Introduction

Continuum is a Solana-native protocol for 24/7 synthetic exposure to real-world assets. Here’s the mental model.

Continuum is a Solana protocol for 24/7 synthetic exposure to real-world assets: stocks, indices, commodities and FX. You deposit collateral (cUSDC on devnet, USDC on mainnet) and receive paired long and short tokens priced from the asset’s NAV. You can trade either leg on Continuum’s own venues, hold it with no expiry, or redeem both legs together for collateral.

There is no funding rate, no liquidation and no leverage. The position is an SPL token, paid for in full. The short leg carries a volatility decay instead of funding. It is charged on realized volatility rather than positioning, and longs carry no holding cost.

Quickstart

Mint your first paired position on devnet in five minutes.

Concepts

The mental model: paired tokens, NAV, oracle, keeper, CLP.

Build

TypeScript SDK setup, IDLs, PDAs, end-to-end examples.

Programs

On-chain instruction and account reference.

What you can build

Long and short tokens are standard SPL tokens, so other programs and apps can use them directly. Some examples:

• Wrapper UIs that offer long-only or short-only flows on top of the paired primitive.
• Structured products, such as delta-neutral baskets or dispersion trades, that combine several markets.
• Trading bots that trade the bin books when they drift from NAV.
• Portfolio analytics that value positions from on-chain NAV, with no off-chain feed.
• CPI integrations where another Solana program holds, mints or redeems Continuum positions as part of a larger flow.

How it works

A user calls mint_paired(collateral_amount) on the mint-redeem program. The program reads the price that the keeper last pushed to the Market account and takes the mint fee. It sends the deposit to the market’s collateral vault, except for a dev tax of 10% of the fee. Then it mints long (L) and short (S) tokens, each worth half of the deposit after the fee.

The long leg is priced at the asset price P, adjusted for any corporate action. The short leg is priced at K / P × γ, where K = initial_l_price × initial_s_price and γ is the short leg’s volatility-decay index. So L × S = K × γ, and as one leg rises the other falls. Mint and redeem also quote each leg against the user by the oracle confidence band. This worst-case quoting is on for every market except QQQ (as of 10 Oct 2026).

To exit, the user calls redeem_paired(l_amount, s_amount) with both amounts above zero. The program burns the largest value-balanced pair inside them, leaves the rest of the larger leg in the wallet, and pays collateral at NAV, less the redeem fee. In between, both tokens trade on Continuum’s own venues: committed orders while the market is open, and a bin book per leg for instant trades while it is closed. A committed order fills at NAV ± the posted commit spread (at least 10 bps), at a price pushed after the order was placed.

A keeper run by the protocol pushes prices and re-centres the books. Mint and redeem need a price pushed in the last 300 s, so they pause while the underlying market is closed or the keeper is down. The books trade then.

Where this doc lives in the stack

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                       You (developer)                        │
│  Frontend / bot / structured product / CPI program           │
└──────────────────────────┬──────────────────────────────────┘
                           │ TypeScript SDK / Anchor / web3.js
                           ▼
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                  Continuum on-chain programs                 │
│  mint-redeem · oracle · clp · registry · trading · faucet    │
└──────────────────────────┬──────────────────────────────────┘
                           │
                           ▼
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                       Solana base layer                      │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

The keeper runs off-chain. It signs price pushes as each market’s keeper_authority and book updates as the CLP authority. Your transactions go directly to the programs and never need its keys, but mint and redeem rely on its recent price push.

Core invariants you can rely on

1. Paired mint and redeem. User mints always create both legs, and user redeems always burn both. The single-leg mint and redeem instructions require the keeper authority.
2. NAV on chain. L = P and S = K / P × γ. γ starts at 1, and set_s_gamma_index rejects any write that raises it.
3. Fresh-price gate. Mint and redeem revert with TwapNotAvailable when the pushed price is 0 or more than 300 s old. In the Stress risk state both are blocked by default.
4. No redemption race. If a vault ever falls below 100% collateralized, redeem pays each holder their NAV claim times the collateral ratio, so early redeemers cannot drain it.

See Solvency invariants for the complete list.

What’s not here

• No funding rate. Nobody pays for being on the crowded side. The short leg’s volatility decay charges realized volatility instead, and never touches longs.
• No liquidations. Nothing can close your position; you hold the token.
• No leverage. You pay the full value of both legs when you mint.
• No outside AMM. Trading happens on Continuum’s own bin books and committed orders, and on a Manifest order book that traders reach through Continuum’s trading program.
• No user yield vaults. The protocol funds the CLP’s capital itself, and there are no user LP shares.

Get oriented

• Just want to interact? → Quickstart
• Want the mental model first? → How Continuum works
• Want to start building? → SDK setup
• Want the on-chain instruction reference? → Programs overview