Glossary

We've walked the whole system end to end - from Maya's first click to the guardrails that protect everyone's money. This last chapter is your reference shelf: a plain-language glossary of every Own-specific term the book used.

Keep this page bookmarked. When a term blurs together with another one - and with four different clocks and three robots in play, a few will - come back here.

Glossary

Every term below was introduced somewhere earlier in the book. One clear sentence each, in alphabetical order.

• Backing cap - the safety ceiling on how many tokens a vault may mint against its collateral (for example, 65% for the USDC vault); it is never loosened just to make room for more demand.
• Base Sepolia - the test network (a practice version of the Base blockchain) where Own is deployed today, so everything runs with play money while the system is proven out.
• Circuit breaker - an automatic stop that halts quoting or trading when something looks wrong (prices too far apart, exposure too large), so a glitch can't turn into a loss.
• Collateral ratio - the rule that the value of all tokens minted must stay comfortably below the value of collateral backing them, which is what keeps the system solvent.
• Collateral vault - the on-chain pool where Liquidity Providers deposit their assets (USDC, wstETH, cbBTC); that pool is what backs every eToken.
• Delta-neutral - a position arranged so its owner doesn't care which way the underlying price moves, because a gain on one side is cancelled by a loss on the other; it's how both the trader's loop and the Market Maker's hedge stay market-risk-free.
• eToken - a synthetic token that tracks a real asset's price (for example, eTSLA tracks Tesla); it is not the real share, but a token backed by on-chain collateral and anchored to the real price.
• Firm quote - a price the Market Maker commits to for a few seconds, signed so it can't be altered; you submit it on-chain to trade against that exact price.
• Force-execute - the trader's recourse when a redeem order isn't filled in time: after a waiting window, they can close the trade themselves at a fresh on-chain price.
• Funding - the recurring fee that one side of a perpetual futures contract pays the other; harvesting it is the main reason traders come to Own.
• Hedge - an offsetting position the Market Maker takes on an outside venue so that, whichever way the price moves, its tokens issued and its outside position cancel out.
• The kink - the bend in the borrow-rate curve (around 80% of the lending book's capacity) where rates start rising steeply; it's the single dial that balances LP yield against keeping borrowing cheap.
• The Keeper - the off-chain heartbeat (one of the three robots) that regularly pushes fresh prices and risk marks on-chain so trades never stall.
• Liquidity Providers (LPs) - the people who deposit collateral into vaults to back the tokens and earn yield in return.
• The loop - the trader's move of minting eTokens, borrowing against them, minting more, and repeating, to build a larger leveraged position from the same starting capital.
• Mark - the protocol's working price for an asset, kept fresh by the Keeper and used for the system's risk checks (distinct from the price you actually trade at).
• The Market Maker - the dealer (one of the three robots, run by the Vault Manager) that quotes firm prices to traders and hedges the resulting exposure.
• Mint - creating a new eToken by paying in (USDC), which is how a trade to buy exposure settles.
• The Oracle - the price-teller (one of the three robots) that gathers prices from many sources, agrees on one, and signs it so the protocol can trust it.
• Perp (perpetual futures) - an exchange contract that tracks an asset's price with no expiry date; its funding fee is the income traders come to Own to capture.
• Redeem - handing an eToken back to the protocol for USDC, which is how a trader closes a position and exits.
• RFQ (request for quote) - Own's trading model: instead of an order book, you ask the Market Maker for a price and it sends back a firm quote to trade against.
• Solvency - the condition that the collateral in the vaults is always worth more than the tokens it backs, so every eToken can be redeemed.
• Trading spread - the small difference between the buy and sell price (around 0.25%) that the Market Maker quotes; it's the trading cost and the revenue that's shared among LPs, the Market Maker, and the protocol.
• Utilization - how full something is as a fraction of its limit: vault utilization (collateral working) and lending utilization (how much of the loan book is borrowed), the latter being what sets the borrow rate at the kink.
• The Vault Manager (VM) - the operator who runs the market-making and risk backend and provides liquidity to the market.

What just happened

• We collected every Own-specific term from the whole tour into one alphabetical glossary, with a single plain sentence each.
• That's the end of the tour: you now have the whole picture - the trade, the price, the backing, the money, and the safety.

This book describes Own's target mechanics and uses illustrative figures that reflect market rates around June 2026. Real returns vary with market conditions. Nothing here is an offer, investment advice, or a guarantee of returns. Synthetic stock exposure carries market, smart-contract, and counterparty risk, and Own is not available to US persons or other restricted jurisdictions.