The LeverUp blog has grown into a library of guides on perpetual futures. That's useful if you already know what you're looking for, and less useful if you're starting out and don't know which article to read first.
This page puts those guides in order. It's built for three kinds of readers:
- New traders who have heard of perps but haven't opened a position yet.
- Spot and DeFi users who understand tokens, swaps, and LP positions, but not leverage, funding, or liquidation.
- Active perp traders who want to understand what happens underneath the order ticket: how venues source liquidity, how prices get on-chain, and where costs hide.
How to use this path
The path has three levels. Each one builds on the last.
- Beginner — foundations. What a perpetual future is, how leverage and shorting work, and what funding and open interest tell you.
- Intermediate — risk and cost. What can close your position early, and what quietly eats into your returns.
- Advanced — market structure and strategy. How perp venues are designed, why those design choices change your execution, and where perp markets are heading.
You don't need to read every article. If a topic already feels familiar, skim the summary and move on. If a later article leans on a concept you haven't met yet, jump back a level. Reading times are estimates.
None of these guides are financial advice. Leveraged trading can lose more of your margin than you expect in a short period, so read the risk section before you trade real size.
Level 1: Beginner — Foundations
Start here if you haven't held a leveraged position before. These guides cover the vocabulary and the core mechanics. By the end of this level you should be able to explain what a perp is, how leverage changes your exposure, and what funding and open interest measure.
- What Are Perpetual Futures? — The starting point: what a perp is, why it has no expiry date, and the key terms you'll see on every trading screen. ~7 min read
- What Is Leverage Trading in Crypto? — How leverage controls a bigger position than your deposit, and how it moves your liquidation price. ~5 min read
- Going Short on a DEX — How a short position gains when prices fall, and how it differs from a long. ~3 min read
- What Is a Perp DEX? — How decentralized perp exchanges work, how they compare with centralized exchanges, and the main types you'll run into. ~6 min read
- Why Self-Custody Matters: Lessons From FTX — How custody arrangements affect who controls your funds, and which risks remain when you trade on-chain. ~3 min read
- What Is a Funding Rate? — How periodic payments between longs and shorts encourage perp prices to stay close to spot, and how the mechanics vary by venue. ~5 min read
- What Is Open Interest? — How to read the total value of open positions alongside price. ~5 min read
- A DeFi Investor's Guide to Perpetual Futures — If you already know LP positions and APY, this maps what you know onto perp trading. ~4 min read
Before you move on: you should be able to say how much your position gains or loses for a 1% price move at your chosen leverage, who pays funding right now in the market you want to trade, and whether open interest is rising or falling alongside price.
Level 2: Intermediate — Risk and Cost
Once you know how a perp works, the next question is what can go wrong and what it costs to hold a position. Position sizing and overlooked costs can turn a trade into a loss even when your view on direction turns out to be right. This level covers liquidation, trading costs, and pricing risk.
- What Are the Hidden Costs of Perp Trading? — Open and close fees, holding fees, funding, slippage, and the costs that don't show up as a line item. ~3 min read
- How Liquidations Work on LeverUp — The math behind when a liquidation triggers, the oracle's role, and how to keep your position out of range. ~5 min read
- Cross Margin vs Isolated Margin — How each margin mode changes your liquidation distance and how much of your account one position can put at risk. ~7 min read
- Risk Management for New Traders — A practical framework for position sizing, stop losses, and limiting how much one trade can cost you. ~6 min read
- What Is Slippage in DeFi? — Why the price you get can differ from the price you expected, and how oracle-referenced perp markets handle it. ~4 min read
- What Is Oracle Pricing? — How price feeds bring market prices on-chain and why freshness matters for perps. ~5 min read
- What Is Stale Pricing? — How delayed price updates can leave a venue referencing outdated prices, and what that does to execution quality. ~5 min read
- Oracle Freshness and Hidden Slippage — Why oracle update speed belongs in your execution-cost checklist next to fee rates. ~4 min read
- Funding Rates Explained: Signals and Costs — A closer look at what funding costs you over time and what it says about positioning. ~4 min read
- Execution Quality vs Headline Leverage — Why the maximum leverage number matters less than the costs it multiplies. ~4 min read
- Borrowing to Leverage vs Trading Perps — Recursive borrowing on a lending protocol compared with a perp position: costs, liquidation, and complexity. ~4 min read
- What Is MEV? — How transaction ordering can be used to extract value, and why its impact depends on how a venue prices trades. ~4 min read
Before you move on: for any trade you plan, you should know your current liquidation level and what can move it, have a rough estimate of holding costs over a day or a week under different funding scenarios, and know the most you're willing to lose before you close it. If you can't answer those three, stay at this level a little longer.
