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The Ascend Spot DEX is a verifiable, orderbook-based spot market for trading between supported digital assets, and a strong standalone product in its own right: Midnight’s first orderbook Spot DEX implementation. It complements Ascend’s core event perpetuals product (What is Ascend) by providing non-expiring, spot liquidity for users who want to swap, hedge, or rebalance collateral without opening a probability-priced perpetual position.

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What the Spot DEX is

  • CLOB (central limit order book) spot trading: peer-to-peer price discovery, not a bonding-curve AMM.
  • Direct asset exchange: a base is exchanged for a quote (e.g. BASE/QUOTE) at discrete prices, with partial fills and price–time priority on the book.
  • Complementary to perpetuals: spot balances and flows can be used to manage collateral and exposure around outcome markets without conflating spot fills with probability PnL.

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How Spot Trading Works

  1. Choose a spot pairSelect a market listed as BASE/QUOTE (e.g. stable vs native asset, or other supported pairs as announced).
  2. Place an orderUse limit orders (rest on the book at a price and size) or market orders (execute against the best available liquidity). Minimum size, tick size, and pair status follow each market’s specification.
  3. MatchingThe matching engine pairs compatible bids and offers per CLOB rules. Large orders can walk the book and receive a volume-weighted average price across multiple levels.
  4. Settlement On success, balances for the two legs update; fees are applied per the fee schedule.

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Order types (spot)

TypeBehavior
LimitRests on the book until filled, cancelled, or expired.
MarketFills immediately against the opposite side, subject to available depth and any max-slippage or notional caps configured in the app.

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Spot vs event perpetuals

Spot DEXEvent perpetuals
Price objectAsset vs asset (e.g. BASE in QUOTE)Outcomeprobability (0–100%) per Outcome Probabilities
PositionSpotbalances; no per-market “LONG/SHORT on %”LONG/SHORT on a probability
LeverageUnlevered spotLeverage and margin per market rules; see Margin Model
SettlementTrade settlement (fills and fees)Event resolution and Settlement & Resolution for outcome markets
Use spot to move value between assets; use perpetuals to trade belief about future probabilities with the perpetual structure (Perpetual Market Structure).

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Multi-chain and verification

  • Wallets and signing: as on the rest of Ascend, actions use ecosystem-native credentials (Cardano, EVM, or Solana) and are only executed when the protocol’s rules pass validation.
  • Canonical execution: the Matching, Account, and related engines maintain a single coherent trading and fund state, with ZK and commitment guarantees aligned to Midnight where specified for the deployment.