Vision & Positioning
What Phasis is, why it exists, and who it is built for.
What is Phasis?
Phasis is a Deribit-grade options exchange running fully on-chain on the Sui blockchain. It combines a real central-limit orderbook (CLOB), portfolio-level margin, and self-custody in a single composable protocol — no bridges, no wrapped assets, no centralized matching engine.
Every order, fill, position, and settlement happens on-chain in a user-owned Account object. There is no custodian.
Why it matters
Options are the largest unfilled primitive in Sui DeFi. Spot trading, perpetuals, and lending are all live, but listed options — the instrument that lets traders express directional views, hedge delta, and trade volatility itself — do not exist on Sui at any professional quality. Off-chain options venues transact roughly $1–2 trillion per year in notional. On-chain participation is under 1% of that, held back primarily by capital inefficiency: per-position margin requirements make spreads and multi-leg strategies uneconomical for serious traders.
Phasis addresses this directly with a portfolio margin model based on an N-point Black–Scholes stress grid. Instead of locking margin against each leg in isolation, the protocol measures the net worst-case loss across a range of price and volatility scenarios and locks only that. Spread traders and market makers can participate without tying up multiples of their real risk.
How it compares
| Venue | Type | Chain | Self-custody | CLOB | Portfolio margin |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Deribit | CEX | Off-chain | No | Yes | Yes |
| Derive (Lyra) | DEX | Optimism | Yes | Yes | Partial |
| Dopex / Premia | DEX | Ethereum | Yes | AMM | No |
| Aevo | Hybrid | Off-chain matching | No | Yes | Partial |
| Phasis | DEX | Sui | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Phasis is not a binary options primitive. It is a full listed-options exchange that happens to run entirely on-chain.
Who is Phasis for?
Volatility traders and quant funds are the primary audience. If you trade on Deribit today, Phasis exposes the same product (European-style options, strike/expiry grid) with the same margin model semantics, but with on-chain settlement and self-custody.
Market makers benefit from Sui's sub-second finality and predictable gas costs, which make two-sided quoting across multiple series economically viable — something impossible on Ethereum at current block times and fee levels.
Structured product builders can compose on top of Phasis positions to issue covered-call vaults, cash-secured puts, or principal-protected notes without any off-chain dependency.
Retail directional traders can buy calls and puts for hedging or leveraged exposure with transparent, auditable pricing.
Where to go next
- Protocol overview — registry, accounts, orderbook, margin engine
- Trading guide — place your first trade
- Why Sui — technical reasons for the chain choice