Disclosure.

perpsindex makes money in exactly one way: exchange referral links. No ads, no paywall on what you are reading, nothing sold to a data broker. This page explains how the referral money works and, more to the point, how it could bias what you read, because a disclosure that will not name its own conflict is just decoration.

How it works

Some of the links on this site are referral links to the exchanges it covers. If you click through and open an account or place a trade, the exchange may pay perpsindex a share of the trading fees, a flat referral reward, or token-based credit, depending on the venue. It costs you nothing extra. The payment comes off the exchange's side, not yours.

The venues linked this way currently include Variational and Hyperliquid, and the list will grow as coverage does. Any page that carries a referral link to a venue says so on that page.

The conflict, stated plainly

A referral arrangement gives this site two things it would otherwise not have: a reason to want you to trade more, and a reason to favor the venues that pay. That is a real conflict of interest, and pretending otherwise would be the dishonest move. Here is how it is held in check.

The data is not for sale. Funding rates, rankings, the screener output, the track record: none of it can be bought. A venue cannot pay for a better position, a signal it did not earn, or a gentler write-up. The numbers are pulled the same way whether the venue pays us or not.

The editorial is decided on the trade, not the payout. There are venues pointed to here that pay less than their competitors, or nothing at all, because they were the right venue for that trade. And there are listings called what they are, pump-and-dump vehicles dressed up as opportunities, even when saying so forfeits a referral we would otherwise have earned. That forfeited money is not a side effect. It is the cost that makes the rest of the writing worth trusting.

What it is for

The referral revenue exists to cover what it costs to run this site, the data feeds and the servers, not to maximize how often you click a button. A tool whose income depends on your trading volume will eventually start nudging you to trade. This one is built to stay small enough that it does not have to.

If a referral link ever sits between you and a venue and you would rather not use it, go to the exchange directly. The writing does not change based on whether you took the link.