MNX

MNX is a decentralized futures exchange focused on financial markets related to artificial intelligence (AI). Built on MegaETH, it offers non-custodial trading in futures tied to private AI companies, public equities, GPU-compute prices and prediction-market outcomes. MNX announced that its exchange went live on October 13, 2026, and advertises leveraged long and short positions of up to three times available funds.^[1]​^[2]​^[3]​

MNX Markets, Inc. was founded by former executives of prediction-market operator Manifold. Cofounder and chief executive Stephen Grugett is identified as a key person at the company.^[4]​^[5]​

Overview

MNX is a decentralized futures exchange built on MegaETH that offers non-custodial trading across perpetual, numeric and binary futures. Its markets cover AI-related companies, equities, computing references and prediction-market outcomes.^[1][9]

MNX matches orders in frequent batch auctions, collecting them over 200-millisecond intervals and clearing them together at a uniform price.^[1]

History

In a February 18, 2026 post, MNX’s founders said they were building an exchange for the AI economy and wanted to bring prediction markets and perpetual futures beyond primarily retail use toward institutional applications. They argued that prediction markets could help investors hedge risks that conventional financial instruments do not cover, while futures on AI-related assets could support views on compute costs, model development and private-company valuations. The founders cited more than 30 million predictions on their markets and described instances in which prediction markets had anticipated developments involving the Russian invasion of Ukraine and AI performance at the International Mathematical Olympiad.^[6]​

The founders also argued that perpetual futures could give traders leveraged exposure or short positions without requiring access to the underlying asset or, for equities, borrowing shares through a prime broker. They said the infrastructure for an on-chain exchange had become capable of meeting traders’ throughput and latency requirements, and that non-custodial settlement could reduce the need to entrust funds to an exchange. These claims formed part of the founders’ case for building markets around AI-related assets, rather than a description of all MNX products at launch.^[6]​

MNX invited users to try its testnet in February 2026. A March 25 post continued to promote testnet perpetual-futures trading as a way to explore markets for GPU prices, compute costs, model performance and private AI-company valuations.^[6]​^[7]​

In June 2026, MNX raised $6.4 million in a pre-seed round led by Village Global, at a reported company valuation of $40 million. Village Global investor Max Killberg described the investment as a bet on financial infrastructure for AI, which he said had not kept pace with the capital flowing into the sector.^[4]​^[2]​

MNX announced the exchange’s launch on October 13, 2026. Its initial products included futures tied to the valuations of OpenAI, Anthropic, DeepSeek and Moonshot AI. By October 23, MNX had announced RSENATE26, a binary market on whether Republicans would retain the U.S. Senate in the 2026 midterm elections. By October 24, it was also offering perpetual contracts tied to the rental price of NVIDIA H100 GPUs. MNX has promoted perpetual contracts on Alphabet shares around the company’s earnings announcements.^[8]​^[2]​

Markets and Contracts

MNX groups its products into perpetuals, numeric futures and binary futures. The exchange describes the range as markets spanning the AI value chain through a single account.^[9]​^[1]​

Valuation Futures

MNX’s numeric, or valuation, futures cover OpenAI, Anthropic, DeepSeek and Moonshot AI. Their quoted prices represent company market capitalizations in billions of U.S. dollars. These contracts are intended to provide a tradable reference for private companies whose shares are not routinely available on public exchanges.^[1]​^[9]​

The valuation contracts launched with expiries at the end of 2027 and no recurring funding fees. Their prices are set through trading on MNX rather than by a continuously available external price feed. If a company remains private at expiry, settlement may use public valuations from funding rounds, investment funds or secondary-market transactions. As a last resort, MNX can determine the settlement price through a published review process. Such a settlement price may differ from the price investors would pay in a private-share transaction.^[2]​^[4]​

Cofounder Stephen Grugett argued that dated futures were better suited to private companies with infrequently traded shares than perpetual futures based on stale or illiquid prices, which he said could behave unpredictably and incur high or variable funding rates.^[4]​^[2]​

Perpetual Futures

MNX’s perpetual futures track external references and have no expiry. The exchange lists public equities and exchange-traded funds connected to the AI supply chain, including companies in chips, memory, cloud computing and AI models. Named examples include Micron, NVIDIA, CoreWeave, Meta, Alphabet and the Roundhill Memory ETF. Its perpetual markets also include the SemiAnalysis H100 Selected Spot Rental Price Index, which tracks rental prices for NVIDIA H100 GPUs, as well as cryptocurrency references such as Bitcoin and Ether.^[1]​^[9]​

