Fees & Rebates

Horizon Futures offers a perpetual futures DEX on the BNB Chain with very compelling fees.

Fees break down

Crypto

Crypto	Maker	Taker
BTC	2bsp	6bsp
ETH	2bsp	6bsp
BNB	2bsp	8bsp

Forex (coming soon) Commodities (coming soon)

How Fees are Calculated

The fees consist of two parts. The first fee is a variable percentage fee. The second fee is a flat rate fee.

The first fee is what you will see in almost all perpetual future DEXes, typically presented in 2 numbers. For Horizon Futures, the fees are expressed as 2/6 bps, which means a maker fee of 2 bps and a taker fee of 6 bps.

Determining whether you get the maker or taker fee depends on the current skew difference between the long and short positions in the market. For example, if for BNB futures, there is currently $10k in long positions and $5k in short positions; the market skew is $5k in favor of the long side. In this situation, where there are more longs than shorts, the larger taker fee is charged for opening a new long position since it increases the market skew. Conversely, a maker fee is charged for opening a short position in this situation because it decreases the market skew. The reverse applies when there are more shorts than longs. This fee structure is intended to balance long and short demand, promoting neutral markets with zero skew in both longs and shorts.

Bps stands for basis points, a unit of measurement in finance that represents 0.01%, or 0.0001 in decimal form. This means that for a $1000 USD position with a 2 bps makers fee, the fee will be $1000 x 0.0002, or 0.2 USD. For a $1,000,000 USD position with a 6 bps takers fee, $1,000,000 x 0.0006 will be $600 USD.

Below is a comparison of prices of different perpetual futures DEXes (and semi CEXes):

• 2/6 bps (maker/taker) on Horizon Protocol

• 5/7 bps (open/close) on [GMX]

• 2/5 bps (maker/taker) Tier 1 on [DYDX]

• 6/6 bps (open/close) on [MUX Protocol]

• 8/8 bps (open/close) for alts on [Gains]

• 5/5 bps (open/close) on [LEVEL FINANCE]

• 10/10 bps (all trades) on [PERPETUAL FUTURE]

The reason that Horizon Futures can have such low fees is due to the dual oracles system. Since it is a variable percentage fee, it is very important to keep this fee as low as possible.

Keeper Fee

The second fee is a Keeper Fee, or automation fee, which is required to update the Pyth price on-chain and execute the trader’s order with that latest price.

The Keeper can be considered an automated orders and liquidation system. It gets activated upon any calls for new orders and liquidations to update all relevant contracts. There are two keepers per market, one for executing orders and one for managing liquidations.

The Keeper Fee is much more forgiving in comparison to the percentage fee, as it is a flat fee that is dependent on the overhead to run the keeper. For every trade executed, the trader will need to pay the Keeper Fee in addition to the exchange fees shared above.