The Complete Guide to Perpetual Trading on TON

What is a perpetual contract?

A perpetual future is an agreement that tracks the price of an asset — BTC, ETH, TON — without ever expiring. You never hold the underlying coin; you hold a position that gains or loses value as the mark price moves.

Because there is no settlement date, a perpetual needs a mechanism to stay anchored to spot. That mechanism is the funding rate, described below.

How leverage works

Leverage multiplies your exposure relative to the collateral you post. With 100 USDT of margin at 10x, you control a 1,000 USDT position: a 1% move in your favour returns roughly 10% on your margin, and a 1% move against you costs the same.

Leverage does not increase your expected profit — it compresses the distance to liquidation. On Tonly each market publishes its own maximum leverage (up to 125x); traders who last tend to use a fraction of it.

Isolated vs cross margin

Isolated margin ring-fences collateral per position. If that position is liquidated, only its margin is lost, and the rest of your balance is untouched. This is the safer default for directional bets.

Cross margin lets the whole available balance back the position. Liquidation happens later because more collateral absorbs drawdown, but a single bad trade can consume the account. Use it when you actively manage risk.

One-way vs hedge mode

In one-way mode a symbol holds a single net position: buying while short reduces or flips the position.

In hedge mode long and short can exist on the same symbol at the same time, each with its own entry, margin and PnL. This is how traders hold a core position while trading against it short term.

Funding rates explained

Every 8 hours open positions pay or receive funding based on the long/short imbalance of the market. When longs dominate, the rate is positive and longs pay shorts; when shorts dominate, it inverts.

Funding is what keeps the perpetual price tethered to spot without an expiry date. It is small per interval but compounds — on a position held for days it can outweigh the trading fee entirely.

Liquidation and maintenance margin

Each position has a maintenance margin requirement. When the mark price moves far enough that remaining margin falls to that level, the position is closed automatically at the liquidation price.

Two levers move liquidation further away: lower leverage, and adding margin. A stop-loss placed before liquidation is almost always cheaper than the liquidation itself, because it exits at your price rather than the threshold.

Fees, and why volume matters

Trades pay an opening and a closing fee on notional size, plus funding while the position is open. Tonly shows the exact commission on every position and in trade history, so the cost is never implicit.

VIP tiers reduce those fees as your 30-day volume grows, which matters most for short-term traders who turn over notional many times a day.

Why trade perpetuals on TON inside Telegram

Collateral arrives through TON Connect: you deposit USDT from a wallet you control, with no KYC form and no separate app to install. The terminal is a Telegram mini app, and the same account opens in the browser at tonly.app/app.

That removes the two slowest steps of traditional onboarding — account creation and identity review — while keeping deposits and withdrawals on-chain and auditable.

A first trade, step by step

1. Open the Tonly mini app in Telegram or the web terminal. 2. Go to Wallet → Deposit and send USDT over TON via TON Connect. 3. Pick a market such as TON/USDT. 4. Choose isolated margin and modest leverage. 5. Set collateral, then set take-profit and stop-loss before submitting. 6. Track the position, funding and commission in Portfolio.

Start with a size you would be comfortable losing entirely. Leverage rewards process, not conviction.

Risk disclosure

Leveraged trading can result in the total loss of deposited funds. Nothing here is investment advice. Trade only capital you can afford to lose, and size positions so a single liquidation cannot end your account.