What is Carbon

Carbon is a non-custodial perpetual-futures platform built on the SYMM protocol. The Carbon Trading API is its programmatic surface: a REST API to trade, manage positions, and read market data without touching a smart contract directly. You keep custody of your funds.

The RFQ model

Most exchanges run a Central Limit Order Book (CLOB): your order matches against another anonymous order. Carbon is an RFQ (Request for Quote) venue:

1. You (the trader, PartyA) submit an intent — "go long 1 BTC at 10×."

2. A solver (the counterparty, PartyB) — a professional market maker — prices it and takes the other side.

3. The trade settles on-chain on Arbitrum, collateralized by both sides.

There's no shared book you match into; your counterparty is always a solver that quoted your trade. That's why the API has a solver parameter and /v1/solvers/... endpoints reporting each solver's liquidity and funding.

Where trades settle

Carbon settles on Arbitrum (chain ID 42161). Every account and market request carries a chainId identifying the deployment.

Two account modes: crypto and tradfi

Mode	Margin model	Positions
Crypto	Cross — one shared margin pool backs all positions	Cross only
TradFi	Isolated — each position has its own margin	Isolated only

This is a hard rule today: crypto mode allows only cross positions, tradfi mode allows only isolated positions. See Accounts & trading modes.

Markets

• Crypto perps — BTC, ETH, and the long tail of crypto assets.

• RWA (Real-World Assets) — tokenized equities and commodities, priced from traditional-market feeds with market-hours schedules, under /v1/rwa/....

What the API gives you

• Authenticate a wallet and mint scoped API keys.

• Manage accounts — subaccounts, balances, equity.

• Trade — open/close, add/remove margin, TP/SL, and batches.

• Read — live positions, order & funding history, prices, markets, solver data.