Abstract Markets Glossary

Part of the difficulty of introducing something genuinely new is naming the individual concepts it is composed of.

The goal is to create terms people can naturally adopt and use when speaking.

Abstract markets introduced by Derpetual represent a new category of markets and include concepts that were not previously part of standard financial vocabulary.

This glossary explains Derpetual’s terminology and proposed market design. Definitions describe the concepts; they do not establish which features are currently available.

Product features and proprietary names are written with capital letters. General concepts are written in lowercase.

Language is fluid, so these terms may evolve over time.

Derpetual

A research and technology project building infrastructure for abstract markets and developing abstract futures.

abstract market

A market in which participants trade exposure to the future value of any measurable quantity, whether or not it corresponds to a traditionally tradeable asset.

An abstract market is based on an abstract futures contract.

Learn more in Introducing Abstract Markets.

abstract futures contract

Also referred to as abstract futures.

A financial primitive developed for the permissionless creation of isolated synthetic markets.

Abstract futures are the core primitive behind abstract markets.

price oracle

A source of truth that publishes the numerical value used by a market equation.

operator

A mathematical operator that connects different price oracles in a market equation.

Supported operators include:

+
-
*
/

market equation

A mathematical expression that defines the value of an abstract market by combining one or more price oracles using operators.

Abstract Market Launcher

A Derpetual feature for creating abstract markets by combining one or more price oracles into a market equation using operators.

market credit (MCred)

A metric defining the maturity of an abstract market.

Market credit is expressed in US dollars and is intended to be analogous to the market-cap metric used for assets.

bonding curve

A mechanism used to bootstrap liquidity in an abstract market.

The bonding curve progresses as market credit increases.

Position Yield

An incentive to deploy liquidity for early abstract market participants.

Position Yield is a pro-rata distribution of future trading fees to open positions, weighted by position size and duration.

Read Introducing Abstract Markets for the broader concept.

Read The Derpetual Manifesto for the thesis behind abstract futures and Derpetual.