General Overview

# Compared to Perp Venues

Most DeFi perpetual protocols bundle execution, margin accounting, liquidations, collateral, prices, and settlement into one venue. S&F separates those jobs.

The core difference is simple: in S&F, the position is a token that can leave the venue.

# Main difference

# Trust assumptions

S&F accepts slower base-layer settlement to reduce the number of actors that can interfere with the position.

# Compared to Synthetix

Synthetix and S&F both make synthetic exposure protocol-native, and both must handle oracle-driven settlement risk. The difference is the engine.

Synthetix is built around protocol-managed synthetic markets, shared liquidity and debt accounting, and governance-controlled market support. It has historically had to mitigate stale-price and oracle-front-running risk with mechanisms such as exchange delays, fee reclamation, and delayed or off-chain order settlement.

S&F uses separated markets and collateralized settlement pools. Each supported synthetic has its own settlement market, and LPs choose the funding rate where they are willing to underwrite trader exposure. Trader demand consumes the cheapest active liquidity first. As demand rises, funding can rise and activate more expensive risk capital.

This makes counterparty risk explicit. S&F does not depend on a shared system-wide collateral pool, a native incentive token subsidy, or governance whitelisting as the primary liquidity engine. Anyone can create a supported synthetic market, while issuance, redemption, collateral accounting, funding, oracle rounds, and black-swan debt rules remain in the S&F settlement layer.

OTC settlement also treats oracle delay as a first-class boundary. Issuance and redemption wait for oracle rounds, while instant execution happens in secondary markets trading already-issued position tokens.

# Market-maker surface

In a venue-style perp system, a market maker usually operates inside the venue's margin and liquidation rules.

In S&F, the same participant can mint, redeem, provide LP capital, and quote secondary markets around the same position token.

This creates multiple liquidity surfaces:

• OTC provides issuance and redemption;
• Market provides instant execution and arbitrage;
• LP positions provide funding when counterparty risk is priced attractively;
• oracle rounds provide a common settlement reference.

S&F does not need to be the fastest exchange. It needs to be a credible base asset and settlement path that fast venues can build around.