Overview

Temporal is a perp exchange that also trades perpetual options: the same calls and puts Deribit lists, made perpetual. They have no expiry date and no time decay to manage; instead the holder pays a small, continuous holding cost. You can use them two ways:

• Protect — open a leveraged perp and push its liquidation price further away. The venue adds one option swap (buy a put, sell a call, or the reverse on a short) that costs about nothing up front: the two premiums roughly cancel, and the small net left over is shown on the ticket.
• Option — buy or sell a single call or put, on BTC or HYPE, without ever rolling it.

A third tab, Earn, is the other side: you provide liquidity as a maker and earn the spread and the holding cost on what traders hold.

How a trade happens (in one paragraph)#

Each maker runs its own quoting program (the venue runs one for TLP makers). When you trade, the venue sends your request — asset, strike, duration, size — to the makers; each answers with a firm, signed quote; the single best quote for your whole size wins and that maker fills all of it, at its own price. Makers see the request, never who sent it. A large order is split into pieces (default $1,000 of premium each — the Piece size under Slice order); each piece is priced on its own and may land on a different maker. Prices are anchored to a listed options market (Deribit for BTC, Derive for HYPE), called the oracle venue: a maker's quote only counts if it sits inside a price limit around the oracle venue's bid and ask.

What your position is worth#

Your options are valued at the oracle venue's price on the side you could close at: the bid for what you bought, the ask for what you sold. That value — the mark — is what your margin, liquidation and withdrawals use.

What it costs#

A taker pays a small fee on each option open and close; makers pay none. Holding an option costs its holding cost, paid to the other side; the venue keeps 10 % of it. Full schedule: Fees & liquidation.

Worked example — Protect#

A 5× long BTC perp on $80 of margin would be liquidated about 20 % below entry. On the Protect tab you type the Liq. price you want instead (or drag it on the chart), and a Target price with the Target ROE you are playing for. The venue finds the longest-lasting swap that holds that liquidation price and still gives you the target return at the target price, and shows Days protected: how long the account's spare margin pays the swap's holding cost at the worst price before liquidation. Under 30 days you see a ⚠. The perp and the swap open together in one signed request, or nothing opens.

Your AI agent can do all of this#

Every act in these docs has its command beside it. Your wallet signs every act; the agent never holds a venue key. Start with Trade with your AI agent.

curl -s https://protect.temporal.exchange/api/venue/health

Testnet#

The venue runs on testnet today (ledger on Elysium testnet, money on HyperCore testnet). See Testnet.

Kept in lockstep with the code: a check fails if this page drifts.