Paradex vs Polymarket

Funding is signed. Positive means longs pay shorts, negative means longs get paid to hold. Venues settle on different native periods (hourly on Hyperliquid, dYdX, Lighter, Extended, Pacifica, Ondo, Vest, StandX and ApeX, every 4h on edgeX, every 8h on Kalshi, Aster and the CEX books); every figure is normalized from the venue's own quoted rate and interval before ranking. Funding is only the holding cost. Opening costs (taker fee, spread, impact) are the companion bench perp-fees.

Ranked only with 24 hours of funding history (288 samples) and a stddev above zero: a young listing, or a venue whose rate has not moved since listing (Ondo Perps at launch, Polymarket in July), reads artificially stable and shows as Provisional, never as the leader. Stability is not directionality: a persistently positive but tight band ranks above a rate that flips every settlement.

The ratio is a screen, not a verdict. Both terms are the venue's own figures (24h volume and open interest as each API reports them, in USD), so a venue that counts both legs of a fill moves its ratio without changing anything real. A very low ratio (Ostium, 0.2x) means positions held for days on thin daily volume; a very high one (Kalshi, above 40x) means a day of trading dwarfs what stays open. The bands in the methodology say what each range usually means.