What funding is

Funding is the periodic payment between longs and shorts that pins a perpetual to its index price. On the equity perp book it settles every eight hours, and it can run either sign for weeks. A certificate holder never opens a funding tab, but the vault underneath holds a real perp, so funding is a real cash flow that has to land somewhere.

The BufferBook thresholds

Positive funding accrues to a per-asset buffer. Sustained negative funding draws that buffer down first. Three published thresholds govern what happens next: past fee_on, the remainder passes through as a transparent holding fee; past mint_slow, new minting is throttled to protect the buffer; past insurance_draw, the staked insurance buffer covers the difference before holder backing is ever touched.

Who pays what, when

Holders pay nothing while the buffer is positive, and a published fee only after it is exhausted. Stakers underwrite the tail beyond that, and are compensated for it with a share of protocol fees. Keepers sweep accrued funding into the buffer every hour, so the balance the dashboard shows is always current.

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Buffered, then fee'd, never hidden.

Why transparency is the mechanism

Hidden funding is how synthetic assets quietly depeg: the cost builds up off balance sheet until it cannot. Publishing the buffer balance on-chain turns funding from a surprise into a signal. You never have to take our word for the state of the buffer, because the state of the buffer is the chain.