Glossary
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| NDF | Non-deliverable forward. The instrument. Cash-settled. No currency is delivered. |
| Deliverable forward (DF) | A partner's product, offered to its own customer: a CRX NDF (the locked rate) plus the partner's own spot leg. |
| CRX Network | The smart contracts that hold collateral, open positions atomically, and close them when risk demands it. The trade faces the network's net-0 book. |
| Risk engine | The smart contracts in their risk role: they lock collateral on both sides, keep the book verifiably net-0, and manage over-risk by closing positions. |
| Net-0 | Every position carries its long and its short inside one contract object. The book sums to zero. Verifiable on-chain at any time. |
| Counterparty | The other side of the trade. On CRX a position opens atomically with both sides inside one contract object, each side's collateral locked by the risk engine. |
| Taker | The firm locking a rate. The client side. |
| Maker | A liquidity partner quoting firm rates. Earns the spread. |
| RFQ | Request for quote. The taker's ask: pair, term, size, direction. |
| Locked rate | The rate the taker accepts. The payout is measured against it. |
| Mark | The on-chain rate the contracts read: the live Pyth spot, with an EMA fallback when its confidence band is too wide. Sizes margin and close-out. |
| EMA | Exponential moving average of the Pyth price: the fallback the oracle uses when the live spot's confidence band is too wide to trust. |
| Pyth | The oracle the price comes from. Never CRX, never a party. |
| Initial margin (IM) | The deposit posted up front. Off-chain against a registered dealer it is mandatory and SIMM-based. On CRX the contract charges a market-risk amount on every position. |
| SIMM | ISDA Standard Initial Margin Model. Sizes IM from a trade's risk sensitivities over a 10-day horizon. Symmetric. Both sides post by the same model. |
| FEU | Financial end user. ≥ $8B or < $8B average aggregate notional sets whether two-way IM applies against a registered dealer. |
| NFE | Non-financial (commercial) end user. Exempt from mandatory IM. |
| Independent amount (IA) | A bank's negotiated, credit-based collateral from a non-dealer: one-way, often below SIMM or zero. On-chain CRX replaces it with a market-risk charge on every position. |
| Locked initial margin | The buffer locked behind one position. Holds IM only, returned when the position ends. |
| Safe | A participant's free wallet inside CRX, shared across all relationships. Settlement gains land here. |
| Variation margin (VM) | The periodic clearing of profit and loss. Callable by either side. |
| Close-out | What happens when collateral is insufficient: the risk engine closes the positions at the oracle mark and pays the other side from the closed-out party's locked collateral. Full mechanics: Contract Documentation. |
| closeOnChain | Cooperative close-out. The two sides of a position can close the trade directly on-chain, without the operator. |
| ECP | Eligible contract participant. A qualified firm. No retail. |
| KYB | Know your business. The onboarding check. Mocked on the frontend in the MVP. |
| Operator | The governance multisig. Approves firms, sets parameters, can force-close on a legal order. |
| DCO | A derivatives clearing organization. CRX is not one. Collateral never crosses relationships and there is no shared loss fund. |
| ISDA | The standard master agreement framework for derivatives. One adherence per firm. |
| Base Sepolia | The network CRX's Sandbox runs on, operated by Coinbase. Chain id 84532. |
Deeper treatment of any term: The Margin Engine (~3 min) · The Risk Engine (~3 min).