A stock perp follows a share price. Nothing else about it involves a share. The margin you post is a stablecoin. Gains and losses are credited and debited in that stablecoin. Funding is paid in it. When the position is closed, what comes back is that stablecoin. Shares never enter the picture.
Cash settlement, continuously
Traders will know cash settlement from index options, where no shares change hands at expiry and the difference is paid in money. Cash-settled versus physically settled explains the idea. A perp takes it further. There is no expiry, so settlement happens all the time: the position’s value is marked as the price moves, and funding passes between the sides every hour.
A straight-line payoff
Because margin and payout are in a dollar stablecoin, the payoff is simple. A position gains or loses a fixed dollar amount for each dollar the price moves. That is the linear design described in coin-margined versus stablecoin-margined. The collateral does not swing in value with the thing being traded, which is not true of contracts margined in a volatile coin.
The stablecoin is part of the trade
A stablecoin aims to hold a dollar. It is a token issued by someone, and its peg depends on that issuer’s reserves and on the market’s confidence in them. A trader holding margin in a stablecoin carries that exposure for as long as the margin sits there. It is usually invisible. Stablecoin depegs and collateral risk covers what happens when it is not.
No shares anywhere
Since no shares back the contract, your profit is paid from the other side’s loss, through the venue’s margin system. There is no pool of stock to fall back on. This is also why a perp carries no dividend and no vote. And it is why open interest can grow without anyone buying a single share: the contract creates exposure to the price without touching the float.
A stock token is the opposite design. Its supply is the number of shares that exist on-chain, and it rises only when tokens are minted. The perp’s open interest and the token’s supply measure different things, and neither should be read as the other.
A different venue with different terms
A share in a brokerage account and a perp position on a builder book are held under different arrangements. The margin rules, the maximum leverage and the liquidation process are the venue’s, and they vary by market. Getting money in means acquiring the stablecoin first. Getting it out means converting back. Those steps have their own costs and their own timing.
What NoVo shows
NoVo reads these markets and holds nothing in them. It has no order routing and no broker link. The Stocks On-Chain tab of the Crypto Market Map lists every stock perp beside every stock token, so the contract and the tokenized share on the same name can be compared.