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Why the venues stay near NAV

Every venue prices off the same keeper-pushed price, so there is no outside pool to drift away from:
  • Committed orders fill at NAV ± max(commit_spread_bps, 10) bps, at a price pushed after the commitment (any later push, not necessarily the first). The price did not exist when the order was placed, so there is no stale quote to trade against. Since 11 Oct 2026 every live market accepts them, and they are the protocol’s only venue while a market’s price is live.
  • The instant oracle swap (clp_swap), which quoted NAV ± a fixed spread, was retired on 11 Oct 2026 and always fails.
  • The bin books are the only venue whose price floats between keeper updates, and they fill only while the market’s price is stale (outside Normal, more than 300 s old). The keeper re-centres each book once its inventory-shifted centre drifts past the reposition gate: 20 bps by default, cut further so the book moves before NAV reaches its first funded bin. A trader who lifts a stale bin pays the real slippage of the bin ladder. And turning a cheap leg into cUSDC through the protocol means buying the other leg too and redeeming the pair, because redeem_paired needs both legs; that round trip pays the redeem fee (10 to 39 bps as posted on 13 Oct 2026, times 1.5 in ProxyMode).
So any venue’s mispricing is bounded by the larger of the reposition gate and the half-spread, plus that fee hurdle.

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What bounds a stale book

While prices are pushing, the books don’t fill, so a gap inside one keeper cycle can’t be traded against them. Off-hours, a move on another venue can leave bins in the money until the keeper’s guard pulls the stale side, and a trader can lift them. That worst case is bounded:
  • pool_swap fills only from pre-funded bins, so the loss is capped at the depth of those bins.
  • The books are lean (see Book management), and the next cycle re-centres and refills them.
  • On QQQ, SPY and XAU, pool_swap is held to a rolling notional cap of $1,000,000 per hour (as of 11 Oct 2026). The other 10 live markets have no such cap set (checked on chain, 13 Oct 2026).
  • While a market is closed, its books are free-float books: one bin a side within 1% of the last price, sized to measured demand ($500 a side until flow is measured) and limited by a risk cap on that market’s share of the treasury. There are no fixed dollar ceilings.
Capping depth this way is what makes the books safe on volatile assets, where an uncapped venue quoting at NAV could be drained.

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Arbitrage

The keeper runs no arbitrage loop. Its arbitrage scanner, the boot-time sweep of leftover L and S in the keeper wallet and the liquidity seeder belonged to an external-venue layer that has been removed. Anyone can still trade against a drifted book without a keeper key: buy a leg on its book, buy the other leg on its own book, and redeem the pair with redeem_paired. Near the reposition gate that trade rarely clears the fee hurdle.