Up to about 37x leverage that opens in one transaction and ends on a date, not on a dip. No price liquidation. No margin calls. Costs you know before you click.
Leverage in DeFi has a reputation problem. It is earned.
On most venues the story goes the same way. You open a leveraged position. The market twitches. A price feed crosses your liquidation line, a bot sells your collateral at a discount, and you are left with nothing. It does not matter if the price comes back five minutes later.
The whole model turns on one mechanic: price-based liquidation. That mechanic turns short-lived noise into permanent losses.
What if leverage did not work that way? What if a dip could not close your position, and the thing that ends it is a date you chose?
That is what BASIS built. Leverage on BASIS runs up to about 37x, depending on the token and the size of the buy. It opens in one transaction and settles by date, with no price liquidation.
How Traditional Leverage Gets You Killed
Take a standard 10x long on ETH:
- You deposit $100 as collateral
- The platform lends you $900
- You now hold $1,000 of ETH exposure
- If ETH drops about 10%, your position is worth about $900, which is the platform's loan
- The platform liquidates you to get its money back
- You lose your $100
- A liquidation bot takes a fee for pulling the trigger
The core problem: your liquidation price is tied to a volatile market price. If ETH drops 10%, you are out. If it bounces 20% five minutes later, you are still out.
That design causes three familiar problems.
Liquidation cascades. Prices drop, leveraged positions get liquidated, the liquidations add selling, prices drop further, more positions get liquidated. The system amplifies the crash.
Price manipulation. A brief, artificial move in a price feed can liquidate positions that were healthy a block earlier. Whoever caused the move buys the collateral at a discount.
Constant monitoring. Leveraged traders, human or agent, have to watch positions around the clock. A short outage during a spike can wipe you out.
The BASIS Approach: Leverage That Ends on a Date
Every token on BASIS belongs to a family chosen at launch and fixed forever. On Stable+, the price can only hold or rise in its base asset. Utility+, Floor+, Meme+ and Yolo+ move both ways, over a floor that only rises. That floor is a pricing rule of the token itself.
BASIS leverage is built around that floor rather than around the latest price print. When you open a position:
- You pick a token, an amount in its base asset (USDG for most tokens), and how long the position should run
- The position opens in one transaction
- It runs until its date, and a dip in between does not close it
- Before the date, you close it, close part of it, or extend it
If you let the date pass, after expiry a keeper closes the loan: the collateral that covers the debt is taken to repay it, 10% of the rest is the liquidation fee, and you claim the remainder. Claim within 365 days of the liquidation; after that the leftover may no longer be claimable. You never owe more than your collateral.
The size, the fees and the date are known before you open. Fees apply on each buy inside the position, and they are disclosed up front.
How ~37x Works
The maximum is not one fixed number for every token. It depends on the family, on where the token is in its life, and on the size of your buy. There is no fixed cap in the contract: a position just has to come out at more than 2x.
On Stable+, up to about 37x is available at any point in the token's life. The price only holds or rises in its base asset, so the same room is on offer on day one and on day five hundred. A large buy moves the price more, so it gets less leverage than a modest one.
On the other five families (Utility+, Floor+, Meme+, Yolo+ and Yolo), leverage is highest at launch and eases as the price rises. A token that has run a long way offers less than one that has just launched.
That is a sensible shape. Leverage is most generous when a token has the least room to fall, and it tightens by itself as a token runs and the room for a pullback grows. Nobody has to step in and change a setting. The exact figure for any token is shown before you open.
The Loan Duration Component
On BASIS, price does not end a leveraged position. The date does, and you choose the date.
Costs:
- 2% to open
- 0.005% a day for the duration
- 30-day position: 2.15% in total
- 90-day position: 2.45% in total
- 365-day position: 3.825% in total
- Extending: 0.005% a day
- Closing: 3% of the profit, so a close with no profit costs nothing extra
- The token's trading fee on each buy inside the position: the 0.60% base fee, with no referral discount, plus the token's own fees
The cost is fixed when you open. Funding on perpetual futures floats, can spike in volatile markets, and you only find out what you paid after you have paid it.
Managing time is simple for agents. A scheduled job checks the expiry dates on open positions and extends or closes anything that is close. Every leverage action is available through the BASIS MCP server and the TypeScript and Python SDKs, so an agent can run this on its own. No price feeds to watch. No volatility model. No race against liquidation bots. A calendar.
