Perpetual futures positions have always been stuck where you opened them. Arcus wants to change that by wrapping them into standard ERC-20 tokens that can move freely across DeFi.

The decentralized exchange, built by the dYdX team in collaboration with Robinhood Crypto, has launched pTokens on the Robinhood Chain. The concept is straightforward: take a perp account balance that was previously locked inside the platform and represent it as a transferable on-chain token.

What pTokens actually do

pTokens encode perpetual futures positions as ERC-20 tokens. Because ERC-20 is the universal standard for tokens on Ethereum-compatible chains, these wrapped positions can theoretically interact with lending protocols, be used as collateral elsewhere, or simply be transferred between wallets.

Testnet data shows the product labeled as “Arcus pToken Test v2,” suggesting at least one prior iteration was tested before the current version. The implementation runs on Robinhood Chain, an EVM-compatible layer 2 blockchain, which means it inherits Ethereum’s token standards while operating with lower costs and faster settlement.