Funding payments apply to perpetuals to help keep traded prices near their references. When a perpetual trades above its reference, longs pay shorts; when it trades below, shorts pay longs. Funding accrues each second and is booked to margin hourly. It runs only during the relevant market’s funding session: U.S.-listed stock perpetuals follow regular U.S. equity trading hours, Hong Kong-listed MINIMAX and ZAI follow Hong Kong trading sessions, and markets with around-the-clock references—including H100, Bitcoin and Ether perpetuals—fund continuously. Numeric and binary futures do not have periodic funding.^[9]​

Binary Futures

Binary futures represent outcomes framed as yes-or-no questions. They are priced between 0 and 1, with the price functioning as a market-implied probability, and ordinarily settle at 1 for a “yes” outcome or 0 for a “no” outcome. Contract rules may provide for a tie or partial settlement. MNX’s examples include political, economic and AI-related questions, such as the 2028 U.S. presidential election, U.S. labor-force participation, San Francisco home values, combined OpenAI and Anthropic revenue in 2027, and which companies will produce leading AI systems by specified dates.^[9]​^[1]​

MNX’s RSENATE26 market asked whether Republicans would retain the Senate in the 2026 midterm elections. The exchange has also documented DPREZ, a presidential-election market, and described procedures that keep the oracles for DPREZ and RSENATE26 from moving away from the corresponding Polymarket prices.^[8]​^[9]​

Trading and Price Formation

MNX matches orders through frequent batch auctions instead of a continuously updating order book. Each 200-millisecond window collects orders and clears them together at one uniform price. The exchange presents the design as a way to make execution depend on the prices traders quote rather than the speed of their network connections. In the company’s illustration, a batch clears at the price matching the greatest volume, with all matched units trading at that price.^[1][5]

When orders could clear at multiple prices for the same volume, MNX applies additional rules to select a price. The process considers the price at which resting orders alone would fill the trade; otherwise, it uses the oracle rounded to the market’s tick size if that price lies between the candidates, or the nearest candidate price. If one side has more eligible volume than can be matched, liquidation orders receive priority, followed by other market orders and then limit orders by price. At the final price level, remaining quantity is allocated pro rata rather than by queue position. Each market also sets its own tick size, quantity increment and order-size limits.^[9]

Each market has an oracle-relative price band, and a batch can clear only within that band. Orders outside it remain open until they become eligible. The bands differ by contract: CRWV and SPCX, for example, use bands of plus or minus 5%, while OPENAI and ANTHROPIC use plus or minus 20%.^[9]

MNX distinguishes the oracle price from the mark price. The oracle governs margin checks, liquidation eligibility and tradable price bands. Perpetual-market oracles aggregate external reference data, while numeric and binary futures use an eight-hour exponential moving average of MNX’s internal order book because no continuously observable external price exists before settlement. A separate oracle-signer service computes and signs futures and H100 prices. The mark price is used for displayed unrealized profit and loss and conditional-order triggers; it is calculated from the best in-band bid, best in-band ask and previous mark. Quotes must have rested for 400 milliseconds before they can affect the mark. If in-band quotes are absent, the previous mark carries forward, constrained by the price band; a market without a mark begins at its oracle price.^[9]

Margin and Liquidation

MNX uses isolated margin, so collateral is assigned separately to each market position. A position’s notional value is its size multiplied by its price, while its equity consists of margin, unrealized profit or loss and pending funding. Each market sets initial and maintenance margin requirements, which determine its leverage limits. For example, a position worth 1,000 USDM at five times leverage requires about 200 USDM in opening margin before applicable fees. Binary shorts use their maximum possible loss—contract size multiplied by one minus the price—as the basis for required margin rather than the position’s notional value.^[9]​

A position becomes eligible for liquidation if its margin ratio falls below the market’s maintenance requirement after pending funding is applied. MNX also uses a separate buffer 0.5 percentage points above maintenance: additions are refused inside the buffer, and leverage changes cannot leave a position within it. Fully collateralized 1× binary positions and 1× perpetual longs are exempt from the buffer. Reductions remain permitted.^[9]​

​Liquidation proceeds in stages. If equity remains at least two-thirds of the maintenance requirement, MNX cancels open orders and submits reduce-only market orders that can shrink or close a position without reversing it; large positions may be liquidated in pieces. If equity is positive but below two-thirds of maintenance, a backstop vault takes over and closes the remaining position, receiving the trader’s remaining margin as its fee. If equity is zero or negative, auto-deleveraging reduces or closes positions on the opposite side to maintain exchange solvency. The system ranks positions by profit as a share of entry value multiplied by leverage, with losing positions ranked after profitable ones. Auto-deleveraging reductions execute at the bankrupt position’s bankruptcy price, where its equity is zero, rather than at the oracle price; a large price gap can therefore cause a loss to the affected trader.^[9]​