Position Splitting: Choosing Your Own Exposure
Leverage is per position. You decide how much of your capital to put into leverage and how much to hold as plain spot tokens.
A smaller leveraged slice next to a larger spot holding gives a gentler overall exposure. Everything in leverage gives the full size. Anything in between is up to you.
Spot tokens have a second use. In any family with a floor, you can borrow the full floor value against them, and on Stable+ the full value, before fees. Leverage and loans are separate tools for separate jobs, covered below.
Partial Closes: Taking Profit Without Closing
Many venues make you close the whole position or nothing. BASIS lets you close part of a leveraged position and keep the rest running.
That supports the exits traders actually use:
- Ladder out: take a slice off at each profit target
- Recover your stake: close enough after a strong run to get your original money back, and let the rest ride
- Rebalance: move part of a leveraged position into spot, where it can back a loan
Why Agents and Traders Like This
No liquidation monitoring
Traditional leverage means watching price feeds, gas costs and liquidation queues, and modelling dozens of variables in real time. On BASIS, you track a date.
Predictable costs
Opening, holding and extending fees are known before you open. No funding surprises. No floating rate. No "your position was liquidated because the network was congested during a crash."
Preview before execution
You see the position size, the fees and the date before committing. An agent can price any position exactly before it opens one.
Agent access as standard
Every action on BASIS is open to AI agents, with ERC-8004 on-chain agent IDs, an agents section in The Reef forum and llms.txt alongside the MCP server and SDKs. Leverage that settles by date is far easier for an automated system to run safely than leverage that can be closed by a wick at 3am.
Comparing Leverage Models
| Feature | Typical price-liquidation venue | BASIS leverage |
|---|---|---|
| Max leverage | Often higher | Up to about 37x |
| What ends a position | Price crossing a liquidation line | The date you set |
| Can a wick close you out | Yes | No |
| Holding cost | Floats, can spike | Fixed when you open: 2% + 0.005%/day |
| Can you owe more than your collateral | Depends on the venue | No |
| Partial close | Varies | Yes |
| Round-the-clock price watching | Needed | Not needed: watch the date |
The maximum on BASIS is lower than some venues offer, and that is deliberate. Very high leverage with price liquidation mostly converts noise into losses. Up to about 37x with no price liquidation and fixed costs is a tool you can plan around.
Leverage or a Loan?
BASIS gives you two ways to get more out of a token, and they do different jobs.
Leverage is one transaction. It gives you a larger exposure to the token's price, runs to a date you choose, and costs 3% of the profit when you close.
A loan keeps your exposure where it is and gives you cash. You hold the tokens, borrow up to their full floor value (the full value on Stable+) in the base asset, and use that money for anything: another token, a prediction market, a vault. Each loan is its own position with its own date, so one expiring does not touch the others.
Pick by goal. Want more exposure to one token? Use leverage. Want liquidity while you keep holding? Take a loan.
What Still Matters
No price liquidation does not mean no loss. On the floor families the price can fall toward the floor, and a leveraged position falls with it. Fees are paid on opening and on each buy inside the position, and they are spent whether or not the trade works. A rising floor is a pricing rule, not a promise of profit. Price cannot liquidate you; expiry, fees, a fall above the floor and contract risk remain. Execution risk applies too. Reviewed by two leading AI models, run independently (the latest Claude Opus and GPT), plus 1,450+ tests. A Hashlock audit is engaged, and its report will be published when complete. Bug bounty open.
The Bottom Line
Leverage does not have to be a trap. It does not need liquidation bots and cascading crashes. It does not need you awake at 3am hoping the market does not wick 10% against you.
When a position ends on a date rather than a dip, the risk model changes. A crash does not close you out. A manipulated price print does not close you out. Selling by others does not trigger a cascade through your position.
What is left to manage is the date, the fees and the trade itself, and all three are known before you click.
Up to about 37x. No price liquidation. Fixed costs. A preview before every position. Leverage that works for autonomous systems, and for any trader tired of being liquidated by an overnight wick.
BASIS leverage: up to about 37x on Robinhood Chain, in USDG. Opens in one transaction, ends on a date, not on a dip. launchonbasis.com
Basis Team
Published Mar 25, 2026