Fees and settlement
OpenProp charges no deposit, withdrawal or swap fee. The only fee is the protocol's 10% share of positive excess, taken at settlement from what quoters earn above a passive hold.
Who pays what
| Party | Pays | Receives |
|---|---|---|
| Taker | The quoter's spread, built into the quoted price; network fees | The swap output |
| Liquidity provider | Network fees | 50% of positive excess above each book's high-water mark, plus the hold return of the vault's assets |
| Quoter | Network fees for every quote; first loss on its book | 40% of positive excess, credited to its bond |
| Protocol | — | 10% of positive excess, which buys $OPENPROP and burns it |
Network fees are Solana's: a base fee per signature plus a priority fee set by the transaction builder, paid in SOL by whoever signs. Opening a token account for the first time takes its rent deposit, which stays in that account and is yours.
The clock
| Period | Length |
|---|---|
| Slot | About 200 ms |
| Checkpoint | About every 1,500 slots, about 5 minutes |
| Epoch | 432,000 slots, about 24 hours |
At each checkpoint the program marks every book at the reference price, records its excess for scoring and updates its loss windows. At the end of each epoch it settles every book, pays the split, serves withdrawal requests and sets the next epoch's allocations.
Excess over a passive hold
A book starts each epoch with an allocation of SOL and USDC . At the reference price , its excess is what it holds now against what the starting inventory would be worth if left alone:
SOL moving up or down changes both terms equally, so price moves cancel out. What remains is what the quoting added: spread captured, inventory managed well, or adverse fills taken.
The high-water mark
Each book keeps a high-water mark of its cumulative excess. Only excess above the mark is shared. A book that loses 1,000 USDC and then gains 1,500 USDC pays the split on 500, because the first 1,000 only recovered ground.
A worked epoch
Two books finish an epoch. Book A gained 10,000 USDC of excess and was at its mark; book B lost 3,000 USDC and its quoter's bond is 20,000 USDC.
| Book A | Book B | |
|---|---|---|
| Excess this epoch | +10,000 USDC | −3,000 USDC |
| To the vault (LPs) | 5,000 | — |
| To the quoter's bond | 4,000 | −3,000 charged to the bond |
| To the protocol | 1,000 | — |
| Effect on LPs | +5,000 | 0 — the bond covered it |
Book B's high-water mark now sits 3,000 above its cumulative excess; it pays no split until it earns that back.
Had book B lost more than its bond and unpaid profit credit, only the remainder would reach the vault.
When things are paid
- The vault's 50% stays in the vault at settlement, so every OPLP share is worth more from that moment.
- The quoter's 40% is credited to its bond and matures in tranches before it can be unbonded. Until then it still counts as first-loss capital.
- The protocol's 10% is paid in USDC to the protocol's own account in the program. Its only way out is one transaction that swaps it for $OPENPROP through Jupiter and burns what it bought. See $OPENPROP.
If settlement finds a book short of free USDC to pay a credit, the credit stays recorded as owed and is paid at a later settlement; it is never silently dropped.
Withdrawals and settlement
A withdrawal request burns your liquid shares into pending ones. The settlement of that epoch reserves your share of the vault's SOL and USDC at the settled value, and you claim it from the next epoch. Reserved assets no longer trade, so the claim pays exactly what settlement reserved.