Overview
Ascend Perpetuals is a leveraged trading platform where you go long or short on the live probability of real-world event outcomes. You pick a market — for example, "Will the Fed cut rates in March?" — see the current probability priced as a percentage, and take a position on whether that percentage will rise or fall, with up to 1001 times leverage on your collateral. Positions have no expiry, so you can scale in and out as the odds move instead of waiting for the event to resolve1.
Think of it like trading a stock that tracks "how probable is this outcome" instead of a company's share price. Ascend Perpetuals is built on Midnight — a privacy-focused chain linked to Cardano — with order signing supported from Cardano, Ethereum, and Solana wallets2. The $ASCEND token, issued on Cardano with a fixed supply, anchors fee discounts, staking rewards, and governance voting3.
Key Features
- Trade the move in the odds, not just the final result. Each market lists a live probability percentage that updates as news flows in. You take a long or short position on that number and your gain or loss tracks how it moves, instead of waiting for the underlying event to resolve4.
- Full order book with no expiry on positions. The platform uses a central limit order book with limit orders, market orders, and standard perpetual execution. A position stays open as long as the market is live and your collateral covers it4.
- Up to 1001 times leverage. Capital efficiency designed for active traders — a thousand units of collateral can hold the same probability exposure as ten thousand locked into a traditional prediction market share, with the rest of the balance staying liquid2.
- Cryptographic checks at every step. Each user action — matching, risk, accounts, fund control, event lifecycle — is verified by a zero-knowledge proof on Midnight before any balance changes. A zero-knowledge proof is a math check that confirms a step happened correctly without revealing the underlying details1.
- Sign from the wallet you already use. Cardano, Ethereum, and Solana wallets all work for deposits and order signing. Matching and final settlement happen on Midnight, which inherits security from Cardano as its partner chain1.
- Stake $ASCEND from a Cardano wallet. Holders can stake directly from a Cardano wallet while keeping their tokens in their own custody. The docs describe rewards funded from trading and funding fees, paid based on a balance check that runs twice a day3.
What to Expect
The marketing site at ascend.market explains the product, alongside a public status page and a blockchain explorer. The project states that its testnet has concluded and that a private mainnet is now live, so public access may be limited4. Inside the app, you pick a market — an election, a sports final, a crypto price target, a macroeconomic release — choose long or short on the live probability, set a position size and leverage within the market's margin rules, and watch the percentage move in real time on an order book.
Markets span politics, sports, geopolitics, cryptocurrency conditions, macroeconomic releases, and commodities or stock direction. Ascend Perpetuals positions itself against Polymarket and Kalshi, services where you typically buy a yes-or-no share and hold it. Ascend Perpetuals is built instead for traders who want to hedge, scale in and out, and use leverage on the same outcomes2.
