# FAQs

### What is Pear Protocol?

Pear is a **non-custodial trading front-end** for executing **pair trades** on integrated decentralized venues like Hyperliquid, Vertex, SYMMIO, and GMX.\
It lets you take simultaneous long and short positions on perps — with capital efficiency and risk transparency — all from one UI.

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### Why trade pairs instead of just going long or short?

Most traders lose money trying to time the market directionally.\
**Pair trading focuses on relative performance**, letting you express views like:

* “SOL will outperform ETH”
* “BTC will underperform ETH”
* “Layer 2 tokens will outperform majors”

It works in any market — bull, bear, or chop — and helps avoid getting chopped up by broad market swings.

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### How does execution work?

Pear is a **front-end interface** — not an exchange or custodian.

* It splits your trade into **long** and **short** legs
* It routes each leg to your selected venue
* Both legs are timestamp-synced for execution efficiency
* You always control your funds (they sit in your wallet or in the trading engine)

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### Where are my funds held?

It depends on the venue:

* **GMX** → Trades directly from your wallet (Arbitrum)
* **Hyperliquid, Vertex, SYMMIO** → You deposit collateral into the protocol’s trading engine. Pear manages positions but never holds custody.

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### What assets can I trade?

You can pair trade **any supported perp markets** on:

* Hyperliquid
* Vertex
* SYMMIO
* GMX

The exact pairs depend on what each protocol offers. Pear auto-surfaces supported markets.

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### How do fees work?

When you trade via Pear:

* You pay the normal trading fees of the underlying venue
* You may receive **rebates** or **discounts** via staking PEAR or through referral rewards
* On Hyperliquid, trades are routed with Pear’s **builder code**, and fees are transparently split per Hyperliquid’s public builder model

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### Is Pear Protocol a DEX?

No. Pear is a **trading layer and routing engine** — we don’t custody funds or match trades.\
We route orders to supported venues (DEXs or on-chain perps) using smart contracts or APIs.

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### How do I hedge impermanent loss as an LP?

Pear enables **pair trading limit orders**, which can be used to hedge concentrated liquidity positions.\
For example:

If you LP in PEPE/ETH, you can set a pair trade (short PEPE, long ETH) to activate if price moves out of your LP range — mitigating impermanent loss.

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### Do I need to hold $PEAR to use Pear?

No — anyone can use Pear without holding $PEAR.\
However, holding and staking PEAR may unlock:

* Trading fee discounts up to 50%
* Volume based rebates
* Governance participation

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### Is Pear available on mobile?

Currently, Pear is optimized for desktop.\
Mobile web is possible and a PWA is on the roadmap.

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### Is there an API?

Yes — Pear offers an **API** for strategy automation and execution.\
See the Architecture and Integration section for docs and examples.