ElementGlossary
Plain-language definitions for the terms used across Element, each linkable by name.
Trading terms
Mark price
Element's authoritative current on-chain price for a market. Every open, close, liquidation, and PnL calculation uses the mark.
Notional
The full synthetic value of a position, collateral times leverage. Fees and margins are percentages of notional.
Leverage
Position notional divided by collateral. Capped by position size, up to 200x on the smallest positions.
Entry price
The mark at which a position opened, used as the basis for its profit and loss.
Liquidation price
The mark at which a position's health reaches the maintenance line and it becomes liquidatable. An estimate that moves with margin, fees, and funding.
Open interest
The total notional open on one side of a market. The imbalance between long and short open interest drives funding and the skew-favorable fee.
Margin and risk
Effective equity
What a position is really worth right now: collateral plus unrealized PnL, minus accrued funding and borrowing. Because unrealized profit counts, a winning position cannot be liquidated by fees alone.
Initial margin
The collateral required to open a position, 0.50% of notional, which sets the 200x maximum leverage.
Maintenance margin (MMR)
The minimum equity a position must keep to avoid liquidation, 0.40% of notional. The gap between initial and maintenance margin is your buffer.
Health
A x1000 index of how close a position is to liquidation: 1000 is exactly at the maintenance line, and below 1000 is liquidatable. Exactly 1000 is still safe.
Funding
A continuous payment between the two sides of a market: the crowded side pays the lighter side. Adaptive and capped.
Borrowing
A continuous cost a position pays the vault for the liquidity it reserves, scaling with utilization and clamped at 100%.
Liquidity
Element LP shares
The ERC-20 shares (symbol eqLP) you receive for depositing USDG into Element's liquidity vault. Their price is the vault's net asset value divided by the total shares outstanding.
Payout queue
A first-in, first-out line for winning closes the vault cannot immediately cash. Payouts are sequenced and paid as liquidity returns, in normal operation in full.
Insurance fund
A vault sub-fund seeded by half of every liquidation fee, used to cover shortfalls before they reach LP principal.
Token and staking
$ELEMENT
Element's protocol token: 1,000,000,000 fixed supply, 18 decimals, no emissions. Stake it to earn a share of protocol trading fees in USDG.
Staking
Locking $ELEMENT to earn a share of the fees traders pay, paid in USDG. Rewards accrue continuously and are claimed separately from unstaking.
Weighted stake
Your staked $ELEMENT times your lock tier's reward multiplier. Your share of each fee distribution is your weighted stake divided by the total weighted stake.
Lock tier
The lock period chosen when staking (7, 90, or 180 days), each with a higher reward multiplier (2x, 10x, 50x). Longer locks earn a larger share of the same fee pool.
Reward index
The on-chain accumulator that tracks each staker's share of distributed USDG fees. Anyone can trigger an update that brings it current, so rewards accrue fairly regardless of when you claim.