Overview
Atomic connects two roles directly:
- Traders open leveraged long/short positions using their wallet balance as margin.
- Lenders supply USDC.e to a pool that backs the leveraged portion of those trades and earn yield from the fees the trades generate.
There is no central matching engine, no proprietary order book, and no protocol-owned vault holding user funds.
Trader posts margin from their wallet → protocol borrows the rest from the lending pool → swap is routed through KyberSwap/0x → position is live on-chain → fees flow back to lenders → on close, borrowed capital + fees return to the pool.
For traders
Atomic functions as a leveraged spot DEX. The trade is a swap with extra capital borrowed from the lending pool, executed through DEX aggregators for best price across Uniswap, Curve, and other Arbitrum venues.
Key consequences of this design:
- No deposit, no vault. Margin is taken directly from your connected wallet at the moment you sign.
- No oracle dependency. The fill price is whatever the aggregator returns from on-chain liquidity. There is no external price feed that could be paused or manipulated.
- Same-block settlement. Open and close are single transactions; PnL is realized atomically.
Read Trading → Open a position for the order types and the on-chain flow in detail.
For lenders
The lending side of Atomic is a single USDC.e pool that backs the borrowed portion of every leveraged position.
- Deposits earn yield from two sources: pool fees (from aggregator routing) and a share of protocol fees (from the 20 bps round-trip charged on every trade).
- Lenders collectively receive 25% of all platform revenue.
- Current APY ranges 10–40% depending on trading volume.
- No lockup. Withdrawals are available at any time, subject to available idle capital in the pool.
See Lending → Provide liquidity for the deposit flow and Lending → Yield mechanics for how the rate is computed.
What happens when you click Buy
- Order panel preview. The frontend simulates the trade against current on-chain liquidity and shows entry, liquidation price, and total cost.
- Sign one transaction. Your wallet signs a single transaction that authorises the trade.
- Margin debit. USDC.e equal to your margin is pulled from your wallet.
- Loan from the pool. The protocol borrows the remaining notional (margin × (leverage − 1)) from the lending pool.
- Aggregator swap. The combined notional is routed through KyberSwap or 0x and filled across Uniswap V3 / other Arbitrum venues.
- Position recorded on-chain. Entry price, margin, liquidation threshold, and borrowed amount are stored against your address.
Closing reverses the steps: the swap is unwound through the aggregator, the loan is repaid to the pool with fees, and any residual margin returns to your wallet - all in one transaction.
Where the safety lives
- Liquidations are executed by a keeper network that monitors positions against on-chain prices. The 88% threshold gives positions deeper survival room than most perpetuals.
- Solvency of the lending pool is guaranteed by the same liquidation mechanism: borrowed capital is always recoverable as long as keepers can close positions before they go underwater.
- Smart contract risk is mitigated by audits (Halborn for V2; V3 audit Q2 2026) and a continuous bug bounty. See Security.
What Atomic is not
- Not a perpetual futures DEX. There is no funding rate; positions are real swaps with real on-chain liquidity behind them.
- Not a custodial product. No part of Atomic ever holds your funds. Even active positions live as on-chain swap state, not as IOUs from a vault.
- Not yield-from-emissions. Lender APY comes from real fees paid by real traders. There is no token reward subsidising the rate.