Pika is a perpetual swap exchange native to Optimism that is built on the concept of a virtual AMM (vAMM).
Similar to Perpetual's vAMM model, Pika uses virtual liquidity for each trading pair to support the same level of liquidity as top perpetual exchanges. Pika uses a hybrid price feed of Chainlink oracles with dynamic adjustments and a fast oracle from top exchanges to price the assets. The protocol supports all trading pairs that have a Chainlink oracle. Whenever an order is submitted, the fast oracle will first fetch the median price from leading volume exchanges and update the mark price before executing the order. This serves to prevent the oracle frontrunning as the price is determined only after the order is submitted. The Chainlink oracle is used with a bid/ask spread whenever the fast oracle is not updating or its price deviates more than 2% from Chainlink. Pika has a funding mechanism to balance the long and shorts for each trading pair. The liquidity vault always serves as the counterparty so it is constantly earning funding fees. Funding is paid or received when traders close their positions. Users who stake in the liquidity vault take the opposite position of all traders on the platform. The vault pays when traders profit and receives when traders lose. To protect the vault from highly volatile conditions, the vault has a max exposure parameter for each trading pair. When this threshold is reached, traders cannot open any additional positions that increase the vault's exposure, but can open positions in the opposite direction that decreases the vault's exposure.
The protocol charges a small execution fee (paid to keepers who are responsible for executing submitted orders with latest oracle update) and a trading fee of 0.1% for each trade (forex pairs have a 0.03% fee because of its lower volatility). The trading fee is distributed 50% to liquidity providers (LPs), 20% to be used as protocol-owned liquidity (POL), and 30% to protocol revenue. Pika also charges a small amount of interest based on how long the trader's position has been open.
You can earn protocol fees and liquidation profits by providing liquidity on Pika. You can also use the platform as a trader to place directional bets on assets or hedge your existing positions.