How TetraFi Works

How one trade moves through the network - rails execute it, netting shrinks what settles, shared collateral funds the wait.

Three Costs, Three Layers

Every institutional settlement carries three costs: the principal risk of releasing one leg before the other lands, the gross settlement toll of moving full notional when only the net is owed, and the trapped liquidity parked to cover the wait. TetraFi runs one layer against each - composable primitives, built institutional-first and gated by one compliance policy.

Layer	The cost it removes	Status
Settlement rails	Principal risk - atomic delivery-versus-payment from any chain, asset, or venue to any other	Live
Multilateral Netting	Gross settlement - obligations clear by set-off, and only the net residual settles	Soon
Shared Collateral Network	Trapped liquidity - committed once, cross-collateralised across every settlement gap	Next

The rails are the pipes. Netting and shared collateral are where the capital efficiency comes from - and each layer makes the others cheaper to run. All three are only possible on-chain: atomicity is what retires principal risk without an intermediary standing in the middle, on-chain proofs are what let obligations clear with no central counterparty, and programmable collateral is what lets one pool answer every gap at once.

Life of a Trade

1. Quote

   Your request fans out to every eligible solver, LP, and venue. On RFQ, each answer is a firm, escrow-enforced quote; on the Router, a ranked candidate with its guarantees stated.

2. Sign

   One signature on one intent. Compliance policy gates the request before it reaches a desk, and custody never leaves your side.

3. Settle or clear

   Settle instantly - in full, delivery-versus-payment, at today’s price. Or opt the leg into netting at a deadline you pick, at a tighter quote: it joins the next run, offsets against the whole network’s opposing flow, and only your net residual moves.

4. Fund the wait

   Wherever value waits on a slower leg - a T+1 desk cycle, a redemption queue, a residual at its deadline, an early exit from a netting position - a vault fronts it from committed capital and is repaid when the slow leg completes. You’re paid now; the wait becomes a depositor’s yield.

Steps three and four describe Multilateral Netting and the Shared Collateral Network, both in design - parameters publish at launch.

The Rails - Live

A single routing, settlement, and compliance engine underlies everything, built around regulated stablecoins and tokenized real-world assets at institutional size. Spreads compress through solver competition, with depth aggregated from OTC desks, CEXs, DEXs, and regulated LPs. Aggregation is the familiar half; where it settles is not. Every fill lands in immutable contracts on-chain, atomically and across chains, rather than on a venue’s internal ledger - so no balance has to be pre-funded to a counterparty, no principal is exposed mid-trade, and the trade composes with the on-chain assets and venues it touches. On top of it, TetraFi sells you one of two distinct trading contracts, depending on what your execution needs:

RFQ - firm liquidity

Your request goes to every eligible solver and LP in the workspace, and each answers with a cryptographically firm, executable quote. Escrowed settlement enforces the terms exactly as quoted: deliver, or refund - a quote can disappoint you only by refunding, never by failing.

Router - aggregated execution

The router fans your request across every eligible execution source - direct DEX liquidity, the RFQ venue, bridges, issuers, and fiat rails - and returns ranked executable candidates with an explicit recommendation. Each candidate states its own firmness, atomicity, settlement guarantee, and fees. From the user’s side it’s one intent and one signature - routing, bridging, and settlement are the solver’s problem, even across chains.

The flow underneath is identical either way - quotes requested, sources compete, a winner gets your signature, the order goes in - and on-chain settlement completes it with custody never leaving your side. The key difference is the contract you buy:

• RFQ: Only firm solver/LP escrow quotes - a closed source set with a delivery-or-refund guarantee
• Router: Best execution across heterogeneous sources - guarantees stated per candidate, never assumed

A Router trade may well be filled by RFQ liquidity - but the product you called is still Router. Product and execution source are independent: the product defines your guarantees, the source records how it executed. Choosing between them is covered in Build.

Multilateral Netting - Soon

Every trade on the rails settles alone and pays the full toll - bridge, rebalance, conversion - even when an equal and opposite flow crosses minutes later. Netting collapses that gross flow to its net residual by atomic multilateral set-off.

• Two firm quotes. Settle instantly at today’s price, or clear at a deadline you pick - hours-class, T+1, or T+2 - at a tighter one. The choice is per settlement, and a tier is no lock-in.
• Hold, don’t move. You settle by adjusting net positions: no pre-funding, no margin, no bridging inventory to cover a debt. Your capital keeps working until the pull window opens.
• Proven and private. Every run ships a validity proof checked on-chain before anything executes, and positions are readable only inside a sealed engine - nobody sees your book.
• Every residual has an exit. A remainder unpaid at its deadline takes a priced backstop ladder - vault liquidity, wholesale desk, discount auction, then gross settlement - so the worst case is what you pay today.

See how a clearing run works.

Shared Collateral Network - Next

Netting shrinks what has to settle; the Shared Collateral Network funds what still has to wait. Capital is committed once into permissioned programmable vaults and cross-collateralised across every settlement gap - encumbered only while a draw is live, and only to that one obligation.

Product	The gap today	What changes
Instant Redemption	A token burns in seconds; the underlying liquidates T+1, T+7, T+14 or longer	Holders exit T+0, issuers run fully invested
Instant Settlement	OTC and RWA legs settle on cycle, riding on credit lines	The counterparty is paid today; credit lines come off the balance sheet
Venue Prefunding	A balance parked at every venue, sized for its worst day	Execute at flow size, fund at net size
Solver Credit	Inventory copied onto every chain a solver serves	Fill anywhere, warehouse nowhere

Every draw is an exchange, not a loan: capital moves only against a verified obligation, with the proof of repayment checked in the same transaction. The same vaults are netting’s backstop and early exit - and, longer term, any programmable collateral use case joins as one more adapter over the same pool: one deep, fungible pool instead of a buffer per product.

One Gate Across Every Layer

Compliance isn’t a pillar beside the others - it’s the gate every layer passes through.

• Onboard once. Verify your entity once into a reusable onboarding pack that streamlines KYB across every counterparty on the network.
• One policy, everywhere. Automated on-chain and off-chain checks under one policy - gating a quote request, netting membership and every run entry, and every vault draw - composed per deployment, under your institution’s control.
• One audit trail. Policy enforcement and an audit trail shared across parties - instead of every party repeating the same manual reviews - with flow monitoring and statistics in one place to run and evidence your activity.

What You Control

Every TetraFi deployment is built institutional-first: owned, configured, and customised by your institution, under full institutional control. Use one primitive or compose all three - each plugs into the shared liquidity and settlement network:

Layer	Your controls
Rails	Your workspace’s own immutable on-chain router - no custody key, no upgrade key, capability upgrades only ever add to an allowlist - plus which venues it may touch, which LPs and jurisdictions your RFQ requests reach, and how your compliance pipeline is composed: checks added, removed, or layered to fit your regulatory perimeter
Netting	Your own policy domain on the shared clearing network: membership rules, run cadence, backstop order, and asset scope
Shared Collateral Network	Pick the vault envelope that fits your mandate - or, as independent curation opens, deploy your own: products, qualifying assets, caps, and policy

Why that model is the whole point is the story of Why TetraFi.

Go Deeper

Multilateral Netting

The clearing run, the settlement choice, and where the residual goes.

Shared Collateral Network

Why one shared capital base beats a buffer per product.

Build

Pick RFQ or Router, and start integrating.

Talk to us

Still unsure which layers your flow needs? Get in touch with our team.