Skew

Solana OTC clearing infrastructure for crypto options

Skew is an on-chain clearing layer for RFQ options, portfolio margin, collateral custody, settlement, and builder distribution. The protocol is not a dealer, matching engine, or managed vault. It provides deterministic Solana program state, typed APIs, and an operating terminal for desks and builders.

Terminal · Docs · SDK · MCP · Relay · Program

Operating Model

Institutional OTC infrastructure separates negotiation, risk, clearing, and settlement. Skew keeps the same separation on Solana:

This is private pre-trade RFQ and public post-trade clearing. Quote negotiation can happen off-chain; collateral movement, option minting, fee routing, and settlement land as auditable Solana transactions.

Live Surfaces

Launch panel: BTC, ETH, SOL, XRP, HYPE. Linear settlement is USDC. Physical SOL-family settlement is constrained to SOL inverse wSOL/jitoSOL lanes.

Auction RFQ v1 escrow is USDC/stable-only. wSOL and jitoSOL are policy-gated CM collateral and Instant RFQ physical-settlement rails for SOL inverse fills; they are not generic cross-asset PM collateral.

Execution Lanes

Skew exposes three distinct trade paths. They are deliberately not collapsed into one order-book abstraction.

There is no take_best_quote instruction in the current IDL. Clients that need 1-click execution should use Instant RFQ; clients that need price discovery should use Auction RFQ and finalize after the auction window.

Risk And Custody

• Portfolio margin: complete-position registry walks, tiered IM, held-long tracking, PM lock rebalance, and variation-margin freshness checks.
• Collateral policy: live custody paths are policy-gated. USDC is the linear PM rail; wSOL/jitoSOL are restricted physical collateral rails.
• Oracle policy: settlement uses canonical Pyth feeds. The IV oracle and pricing service are advisory/risk surfaces, not settlement sources.
• Liquidation: keepers compute priority off-chain; on-chain handlers verify improvement, close factors, waterfall movement, and holder-claim state.
• Fees: protocol fee accumulators are per settlement mint. Builder-routed flows share 25% of the effective taker fee with the registered builder.
• Insurance fund: IF replenish is SKEW_AUTHORITY-keeper gated and capped per call. Governance migration is documented before mainnet.

Skew is devnet software until external audit is complete. The codebase is built to expose invariants clearly before mainnet rather than to hide operational assumptions behind UI copy.

Developer Entry Points

SDK

pnpm add @skew-labs/sdk @solana/web3.js @coral-xyz/anchor @solana/spl-token

import { SkewClient } from "@skew-labs/sdk";
import idl from "@skew-labs/sdk/idl/skew_master.json" assert { type: "json" };
import { Program } from "@coral-xyz/anchor";

const skew = SkewClient.fromProgram(
  connection,
  wallet,
  new Program(idl as any, provider),
);

The SDK includes typed methods for clearing members, option lifecycle, RFQ auctions, Instant RFQ relay helpers, settlement, liquidations, fee routing, builder codes, series listings, collateral vaults, and read snapshots.

MCP

npx @skew-labs/mcp

Core profile is read-only: discovery, market data, pricing, margin breakdowns, fee estimates, collateral policy, option/RFQ/CM reads. Trading, RFQ, advanced, and governance write surfaces are explicit opt-ins via SKEW_MCP_PROFILE; write tools are not listed unless a keypair is configured.

API

The public web/API layer mirrors terminal data:

• /api/rfq-auctions
• /api/rfq-metrics
• /api/surface
• /api/portfolio-margin
• /api/price
• /api/fill-tape
• /api/options

Every trading API route is rate-limited and returns provenance where the data can come from more than one path, such as indexer vs on-chain snapshot.

Repository Layout

skew/
├─ skew-master/    Anchor program
├─ skew-sdk/       npm SDK
├─ skew-mcp/       MCP server for agents
├─ skew-relay/     Instant RFQ websocket relay
├─ skew-pricing/   fair value, IV, margin preview service
├─ skew-web/       terminal, docs, public API routes
├─ skew-indexer/   Helius webhook and database projections
├─ skew-e2e/       anchor/browser integration tests
└─ scripts/        deploy, CU profiling, ops tooling

Quick Start

git clone https://github.com/skew-labs/skew
cd skew/skew
corepack pnpm install
corepack pnpm --filter @skew-labs/sdk build
corepack pnpm --filter @skew/web dev

For the Anchor program:

cd skew
anchor build

For devnet deployment and CU profiling:

corepack pnpm deploy:devnet
corepack pnpm profile:cu

Documentation

• Architecture
• RFQ
• Relay
• SDK
• MCP
• Fees
• Margin
• Liquidation
• Oracle

Design References

Skew's public surface follows a financial-infrastructure pattern rather than a consumer exchange pattern: network access and market connectivity, front-to-back risk/operations, explicit OTC trade capture, and transparent clearing output. The design review for this README used public material from Trayport, Orchestrade, CME ClearPort, and Paradigm as reference points for tone and information architecture.

License

MIT.