BotRadix DEX is a perpetual futures exchange implemented as smart contracts on Base. You trade from your wallet, your collateral is held by the DEX contracts, and every trade settles on chain.
Who you trade against#
There is no order book where traders match against each other. Positions are taken against a liquidity vault owned by the protocol:
- Opposite positions of different traders offset each other first.
- The vault backs the net exposure that remains, and pays or receives the result.
- The vault has no external liquidity providers.
With the v2.2 reference parameters, the protocol opening fee is split between the vault (90%) and the BAQ reserve (10%); the service fee is paid separately to its recipient.
How prices are set#
Every market uses one price, published by the PairForge oracle: it is the price at which orders execute, positions are valued and liquidations are decided. There is no separate index price and no spread from a book.
- A market order executes at the oracle price, within the maximum slippage you set; if the price moved beyond it, the order is rejected rather than filled at a worse price.
- Synthetic cross pairs (for example ETH/BTC) are priced as the ratio of their two legs, which must be observed within 5 seconds of each other.
See Prices and oracle.
How a trade is executed#
- You choose the market, side, size, leverage and margin mode in the terminal.
- BotRadix validates the order against the market, your account and the contracts, and simulates it.
- Your trading key (or your wallet) signs the order. No ETH is needed for this.
- A protocol executor publishes the current signed price and submits your order in the same flow, paying the network gas.
- The contracts check the price, your margin and the market limits, and open or update the position.
Resting limit and stop orders, take profit and stop loss are executed later by the protocol keeper when their conditions are met.
Capacity and protection limits#
To keep the vault solvent, the contracts reserve capacity for what traders could earn in a stress scenario (a price move of 15% to 50%, depending on each market's configuration):
- New positions are accepted only while the capacity required by all markets is at most 80% of the vault, and no single market requires more than 50%.
- Each market has open-interest caps and leverage tiers by position size.
- If a capacity limit is reached, risk-increasing entries are rejected until there is room again. The capacity block does not itself prevent closing, but closes still require valid prices and applicable contract conditions.
Every position also has a maximum profit.
Paying out profits#
Profits are paid from the vault, then from an insurance reserve, then from an emergency reserve.
- Auto-deleveraging (ADL). If one more sharp price move would leave the vault unable to pay, the keeper reduces or closes winning positions (within each batch, those with the largest profit relative to their size on the same side and market first), at the oracle price and without a closing fee, and stops when it falls to the target. The cap and funding apply; anything liquidity cannot cover is deferred. Positions with a valid backed take profit are not closed this way. See Backed take profit and auto-deleveraging.
- Deferred payments. If, after an extreme price gap, the vault and reserves were still insufficient, the unpaid amount would be recorded as a deferred payment, not withdrawable balance, and could only be claimed if contributions or vault income replenish its backing, with no deadline or guarantee; meanwhile the DEX blocks new risk (protected insolvency mode).
Where your collateral is#
Your collateral is held by the DEX contracts on Base, credited to your wallet address:
- Withdrawals are authorized by your wallet, with a transaction or a free signature, and always go to that wallet. Neither BotRadix nor your trading key can withdraw to another address under the current code.
- You can close your positions and withdraw directly from BaseScan, without the website. See Exit without BotRadix.
- The administrator can pause the DEX, put it in reduce-only mode, pause withdrawals (at most 72 hours at a time), and withdraw the vault's free liquidity (not traders' collateral).
- The contracts are upgradeable: router changes go through an advance-notice gate (0 hours today) and the cross-margin contract can be upgraded immediately. The guarantees above therefore depend on BotRadix operating its administrative keys correctly. This is a temporary consolidation phase; sealing is planned by component once the system has proven stable.
See Security and contracts, Smart contracts for addresses and administrative controls, and Risks.
Version#
The current contracts are version 2.2, live since 11 October 2026: an independent exit from BaseScan, an advance-notice gate for router changes, auto-deleveraging with backed take profit, a maximum profit of 20 times the size, parameters adjustable within limits written in the contracts, and 150 markets. See the Changelog.