Level 3: Advanced — Market Structure and Strategy
This level is for traders who want to understand why venues behave differently under stress. It covers where perp liquidity comes from, how design choices show up in your fills, and the new asset classes being turned into perps.
Liquidity and market structure
- AMM vs Protocol-Managed Liquidity — The tradeoffs of curve-based AMMs for perpetuals, compared with a protocol-managed liquidity model. ~6 min read
- PropAMM: A Third Model for Perp Liquidity — Market makers running private pricing engines, and how that compares with pooled and protocol-managed designs. ~7 min read
- The Illusion of Liquidity — Why displayed liquidity is easy to claim and hard to prove, and how thin markets show up on the chart. ~3 min read
- Perp DEX Market Structure Keeps Shifting — What changing market share among perp venues says about how they compete. ~6 min read
- Oracle Freshness and Trade Execution — How delayed oracle updates can affect entry pricing, mark price, and the price checks used for liquidation. ~3 min read
- Liquidation Cascades: How They Happen — How concentrated leverage turns one forced close into a chain reaction. ~4 min read
Strategy and capital
- Yield Farming vs Trading Perps — Two answers to one question: what risk are you being paid to take? ~4 min read
New perp markets
- RWA Perps: Trading Gold On-Chain — What an on-chain gold perp is, and how it differs from an ETF or a futures contract. ~3 min read
- Everything Is Becoming a Perp — A four-layer map of perpification, from underlying assets to collateral, and where pricing risk sits. ~8 min read
- Pre-IPO Perps and Data Perps — How venues price a perp when there is no spot market to anchor it. ~9 min read
- Tokenized Stocks as Margin — Haircuts, weekend pricing, and liquidation risk when stocks become trading collateral. ~8 min read
Automation
- Do AI Trading Bots Actually Work? — What bots can and can't do, why backtests mislead, and the red flags to watch for. ~8 min read
- AI Trading Agent vs Trading Bot — How rule-based bots differ from LLM agents, and why agents still need hard limits. ~8 min read
A note on this level: these articles are more analytical and some take a position. Treat them as frameworks to test against what you see in the market, not as conclusions to accept. Comparing how different venues answer the same design question is the most useful habit to build here.
Putting It Into Practice on LeverUp
The guides above apply to perp trading in general. If you want to apply them on LeverUp, these cover the platform itself.
LeverUp uses a protocol-managed virtual liquidity system powered by the VMMV, where trades reference oracle pricing while execution, settlement, and risk management are handled at the protocol layer. The overview explains how that works and how it differs from pool-based designs.
- What Is LeverUp? — The full protocol overview. ~5 min read
- Trading on Monad: A Retail Guide — Getting oriented as a trader on Monad and LeverUp. ~7 min read
- Setting Up Your Wallet for Monad — Wallet setup and network configuration. ~4 min read
- How to Bridge Assets to Monad — Moving funds onto the right chain. ~3 min read
- How to Open Your First Trade on LeverUp — A step-by-step walkthrough from wallet connection to closing a position. ~5 min read
- How Leverage Works on LeverUp — Exposure, PnL, and liquidation price on the platform. ~4 min read
- How Liquidation Works on LeverUp — What triggers a liquidation and how to stay clear of it. ~4 min read
- How to Set Stop Loss and Take Profit — Setting your exit levels before the market moves. ~4 min read
- How to Use AnyCollateral — Using supported Monad ecosystem tokens as margin. ~4 min read
- Common Beginner Mistakes — Common beginner errors that lead to losses, and ways to reduce them. ~5 min read
- LeverUp's Funding Model — The on-chain calculation from OI imbalance to funding rate. ~5 min read
- Building a Grok Bot Trading Agent on LeverUp — Connecting an AI agent to LeverUp with a scoped trading key. ~5 min read
We'll add new guides to this page as they're published.