Fully collateralized 1× binary longs and shorts post their maximum possible loss upfront and are not liquidated. When liquidation or a backstop or auto-deleveraging action changes a position, MNX displays an in-app notice when the user is present and records the market, side, quantity, price, realized profit or loss and any forfeited margin in the portfolio’s liquidation history.^[9]​

Fees

MNX charges fees on executed fills, including both opening and closing trades, but not for placing or cancelling orders or depositing funds. Each side of a matched trade pays a fee based on whether it is treated as a maker or taker in that match. Under the standard schedule, maker fees are zero for perpetuals, numeric futures and binary futures. Standard taker fees are 5 basis points of notional for perpetuals and 20 basis points for numeric futures; a $10,000 taker fill therefore costs $5 or $20, respectively.^[10]

Binary-futures fees use a different formula: quantity multiplied by a coefficient and by the fill price times one minus the fill price. The standard taker coefficient is 0.02, so a 1,000-contract taker trade at a price of 0.10 incurs a fee of 1.80 USDM. The fee is greatest at 0.50 and approaches zero at either endpoint. Market-specific fee settings and fee-free periods may differ from the standard schedule.^[10]

Maker or taker status is determined for each matched pair in a batch. A limit order matched against a market order is the maker; where orders of the same type match, the earlier-submitted order is the maker. Forced liquidation orders are takers against ordinary orders. Fees are settled from margin balance alongside the fill, and opening orders must reserve enough collateral for both margin and the relevant fee allowance. MNX-relayed withdrawals carry a flat fee, while delayed direct withdrawals from its MarginBank have no MNX fee; users’ own on-chain operations incur ordinary MegaETH gas.^[10]

Security, Access and Development

MNX says customer funds remain in smart contracts on MegaETH rather than being held in the exchange’s custody. MarginBank is MNX’s shared on-chain collateral custody contract: it holds collateral and tracks account balances, transfers, and withdrawals. Users may withdraw through an MNX-relayed withdrawal, which carries a flat fee, or through a delayed direct withdrawal from MarginBank, which has no MNX fee. User-sent on-chain operations incur MegaETH gas.^[12]​^[10]​

MNX publishes contract rules, price sources, market specifications and oracle methodology. Centennial Systems reviewed a defined set of Solidity contracts in a manual differential review of changes in commit 8f4cebe4 from June 23 through July 23, 2026. The review was limited to contracts/**/*.sol and was not a comprehensive guarantee or a review of every contract or all currently deployed implementations. It recorded 82 findings: 2 high, 24 medium, 35 low, 21 informational and no critical findings. The report marked some issues fixed with researcher verification. Its finding and remediation statuses describe the reviewed implementation historically and do not certify current deployments.^[13]​^[14]​

The audit acknowledged and deferred two LiquidityVault share-pricing findings pending a share-price redesign before the vault opened to public depositors. Finding 6.1.2 concerned redemptions valued using NAV that included unrealized PnL, which could transfer value between withdrawing and remaining vault participants. Finding 6.2.2 concerned NAV that omitted elapsed funding until the funding index was checkpointed, which could misstate NAV when shares were minted or redeemed. MNX’s bounty page says the vault remains closed to external depositors and that these issues are to be fixed before it opens.^[13]​^[12]​

MNX offers bug-bounty rewards of up to $100,000 for responsibly reported vulnerabilities involving areas including contracts, applications, privileged access, deployment and market resolution. Its official bounty record lists a September 24, 2026 payment for a low-severity replay report concerning margin and leverage authorizations; it says on-chain nonces prevented replayed changes to user funds or positions. The record also lists an October 20, 2026 discretionary payment for a review that prompted rechecking price bounds for automatic deleveraging.^[11]​^[12]​

The exchange provides programmatic trading through REST and WebSocket application programming interfaces (APIs). The API supports authentication, live market data, order placement and cancellation, fills and account updates; its reference is generated from the exchange schema. Documented mechanisms include API keys, Privy identity tokens, EIP-712 order signatures and trading session keys. MNX also provides a testnet order-bot guide.^[1]​^[11]​

MNX states that trading is unavailable to users in restricted jurisdictions, although affected users can close positions and withdraw funds. As reported around the October 2026 launch, the exchange did not serve U.S. customers; Grugett said MNX intended to pursue the licenses needed to expand into the United States.^[1]​^[2]​