Glossary

Plain-English definitions of the derivatives terms used across Quantority.

Perpetual futures (perp): A futures contract with no expiry. A funding mechanism keeps its price tethered to the underlying spot price.
Funding rate: A recurring payment between longs and shorts. Positive funding means longs pay shorts (often crowded longs); negative means shorts pay longs.
Funding interval: How often funding settles — typically every 8 hours, though some venues use 4 hours. We annualize across intervals so rates are comparable.
Aggregated funding (APR): The open-interest-weighted, annualized funding across exchanges — one cross-venue number instead of four separate rates.
Funding percentile (90d): Where current funding sits within its own last 90 days, 0–100. High means funding is unusually elevated for that coin.
Open interest (OI): The total USD value of outstanding perpetual contracts. It measures committed capital, not trading volume.
OI change (24h / 7d): Percentage change in total open interest. Rising OI means new leverage entering; falling OI means positions unwinding.
Liquidation: A forced closure of a leveraged position when margin can no longer cover losses. Clusters of liquidations often drive sharp moves.
Liquidation imbalance: The 24h skew between short and long liquidations on a −1…1 scale. Positive means more shorts were liquidated (a squeeze higher).
Leverage: Borrowed exposure expressed as a multiple (e.g. 10x). Higher leverage amplifies both gains and the risk of liquidation.
Leverage Risk Score: Quantority's 0–100 composite of funding extremity, OI momentum, liquidation pressure and volatility — a single read on how stretched positioning is.
Mark price: A reference price (usually based on an index) used to value positions and trigger liquidations, smoothing out single-exchange wicks.
Realized volatility: How much price has actually moved recently, measured as the standard deviation of hourly log returns.
Long / short squeeze: A cascade where liquidations of one side force the price further against them — longs squeezed lower, shorts squeezed higher.