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Decibel is a perpetual futures and spot exchange where every order is placed, matched, and settled on-chain. If you have traded perps or spot before, you already know how to use Decibel.

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Get Started

  1. Connect any wallet. EVM (MetaMask, OKX, Ledger), Solana (Phantom, Solflare), or Aptos (Petra, Aptos Connect).
  2. Deposit USDC. Click Deposit and select the chain your USDC is on. Decibel bridges it automatically.
  3. Trade. Perps with up to 50x leverage and cross-margin by default, or spot to hold the asset outright.
  4. Withdraw. Send USDC back to the chain your wallet is connected to.

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Supported Chains

Deposit and withdraw USDC from any of these chains: Bridging uses Wormhole with Circle’s CCTP for USDC transfers. You do not need to bridge manually.

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Fees

Trading fees decrease as your 30-day volume grows, and maker fees drop to zero at higher tiers. Perps and spot share one tier, set by your combined weighted volume (perps notional + 4 x spot notional): Fees are a percentage of notional value (Position Size x Fill Price). Perps charge fees in USDC; spot charges each side in the asset it receives. For the full tier ladder, maker/taker definitions, funding fees, and builder code fees, see the full fee breakdown. No protocol fees on deposits or withdrawals — and Decibel sponsors the network gas, so you never need APT to move funds or trade.

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What Makes Decibel Different?

  • Fully on-chain. The orderbook lives on-chain, not just settlement. Every order, match, and fill is a transaction you can verify.
  • Cross-chain deposits. Connect your existing wallet from Ethereum, Arbitrum, Base, or Solana. No manual bridging.
  • Flexible funding modes. The protocol supports continuous and periodic funding. The current public product presents markets with an hourly funding cadence.
  • Builder Codes. Third-party apps and bots can earn a share of trading fees through Builder Codes.

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Vaults

Not trading directly? Deposit into a vault and let a professional manager trade on your behalf.
  • Fungible vault shares. Your share of the vault is a token you can hold or use elsewhere in DeFi.
  • Skin in the game. Vault managers deposit their own capital alongside contributors.
  • Interval-based performance fees. Managers charge 0-10%, crystallized every 30-365 days. If the vault loses money in an interval, no fees are charged for that period.
  • Fully on-chain. Vault creation, deposits, redemptions, and fee logic all execute as on-chain transactions.
Want to run a vault yourself? See the Vault Launch Guide for developers, or Vaults for how they work as a contributor.

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What Can You Trade?

Perpetual futures and spot are both live. More products are on the roadmap. Spot and perp markets for the same asset are separate markets with separate order books — buying BTC on spot does not affect a BTC perp position. See Perpetuals vs Spot for how the two differ. For min order sizes, tick sizes, and lot sizes for all live markets, see Market Parameters.

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Under the Hood

Decibel runs natively on Aptos Layer 1. For traders this means fast execution and low gas, but you do not need to know anything about Aptos to use Decibel. Connect your existing wallet, and the cross-chain infrastructure handles the rest. For the technically curious:
  • Block-STM parallel execution. Transactions process in parallel, not sequentially.
  • Sub-second finality. Settlement in roughly 0.125 seconds.
  • Move VM. Smart contracts written in Move, a language designed for safe asset handling.
  • No bridges or rollups. All liquidity lives on a single L1. No fragmentation, no bridge risk.

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Next Steps

Perpetuals vs Spot

How perps differ from spot trading

Fees

Full fee schedule, maker/taker rules, and builder code fees

How Margin Works

Cross-margin, leverage, and liquidation thresholds

Vault System

Delegating capital to professional vault managers