House pool
The house pool is every trader's counterparty. It holds USDC. When a trader loses, the loss goes to the pool. When a trader wins, the pool pays the profit.
What it holds
The pool's cash is USDC that can pay winners.
- Losses add cash. A losing trade's loss joins pool cash, less the 2% loss fee.
- Wins take cash. A winning close is paid from pool cash.
- Fees never join the pool. Fees Parchment keeps and the loss fee go to stakers and the treasury, not to pool cash. See Where fees go.
- Parchment's admin can also deposit cash into the pool.
On a winning close, your margin goes back to your free balance right away, even when the profit has to wait.
What it owes
The pool's reserve (R in the app) is what it may owe winners:
| Part | What it is |
|---|---|
| Queued payouts | Profits already owed to winners in the payout queue |
| Open profits | The profit of every open winning position at current prices |
| Stress cushion | A margin of safety set per market, sized from that market's open interest |
Losing positions never offset winning ones in the reserve. Open profits are rounded up, so the reserve never understates what is owed.
Coverage
Coverage = pool cash ÷ reserve.
At 100%, the pool holds exactly what it may owe. Below 100%, it holds less.
Coverage does two things:
- It sets the stakers' share of fees. See the table in Staking.
- It decides when surplus is swept. See Surplus sweep.
When the pool cannot pay
A winning close is paid right away only if the payout queue is empty and pool cash covers the profit. Otherwise the profit joins the payout queue and is paid, oldest first, as losses bring in cash. See Payout queue.
Where fees go
Fees Parchment keeps, after referral shares, and the 2% loss fee are split between stakers and the treasury. The split follows coverage at that moment: the higher the coverage, the larger the stakers' share. See Staking.
When pool cash is above the sweep target and the queue is empty, part of the excess is also swept out of the pool to stakers, the treasury and growth. See Surplus sweep.
The House pool page
The app's House pool page shows the pool live.
Pool now
- Pool cash and Reserve R.
- Payout queue: the number of queued claims, or empty.
- Retained fees now go to: the current stakers and treasury split, also drawn as a bar.
- Sweepable surplus: an estimate of what the next sweep would move, and Last surplus sweep.
- Growth fund and Markets with open interest.
- Coverage gauge: coverage on a dial from 0% to 300%, marked at the two ends of the fee-split curve and at the sweep floor.
House exposure. For each market, the house's net side: it is short what traders are long, and long what they are short. A Net row sums every market.
House finances. House funds (pool cash), Open trader gains (winning positions only), Coverage and Queue debt.
Cash against what the pool may owe. A waterfall that starts at pool cash and subtracts each part of the reserve (queued winnings, open winning PnL and stress) down to what is left after R. It also shows the pool cash above which surplus sweeps start.
Your share. The pool has no deposit shares. Your share is your PARCHMENT stake, which earns the stakers' cut of fees: what you have staked, your share of all staked PARCHMENT, your claimable USDC, and what all stakers earned in 30 days. Stake from the token page.
Charts. Pool fees, Pool trading PnL, Market capacity and Recent pool movements, then How the pool works, the rules above in short.
Advanced. Three actions Parchment's keeper runs automatically. Anyone can run them, and they pay the caller nothing:
| Action | What it does |
|---|---|
| Pay queued winners | Pays queued winnings from pool cash to winners' accounts, oldest first |
| Move pool surplus | Runs the surplus sweep |
| Send fees to stakers | Moves collected staker fees into the staking reward stream |
Each button is disabled with its reason when the action cannot run.