Know the risks
Isometric removes liquidation and funding. It does not remove the possibility of losing money. Read this page once before you trade.
Every position can lose 100% of what you paid. Never trade with money you cannot afford to lose in
full.
You can lose everything you paid
A position that settles on the wrong side of its worthless price pays nothing. That is the normal outcome for a high-leverage position: most 100x positions expire worthless. The amount you paid is gone, with no partial refund.
You cannot get out early
There is no close button. A position you regret at hour one still runs to its settlement time, and a position that is winning on day three can still lose on day seven. Only the settlement price counts.
One price at one hour decides
Settlement uses the oracle price recorded just before the settlement hour. A spike or dip that happens a minute later does not count. If you need a position that tracks the price continuously, this is not that product.
Your payout is capped
A long stops growing once the price reaches double the worthless price. A short stops growing when the price reaches zero. In both cases the cap is your position size. However far the market runs beyond that, you receive the cap.
The quote can move before you confirm
Quotes are good for a short window and refresh automatically. When you confirm, the protocol recalculates against the live price. It will never give you a worse entry price or a smaller position than you agreed to, and if it cannot match the quote the trade fails with nothing charged. But the target you saw a minute ago may not be the one you get.
A long payout may arrive as the market's asset
The protocol normally converts a winning long to USDC and sends it to you. If the whole expiry's winnings are under $5, the price feed is down at that moment, or the conversion cannot fill within 0.5%, the payout stays in the market's asset, cbBTC for Bitcoin, for you to claim. Its dollar value then moves with the market until you sell it. See Payouts and claims.
New positions can pause
The protocol refuses to open positions when the price feed is unsafe, the Base sequencer is down, a pool is at its limits, or the market is paused. Existing positions are unaffected: they still settle and pay. But you may not be able to open a position at the moment you want to.
Smart contract and network risk
Isometric is a set of smart contracts on Base. Contracts can have bugs, oracles can fail, networks can halt, and the tokens involved, including USDC and cbBTC, carry their own issuer and technical risk. The protocol is open source and designed to fail closed rather than pay out on bad data, but no software is risk free.
This is not advice
Nothing in the app or these docs is investment advice. Isometric does not review whether a trade suits you. Trading leveraged products may be restricted in your jurisdiction, and you are responsible for the taxes on any gains. See the terms of service.
What the protocol does protect
- Your maximum loss is fixed. Nothing can be taken from you after you pay.
- Your payout is funded on day one. The pool locks the full maximum payout when you open.
- Nobody picks the price. Settlement uses a verified Chainlink price that no participant, including Isometric, can choose.
- Claims never expire. A payout waits for you indefinitely.
- Bad data stops the market rather than mispricing it. An unsafe feed pauses new positions instead of using a stale price.