Common Questions
Everything we get asked about funding arbitrage, costs, the backtester, and how ORBIT works under the hood.
Strategy basics
How funding arbitrage works at a high level.
Funding rate arbitrage means opening a LONG position on an exchange with negative (or low) funding rates and a SHORT position on an exchange with high positive funding rates. The price exposures cancel, leaving you to collect the spread between the two funding rates — a delta-neutral yield strategy.
Spread = Short-leg APR − Long-leg APR. Positive spread means the short leg earns more funding than the long leg pays, creating positive expected PnL before costs. We annualize each leg by multiplying its per-interval rate by intervals/year (8760 for 1h funding, 2190 for 4h, 1095 for 8h).
Price arbitrage captures temporary mark-price differences between two venues quoting the same asset. You hold minutes-to-hours and exit when prices converge. Funding arbitrage instead captures the funding-rate gap with hold periods of hours-to-weeks. Same trade structure (long one venue, short another), completely different economic logic.
Costs & execution
What you pay and how we model it.
Execution costs include maker/taker fees (paid at entry and exit on both legs) and market impact (slippage from book depth). ORBIT automatically fetches live orderbook data from each venue to estimate real round-trip slippage for your exact position size — not hand-waved bps.
The backtester uses real historical funding settlements from each exchange (up to 90 days of depth). Execution costs use real maker/taker fee schedules per venue. Slippage is estimated from the order-book depth at calculation time. For virtual-liquidity DEXs without public order books (Reya, Variational, Hibachi) slippage shows "not modeled" — flag accordingly.
Headline APR is the annualized snapshot at this exact moment. Realized return over a 7- or 30-day hold is closer to the median rate over the period (rates spike and revert). After amortizing round-trip fees (typically 4-12 bps) and slippage, expect to keep roughly 50-70% of the headline number on a typical hold. Read our APR math guide in the blog.
Data & coverage
What exchanges we track and how often.
Currently 30+ CEXs and DEXs including Binance, Bybit, OKX, Hyperliquid, dYdX, Paradex, Lighter, Backpack, Aster, Hibachi, edgeX, Variational, NADO, Reya, Pacifica, Orderly, and HIP-3 sub-DEXs (dreamcash, HyENA, trade[XYZ], Felix, Kinetiq, Paragon, Ventuals). New venues onboard regularly.
Live funding rates refresh every 60 seconds. Tier A assets (top 50 by OI) refresh every 60s, Tier B (next 250) every 5 min, Tier C (long tail) every 15 min. Historical settlements pull on a per-funding-interval basis from exchange APIs. Order-book snapshots refresh every 30 seconds for top markets.
Default view shows 200+ crypto assets across major and long-tail markets. Switch the class filter to TradFi to see synthetic equity indices, single stocks, commodities (gold, oil, copper), and forex — most are quoted on Hyperliquid HIP-3 sub-DEXs.
Trust & safety
How we operate and what we never touch.
ORBIT is a read-only data/analytics platform. We do not custody funds and cannot execute trades on your behalf. All positions are opened directly on the exchange of your choice using your wallet or account. We have no access to your keys, balances, or order flow.
No. Most exchanges have affiliate / referral programs that we use to earn revenue. If you sign up via one of our partner links you get a fee discount and we get a small commission from the exchange — never deducted from your funds. You can also trade without using any of our links; the data is the same.
No. Everything on ORBIT is analytics and educational content. We make no warranty about historical funding rates predicting future rates, and we are not responsible for trading losses. Funding arbitrage carries real risks (liquidation, exchange outages, basis blowouts) — read our risk-management guide in the blog before deploying capital.
Still have questions?
Long-form guides on math, sizing, and venue specifics live in the blog. For anything else, reach out — we respond.