How it works

Overview

Two roles talk to each other directly:

• Traders open leveraged long or short positions, using their wallet balance as margin.
• Lenders supply assets - USDC.e, WETH, WBTC, ARB, GMX, LINK or UNI - to per-asset pools that finance the leveraged portion of trades that need them, and earn the fees those trades pay.

There's no matching engine, no in-house order book, no vault holding user funds.

For traders

Atomic is a leveraged spot DEX. Every trade is a real swap with capital borrowed from the lending pool, executed through DEX aggregators across Uniswap, Curve and the other Arbitrum venues those aggregators reach.

What that buys you:

• No deposit, no vault. Margin leaves your wallet at the moment you sign, and not before.
• No oracle dependency. Your fill price is whatever the aggregator returns from on-chain liquidity at that moment. There's no separate price feed that can be paused or pushed.
• Single-block settlement. Open and close each happen in one transaction. PnL is realised atomically.

For the full order panel and the supported order types, see Open a position.

For lenders

A separate lending pool per supported asset finances the borrowed portion of every leveraged position. Atomic currently runs pools for USDC.e, WETH, WBTC, ARB, GMX, LINK and UNI.

• Yield comes from two streams: routing fees on aggregator swaps the pool's capital backs, and a share of the 20 bps round-trip protocol fee.
• Across all pools, lenders together receive 25% of platform revenue.
• APY runs per pool, currently in the 10–40% range depending on demand for that asset from leveraged traders.
• No lockup. Each pool queues independently when its utilisation is high.

The deposit flow lives in Provide liquidity; the math behind the rate is in Yield mechanics.

What happens when you click Buy

1. Preview. The frontend simulates the trade against live on-chain liquidity and shows entry, liquidation price, and total fee.
2. Sign. Your wallet signs one transaction.
3. Margin pulled. Your margin (in the pair's quote currency - USDC.e or WETH) leaves your wallet.
4. Loan opened. The protocol borrows margin × (leverage − 1) from the lending pool.
5. Swap. The combined notional is routed through KyberSwap or 0x and filled across Uniswap V3 and other Arbitrum venues.
6. Position written. Entry, margin, borrowed amount and liquidation threshold are stored against your address.

Closing reverses each step in one transaction: aggregator unwind, loan repayment, residual margin back to your wallet.

Where safety actually lives

• Liquidations are run by a keeper network that watches every open position against on-chain prices. The 88% threshold gives positions more room before forced exit than most perpetuals do.
• Pool solvency rides on those same liquidations. As long as keepers close positions before they slip below the borrowed amount, the lending pool stays whole.
• Smart contract risk is what Halborn audits and the bounty exist for. See Security.

What Atomic isn't

• Not a perpetual futures DEX. No funding rate, no synthetic perp; the trades are real swaps against real liquidity.
• Not custodial. Your funds aren't sitting in a protocol vault waiting for a withdrawal request.
• Not subsidised by token emissions. Lender APY is paid in the asset deposited, out of real trader fees. No token to inflate or depreciate.