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A perpetual future is a contract that tracks an asset’s price without ever expiring. You hold it as long as you like; there is no settlement date to roll or close out at. To keep its price tethered to the underlying asset, the two sides of the market exchange a small periodic payment called funding — longs pay shorts, or shorts pay longs, depending on which way the contract has drifted. That is the whole idea: spot exposure to BTC, ETH, or another asset, held indefinitely, with leverage, settled in cash.
Formally, a perpetual swap is a futures contract with no delivery and no expiry, held in balance by a recurring funding rate applied between long and short holders. On ZLL the funding accrues against your open position and is denominated in USDC.

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How ZLL runs them

Every contract on Zero Latency Labs is a perpetual, quoted and settled in USDC. A few choices shape how you trade them:
  • One perp per asset. The markets are BTC-PERP, ETH-PERP, SOL-PERP, XRP-PERP, UNI-PERP, and AAVE-PERP. Each is a single contract on that asset — no quarterly or dated variants.
  • No expiry. Positions never settle on a calendar. Funding, not expiry, keeps the price in line.
  • USDC collateral. You post USDC as margin and your profit and loss is paid in USDC. There is no other collateral asset.
  • Portfolio-based margin. Margin is set per portfolio, and each portfolio is either Isolated (each position backed by its own allocated collateral) or Cross (collateral shared across that portfolio’s positions). Collateral never crosses portfolio boundaries.
  • You sign every write. Placing an order, moving cash, or managing keys all require a signature you build client-side. There is no official SDK yet, so the signing is hand-rolled.
The sign of your position is its side: a positive quantity is long, a negative quantity is short. There is no separate buy/sell flag.

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Where to go next

Markets and precision

The six markets, USDC units, and how to turn human prices and sizes into the integers the API expects.

Positions, leverage, funding

How positions form, how leverage is set per market, and how funding is charged against an open position.

Authentication

The key hierarchy and signing flow behind every write request.

Quickstart

Place your first order end to end.