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Onchain Economics
Trading & Markets

Spot Market

A market where assets are traded for immediate delivery, as opposed to futures or derivatives.

In-Depth Explanation

Spot trading means you're buying or selling the actual asset right now—you take ownership immediately. Spot prices are the 'real' price of an asset. Futures and perps prices reference spot. Spot markets form the foundation for derivatives pricing through arbitrage relationships.

Related Terms

Perpetual Futures

Perps

Futures contracts with no expiration date that track an underlying asset's price through a funding rate mechanism.

Decentralized Exchange

DEX

A cryptocurrency exchange that operates through smart contracts without a central authority or custody of user funds.

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Slippage

The difference between the expected price of a trade and the actual executed price.

Maximal Extractable Value

MEV

Value that can be extracted by reordering, inserting, or censoring transactions within a block.

Sandwich Attack

An MEV extraction technique where an attacker places transactions before and after a victim's trade to profit from the price impact.

Frontrunning

Placing a transaction ahead of a known pending transaction to profit from the anticipated price movement.

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