Fees

Overview

Levant is an oracle-priced, vault-backed perpetual DEX. Every trade executes against the shared Levant Vault — an ERC-4626 liquidity pool that is the counterparty to all positions — at a verified oracle price. There are five costs to understand, and all of them are rule-based and computed from published on-chain parameters: the open fee, the close fee, the spread, funding, and — only if you are liquidated — the liquidation fee.

Every one of these costs ultimately accrues to the Levant Vault, so they raise the value of every lvUSDG liquidity-provider share. Funding is charged differently from the flat fees — it is a continuous, rate-based borrow charge on whichever side of the book is crowded, not a fixed per-trade fee — but it too is settled through the vault, not paid out to other traders. Everything is denominated in USDG, deducted on-chain, and settled by the keeper against a signed oracle price — never billed as an off-chain invoice and never subject to maker/taker rebates.

Open fee

When a keeper fills your open, Levant charges an open fee of 0.08% (8 bps) of your gross notional, where gross notional is your full deposit x leverage. It is deducted from your collateral at open. What remains is your net margin — the collateral that actually backs the position — and your position size (notional) is recomputed on that net margin.

gross notional = deposit x leverage
open fee       = 0.08% x gross notional      (= deposit x leverage x 0.0008)
net margin     = deposit - open fee
position size  = net margin x leverage

Example: you deposit 1,000 USDG at 10x. Gross notional is 10,000 USDG, so the open fee is 0.08% x 10,000 = 8.00 USDG. Your net margin becomes 992 USDG and your actual position size is 992 x 10 = 9,920 USDG. The open fee is paid to the vault (LPs).

Close fee

When you close, Levant charges a close fee of 0.08% (8 bps) of your adjusted size, defined as max(0, notional + effective PnL). Effective PnL is your realized PnL net of funding, with profit capped at the position's max-profit ceiling (900% of margin). If you close in profit the adjusted size is larger than your notional and you pay slightly more; if you close in loss it shrinks — and floors at zero — so the close fee can never exceed your remaining value.

adjusted size = max(0, notional + effective PnL)
close fee     = 0.08% x adjusted size

// effective PnL = realized PnL (profit capped at margin x 9), net of funding

Take the 9,920 USDG position from above. Closed at a flat price, the close fee is 0.08% x 9,920 = 7.94 USDG. Closed 5% in profit (about +496 USDG of PnL), the adjusted size is 10,416 USDG and the close fee rises to 0.08% x 10,416 = 8.33 USDG. A partial close charges the close fee only on the slice you close; the remainder keeps its entry price and funding basis. The close fee is paid to the vault (LPs).

The spread (separate from fees)

Because Levant is oracle-priced, there is no order-book slippage. Instead every fill carries a deterministic spread applied to the oracle mid price. The spread is not billed as a line item — it is embedded in the price you fill at — and it is entirely separate from the open and close fees. Its total, in basis points of the mid, is a constant base plus a price-impact term plus a skew term.

total spread (bps) = 2 (constant)
                   + priceImpact
                   + skew

priceImpact = notional x 100 / depth1pct       // depth1pct = 10,000,000 USDG
skew        = 100 x signedImbalance / oiCap    // skewCoeff = 100 bps, oiCap = 2,000,000 USDG

// floored at 0  -> a fill is NEVER better than mid
// capped at 500 bps (5%) -> the spread can never exceed 5%
// buys  (open long  / close short) fill ABOVE mid
// sells (open short / close long)  fill BELOW mid

• Constant (2 bps / 0.02%) — a flat base applied to every trade regardless of size.
• Price impact — grows with your trade size relative to depth. A trade the size of depth1pct (10,000,000 USDG of notional) pays a full 100 bps; a typical trade pays a tiny fraction of that.
• Skew — grows with how far your trade pushes the long/short book out of balance. The 100 bps coefficient is the premium at a fully skewed book (one side at the OI cap, 2,000,000 USDG); it scales down with size from there, and a trade that pulls the book back toward balance pays less.

Funding (a continuous charge on the crowded side)

Funding is a continuous, borrow-style charge on the crowded side — whichever of longs or shorts carries the larger open interest. Penalizing the crowded side is what nudges the book back toward balance. In this v1 the charge is one-sided: the crowded side pays, and the underweight side pays less (down to zero in a balanced book) but is not paid a credit. It accrues continuously and is settled into your PnL when you close, so it also feeds into the close-fee adjusted size and counts toward your maintenance-margin threshold.

funding cost = notional x (funding accumulator now - accumulator at open)

// base ~0.01%/hr at utilization = 1 and skew = 1
// scales with utilization (open interest / OI cap) and skew
// capped at ~0.1%/hr
// only the crowded side's accumulator grows -> funding is only ever a cost

The rate starts around 0.01% per hour at full utilization and full skew and is clamped to roughly 0.1% per hour; it scales down with utilization (open interest / OI cap) and with skew, and is zero in a perfectly balanced book. Sitting on the crowded side is a cost that grows with how long you hold; sitting on the lighter side costs you less, but it is never a payment to you. Funding is charged continuously rather than at open or close, but — like every other cost on this page — it accrues to the vault (LPs).

Liquidation fee

Liquidation carries its own charge, entirely separate from trading fees. A position becomes liquidatable once its equity falls to the 10% maintenance margin — roughly a 90% loss including funding. It is then force-closed at the raw oracle mark, with no adverse spread applied. The trader forfeits all remaining collateral: 5% of collateral goes to whoever submitted the liquidation, and the remainder goes to the vault (LPs). Liquidation is permissionless — anyone can call it with a valid signed price — and it is isolated: only the liquidated position is affected.

liquidator reward = 5% x collateral    // liqFeeBps, paid to whoever calls it
to LPs (vault)    = 95% x collateral   // the remainder

// triggered when equity <= 10% maintenance margin (~90% loss incl. funding)
// closed at the RAW oracle mark (no spread); isolated to that position

Fee summary

Worked round-trip example

Suppose you deposit 1,000 USDG as collateral and open a 10x long, then close it later with the price unchanged, in a roughly balanced book. We isolate the two explicit fees first, then add spread and funding.

The two explicit fees total 15.94 USDG — about 1.59% of your 1,000 USDG deposit, or 0.16% of the round-trip notional (0.08% in, 0.08% out). Had you instead closed 5% in profit, PnL on the 9,920 size would be about +496 USDG, the adjusted size 10,416 USDG, and the close fee 0.08% x 10,416 = 8.33 USDG. On top of the fees you pay the spread on both fills — roughly the 2 bps constant per side in a balanced book (about 4 USDG here), more if your trade is large relative to depth or adds skew — plus any funding accrued while the position was open. Both of those are embedded in your fill and PnL rather than shown as separate charges.

Where every cost goes

The open fee, the close fee, the spread, and funding all accrue to the Levant Vault, lifting the value of every lvUSDG share; the remainder of a liquidated position's collateral flows there too. Funding differs only in how it is charged — continuously, to the crowded side, rather than as a flat per-trade fee — not in where it goes. The 5% liquidation fee is the only cost that pays an outside party: whoever permissionlessly submits the liquidation. Beyond these you pay ordinary chain gas (Sepolia ETH) to submit intents; there are no maker/taker fees, no listing fees, and no order-matching costs.