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# Fees and slippage on a simulated account
- URL: https://blog.dega.trade/fees-and-slippage-on-a-simulated-account/
- Published: 2026-10-11T09:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-11-10T20:11:03.000Z
- Description: The simulated trading fee is 0%, matching Lighter. Slippage, spread, funding and liquidation are simulated so the account behaves like the market.
- Author: Dega editorial
- Tags: Product

You send a market order for ETH. There is no fee line on the fill. The price you get is a little worse than the one on screen, though, and a bigger order would have done worse. That is on purpose.

A market with zero fees and perfect fills is a market that does not exist. Here is what a Dega account charges, what it simulates, and why.

## The costs inside the account

| Item                | Setting                         | Why                                                                             |
| ------------------- | ------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Trading fee         | 0% maker, 0% taker              | Matches Lighter's standard accounts, which pay 0% maker and 0% taker by default |
| Slippage and spread | Simulated realistically by size | Keeps a zero-fee market from being frictionless                                 |
| Funding             | Applied as Lighter applies it   | Leaving it out would give away a free edge on carry trades                      |
| Liquidation cost    | Up to 1%                        | Matches what Lighter charges to its insurance fund on partial liquidation       |

The fee and liquidation figures were verified against Lighter's documentation, captured on 31 August 2026.

Outside the account, the list is short. You pay the one-time $150 assessment fee, and Dega pays the gas on payouts. Payouts are USDG on Robinhood Chain, settled by smart contract, with no discretionary approval in between, up to $800 per person per day and within a lifetime limit of 20% of the deployable reserve at the moment the account is funded, $4,000 at the recommended $25,000 seed.

## How a fill is simulated

Your orders never reach Lighter's order book, and the balance is not your money. Orders fill against a simulated book built from Lighter's live depth.

At each price level, the simulator takes the quantity Lighter reports and subtracts what simulated orders have already consumed. Every Dega account shares that one book, so traders together cannot take more liquidity than the reference market shows.

An order becomes eligible after a set entry delay, currently 200 ms, and matches against the book as it stands at that moment. If market data goes stale or breaks, the simulator stops matching, cancels unfilled immediate-or-cancel remainders and keeps the fills already made. It resumes only after a fresh snapshot and a continuity check. Once a fill is committed, it is final.

## Why the friction is there

Unrealistic fills would be a free edge for sophisticated traders, raising the pass rate and what Dega owes together. Exploiting platform errors, latency or pricing anomalies in the simulation is [prohibited](https://blog.dega.trade/what-counts-as-prohibited-conduct/) for the same reason.

Dega's hedge positions are Dega's own, never yours, and they pay real execution costs on Lighter. The paper requires that real slippage to be measured and reconciled against the slippage simulated in trader accounts.

## Where friction could become revenue

The yellow paper is open about the points where these settings could turn into income for Dega, and it requires each to be disclosed.

- If simulated slippage exceeds Dega's real execution cost on the hedge, the difference is revenue and must be disclosed as such.
- Where Dega's own position was not liquidated, the simulated liquidation charge is revenue and must be disclosed.
- A spread on the funding rate is a possible lever. It would be disclosed as Dega's spread, never presented as the venue's rate.
- A taker fee is a possible lever too. The paper says it costs the zero-fee advantage and adds friction, and rates it worth doing after volume exists, not before.

Any of these that you could not see on a fill is disclosed in the rulebook before it is used. Each is a change to the rules, and each must pass a stated test before it ships.

Zero fees, realistic friction, and nothing invisible used before it is written down.

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*Nothing has launched. Every figure in this post is a design figure from the Dega yellow paper, version 2.0, dated 22 September 2026\. Dega is not an exchange, broker, custodian or investment manager. Accounts are simulated: orders do not reach Lighter's order book, and the account balance is not your money. Dega's hedge positions are Dega's own, never yours. Payouts are subject to a lifetime limit of 20% of the publicly visible reserve and a per-user cap of $800 a day.*