And a maker (a liquidity provider), who quotes a whole curve of option prices and earns the spread on it. A maker either brings its own pricing model (CUSTOM) or lets the venue quote the listed market for it (AUTO), and TLP does that on every listed asset from one deposit. That side is section 4. A host is anyone running a front end on the same contracts; it can add a small fee of its own on opens (section 6).
How a trade happens#
Makers quote. The front is the best quote on each side at each strike and decay. Every open and close trades at the front. The oracle is the listed options market, joined up by straight lines; the mark is what a position is valued at. Neither trades. See section 5.
What it costs, and what stands behind it#
A taker pays a small fee on each option open and close, makers pay none, and the venue keeps 10 % of funding. A liquidation takes a fee into an insurance fund. If a trader's account goes below zero, the fund pays the counterparty and the trader's debt is wiped, never collected from later money. All of it, with the numbers, is in section 6. What the venue depends on, and how the contracts are checked, is in section 10.