DOCS

Ballast is margin and lending for Solana tokens. You can go long or short with leverage, borrow SOL against tokens you hold, or lend SOL or tokens to the people who do. Every position is real: a long holds the token as collateral against borrowed SOL, and a short has borrowed the token and sold it for SOL. There is no funding rate and no virtual price. You pay interest instead, and your PnL comes from the real pool price.

The protocol is one Solana program with four pieces: isolated lending markets, a pool oracle per token, deferred settlement that lets a full leveraged trade fit in one transaction, and liquidations anyone can run.

Two isolated markets per token

Each market is defined by values that never change once it exists: the loan asset, the collateral asset, the oracle and the liquidation LTV (LLTV). Every listed token gets a pair:

• Long market. Collateral is the token, loans are SOL. Leveraged longs and borrowers use it; SOL lenders fund it.
• Short market. Collateral is SOL, loans are the token. Shorts borrow the token and sell it; token holders lend it.

Collateral is never lent out. A market only ever lends its loan asset, and bad debt in one market can only reach that market's lenders. Positions live in an account derived from the market and your wallet, so you can repay, add collateral or withdraw with any client, including your own scripts.

The oracle

Push oracles do not cover long-tail tokens, so each Ballast oracle prices its token from one pool: the token's deepest SOL pool on PumpSwap, fixed when the oracle is created. The oracle reads the two pool vault balances and keeps a time-weighted average over 20 minutes.

• Sampling. Anyone can call sample; it records at most once every 12 seconds. Every trade transaction samples first, and a keeper samples the rest of the time.
• Truncation. Each sample may move at most 10% from the last one, so a single manipulated block barely moves the average.
• Warm-up. A new oracle refuses to price until its history covers the full window, so nothing can be borrowed in a market's first 20 minutes.
• Freshness. New borrows and collateral withdrawals with debt open need a sample from the last two minutes. Repaying, closing and liquidating keep working on the last price.

The trade-off is lag. In a fast pump the average sits below the pool price, and opening at maximum leverage may be refused until it catches up. In a crash the average trails the pool, which can delay liquidations.

One-transaction router

A leveraged long normally takes a loop of borrow, swap, deposit, or a flash loan with its own fee. Ballast uses deferred settlement instead, the Solana version of Morpho's callbacks. supply_collateral, repay and liquidate can credit the position first and record what is owed to the market. A settle instruction later in the same transaction must pay it, or the whole transaction fails. The program checks that settle is there before it credits anything, and refuses deferred steps called from other programs.

A 3x long with 1 SOL of margin is one transaction:

A short runs the same pattern the other way: credit your SOL margin plus the minimum sale proceeds as collateral, borrow the token, sell it through Jupiter, settle. Closing repays the debt as a deferred step, withdraws the collateral, swaps and settles; what is left comes back to your wallet as SOL. Every swap carries a minimum out, so a worse fill reverts the whole transaction.

Liquidations

A position is liquidatable when its LTV, debt value over collateral value at the oracle price, reaches the market's LLTV. For a fresh position at leverage L, ignoring interest:

Anyone can call liquidate. The liquidator repays part or all of the debt and receives the same value in collateral plus a bonus that comes out of the position:

Liquidators can use deferred settlement too: seize the collateral, sell it through Jupiter and repay in the same transaction, with no capital of their own. If a position's collateral runs out with debt left, the rest is bad debt. The market's accrued fee shares absorb it first; any remainder lowers that market's supply share price.

Interest and fees

Every market uses a port of Morpho's AdaptiveCurveIrm. The rate is set by utilization and targets 90%. Above 90% it climbs steeply, up to 4x the rate at target, to pull borrowers out and new lenders in. While utilization stays off target, the whole curve keeps shifting over time. Interest accrues every second you hold a position.

The protocol takes 10% of interest paid, minted to the market as fee shares. The program caps this at 30%. There are no open or close fees beyond Jupiter route fees and network fees.

Tiers and listing

A token can be listed when its deepest pool is a SOL pool on PumpSwap that clears a tier, and it has enough trading history for the oracle to measure. Tokens with transfer fees, transfer hooks, permanent delegates or a freeze authority are rejected on chain.

LLTV and oracle are fixed for the life of a market, so risk is managed through borrow caps and the opening limit. If liquidity leaves a pool, its caps are cut, down to zero. Open positions are never force-closed by a delisting: they can still add collateral, repay and close, and liquidations keep working.

Risks

• Leverage on long-tail tokens is high risk for traders and for lenders. A position can be liquidated in minutes.
• Oracle lag and manipulation. The TWAP trails real prices and can still be pushed by a well-funded attacker on a thin pool. Lag can delay liquidations in a crash; manipulation can trigger them when the real price has not moved.
• Bad debt. If a price gaps through the liquidation line faster than liquidators act, a market can take bad debt and its lenders absorb what the fee reserve does not cover.
• Shorts have no ceiling. A short loses when the price rises, and a long-tail token can pump without limit.
• Liquidity. Opens and closes go through real pools, so large positions in thin tokens pay price impact. When a market is fully borrowed, lenders wait for repayments, liquidations or the rate to push borrowers out.
• Lending tokens is not a hedge. You are owed tokens. If the token goes to zero, your claim is worth zero.
• Smart contract risk. The program has not been audited yet. Use amounts you can afford to lose.

Program

The owner can list markets, set borrow and supply caps, lower or raise the opening limit below the LLTV, set the interest fee up to 30%, and pause new borrows. The owner cannot change a market's LLTV or oracle, cannot move user funds, and cannot stop repaying, closing, withdrawing collateral or liquidating.

FAQ