Deposits
How money gets in and out, and why the demo terminal needs none of it.
KestrelPerps runs two separate systems and they fund themselves in completely different ways. The demo terminal at /demo issues you a balance and never touches real collateral. Real trading at /trade is non-custodial and needs USD-denominated collateral sitting in your trading account before an order can be placed. Read the section that applies to you. They do not share a balance.
Demo needs no deposit
There is nothing to fund. The first time a wallet connects to the demo terminal, that wallet is credited with 10,000 demo USD. You do not sign a transaction, you do not pay gas, and you do not send anything anywhere. Connecting is an identity check, not a payment.
Demo balance is denominated in USD and exists only in our records. It cannot be withdrawn, transferred to another wallet, sold, or redeemed. It has no cash value. Positions opened against it are priced from live on-chain pool data refreshed roughly every 20 seconds, so the prices are real even though the money is not.
Demo economics are computed server-side. Your client sends four fields: market, side, margin, leverage. Entry price, position size, fees and the liquidation price are all derived on our side from the live price, so a demo balance cannot be inflated by editing a request.
Demo top-ups
If you trade the starting 10,000 down and want to keep going, you can buy more demo balance. This is a real on-chain ETH payment on Robinhood Chain, and it is worth being blunt about what it buys: demo USD and nothing else. The rate is 2,500,000 demo USD per ETH.
| You pay (ETH) | You receive (demo USD) |
|---|---|
| 0.002 | 5,000 |
| 0.005 | 12,500 |
| 0.01 | 25,000 |
| 0.02 | 50,000 |
Payments go to the treasury address 0x130dF20141beB7DB58E8bc8481755328fd3A093b on Robinhood Chain, chain ID 4663 (hex 0x1237). Gas is paid in ETH. You can confirm any payment yourself on the explorer at robinhoodchain.blockscout.com.
The same applies to opening a new demo market. Anyone can list an asset that does not have a demo market yet for a real on-chain fee of 0.01 ETH. That fee creates a market, it does not create balance.
Funding a real trading account
Real trading needs USD-denominated collateral in your trading account. Getting it there is several steps, and it is honest to say so up front: this is not a one-click deposit.
Robinhood Chain is not a supported deposit route directly. Collateral arrives via a bridge from a supported network, which means the funds have to travel before they can be traded. In practice:
- Hold USD-denominated collateral on a network that is supported as a deposit route.
- Bridge it across. Bridges take time, charge a fee, and have their own minimums.
- Wait for the bridge to confirm on the destination side.
- Deposit the bridged balance into the trading account so it counts as usable collateral.
- Only then can an order be placed against it.
None of this applies to the demo terminal. If you are here to learn the mechanics of leverage and liquidation, the demo is the cheaper place to do it.
Withdrawal
Withdrawal requires a signature from your own wallet. Every time. There is no version of the withdrawal flow that runs without it, and there is no support process by which we move your funds for you. We never hold them.
The trading session key, described on the security page, cannot withdraw. It can place, modify and close orders. It cannot sign a withdrawal and it cannot send funds to another address. That boundary is enforced by the authorisation you signed, not by our interface.
| Action | Session key | Your wallet |
|---|---|---|
| Place, modify, close orders | Yes | Yes |
| Withdraw collateral | No | Yes |
| Send funds to another address | No | Yes |
| Revoke the session key | No | Yes |
What the two systems cost you
| Demo | Real | |
|---|---|---|
| Opening balance | 10,000 demo USD, issued on first connect | None. You fund it yourself |
| Deposit route | Not required | Bridge from a supported network, several steps |
| Top-up | Optional ETH purchase of demo USD, no cash value | Deposit of real collateral |
| Withdrawal | Not possible, ever | Your wallet signature only |
| Funding payments | Not charged | Charged and received periodically between traders |
| Fee model | 0.06% taker on notional, open and close | 0.01% of routed volume to us |
Our fee on routed real volume is 1 basis point, 0.01%. The protocol ceiling is 0.1% and we sit at a tenth of it. You approve a 0.05% maximum once, which leaves headroom so the approval does not have to be repeated. Funding payments on real positions move between traders and are not paid to us.
Before you send anything
- Confirm the chain. Robinhood Chain is chain ID 4663, RPC https://rpc.mainnet.chain.robinhood.com.
- Confirm the address. For demo top-ups it is 0x130dF20141beB7DB58E8bc8481755328fd3A093b.
- Keep ETH for gas. Gas on Robinhood Chain is paid in ETH, including on the top-up transaction itself.
- Test small first on any real bridge route.
- Assume a demo top-up is unrecoverable, because it is.
Holding PERPS does not change any of this. Tiers read your on-chain balance and adjust leverage headroom and reward multipliers. They do not fund your account, discount a bridge, or create a withdrawal path. Details are on the token page.