Core concepts and terminology explained for on-chain traders.
27 articles
Spot and perpetual futures are the two main ways to trade crypto. One gives you ownership of the asset; the other gives you leveraged price exposure. Here's how they differ in mechanics, costs, and risk — and when to use each.
Perp DEXes and centralized exchanges offer perpetual contracts but differ in custody, liquidity, fees, and transparency. Here's how to choose.
Last price is whatever the most recent trade printed. Mark price is a reference price used for liquidations. Here's why perp platforms keep them separate — and what happens when a single trade briefly disconnects the two.
Market orders prioritize execution, limit orders cap your price, and stop orders wait for a trigger. Compare limit vs market vs stop orders, time in force (GTC, IOC, FOK), and how order types work on LeverUp.
A reading path through the LeverUp blog for perp traders: start with how perpetual futures work, move on to risk and trading costs, then study liquidity models, oracles, and new perp markets. Each guide is labeled by level with reading time.
Cross margin shares your account's collateral across positions, while isolated margin limits each position to its own collateral. Worked examples show how each mode moves your liquidation price and how much you can lose.
An AI trading agent is not just a smarter trading bot. Bots follow fixed rules; agents read news and onchain data, plan steps, and use tools. Here's how they differ, where each fits, and why agents still need hard limits in code.
Do AI trading bots work? They can execute a plan with discipline, but automation alone doesn't create an edge. Here's what a crypto trading bot does, why backtests and PnL screenshots mislead, the red flags regulators warn about, and a checklist for picking one.
A normal perp is anchored to a spot price. Pre-IPO perps on OpenAI or Anthropic, and data perps on things like shipping traffic, don't have one. Here's how venues price them instead, why prices differ across venues, and what traders should check first.
Grok Bot can run named agents with their own tools, memory, and a cloud terminal. Here's how to wire one up to trade perps on LeverUp using gasless intent signing, with a scoped key that can't transfer tokens or withdraw collateral.
Leverage numbers and fee percentages don't tell the whole story. Here's a full breakdown of what actually eats into perp trading returns: open/close fees, holding fees, funding, slippage, and the cost structure of liquidation.
MEV — maximal extractable value — is the profit that can be extracted by reordering, inserting, or censoring transactions on a blockchain. Here's how it actually works, and why the mechanics change depending on whether you're trading against an order book, an AMM, or oracle-referenced pricing.
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