⚠︎ Risk warning: leveraged derivatives on unregulated platforms — you can lose everything you deposit. Not investment advice.

Review · By Stephan Kulik · Updated 2026-10-05

Derive Review 2026: Options and Perps Settled on Ethereum

Facts verified against Derive's v3 documentation, its Terms of Use and its public instruments API on 2026-10-05. Where the docs disagree with each other or with the API, this page shows both rather than choosing.

What Derive is

"The Derive Exchange is a fully-featured, low-latency exchange that settles trades and manages risk on-chain via Zero Knowledge proofs." Margining, settlement and permissioning are compiled into a RISC-V binary and "proven off-chain with the SP1 Hypercube zkVM"; operations are "batched and submitted to Ethereum L1, where each batch is verified with a PLONK SNARK proof." Trading runs on an off-chain order book and an RFQ system. The protocol is governed by the Derive DAO; Lyra Technologies Corp runs the app, and its Terms are under Panama law.

Products: options first, then perps and spot

Derive lists European options "for any expiry and strike price in supported markets", settled to a 30-minute TWAP and capped at 400 days, plus perpetuals and spot. The public instruments endpoint returned 15 active perps on 2026-10-05: BTC, ETH, SOL, XRP, BNB, DOGE, ADA, LINK, HYPE, ZEC, LIT, PUMP, VVV, CC and tokenised gold (XAUT). The API's maximum leverage is 15.15x on BTC and ETH, 12.99x on SOL, 10x on six others and 6.67x or 5x on the rest. All 15 are in this site's market coverage join with the leverage the API publishes.

Every market and collateral sits in one of four risk universes: Prime (BTC, ETH), Hype, Alt and RWA (XAUT). Each has its own margin, lending pool and Security Module, and "nothing crosses the boundary": a surplus in a Prime subaccount does not support a deficit in an Alt one, even for the same trader.

Margin and marking

Each universe runs a standard margin manager and a portfolio margin manager. Portfolio margin nets risk within each currency from a grid of price and volatility scenarios, which suits hedged option books. Collateral can be USDC, other stablecoins, BTC and ETH families, DRV and, by universe, assets such as SOL or HYPE, at haircuts. A perp is marked to spot plus a 30-minute TWAP of its basis, clamped to within 6% of spot.

Fees at a glance

Perps: taker "$0.01 + 0.03% × notional", maker "0.01% × notional". Options: taker $0.5 plus the lesser of 0.03% of notional or 12.5% of the premium. Spot has no fees. RFQ trades get up to 100% off the cheaper legs of a multi-leg trade. The API carries the same perp rates on all 15 markets. The fees page has the detail, and the fee comparison places Derive beside every other venue.

Liquidation, the Security Module and socialized losses

An account below maintenance margin can be flagged by anyone, is charged a liquidation fee and goes to a solvent auction: bidders take part of the portfolio at a discount that widens from 2% to 20% over 100 seconds, then towards 100% over four hours. If the portfolio is insolvent, the universe's Security Module pays liquidators to take it. If that runs out, the shortfall is socialized: V3 "debits each solvent account in the affected universe once, up front, in proportion to its value". The docs disagree on the fee itself: the liquidation page sets it at 2% of the liquidatable fraction of the portfolio, while the fees page says "10% of the liquidated portfolio value".

When trades can be changed

The Terms say trades "are intended to be final and binding" once processed, but Lyra Technologies may restrict or disable app functions after a mistrade, pricing or oracle issue. Protocol-level actions, "including any cancellation, reversal, repricing", go through DAO governance and protocol processes and are "not controlled solely by us".

Risks

• Narrow perp shelf. 15 perps and leverage around 15x at most; Derive's depth is in options.
• Socialized losses. A drained Security Module is made up by debiting solvent accounts in that universe.
• Inconsistent docs. Funding caps differ between the funding page, the perpetuals parameter page and the API, and the liquidation fee is 2% on one page and 10% on another.
• Off-chain matching. Ordering happens in Lyra's order book; settlement rules are enforced by the proven protocol.
• Withdrawal limits. Payouts wait for batch verification on L1 and are subject to rate limits.
• Access. US persons, Australian tax residents and Ontario residents are excluded. Confirm eligibility first; this site does not cover access workarounds.

Who Derive suits — and who it doesn't

It suits a trader outside the restricted list who trades options, hedges with perps, and values settlement proven on Ethereum and portfolio margin. It does not suit a perp-only trader looking for many markets, high leverage or the lowest headline taker rate.

Getting started

• How to start on Derive — the restricted-person check, wallet login, deposits on Ethereum, choosing a risk universe, standard or portfolio margin, perps and options orders, and withdrawals that pay out on batch verification.
• Fees explained — perp, option and spot fees, RFQ multi-leg discounts, the box-spread fee, liquidation costs, funding caps by market and interest on borrowed USDC.

How Derive compares

FAQ