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Vanna’s perps run on Phoenix, Ellipsis Labs’ perpetuals exchange. Vanna doesn’t run its own perps engine. Instead, each margin account is its own Phoenix trader, and USDC from the margin, borrowed or not, funds its positions.

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How a trade works

1

Wrap USDC

Ember converts the margin’s USDC to phUSD, Phoenix’s collateral token, 1:1.
2

Deposit to Phoenix

The phUSD moves into the margin’s Phoenix trader account (cross-margined across all its Phoenix positions).
3

Place a market order

An immediate-or-cancel order fills against Phoenix’s book in the same transaction. There is no keeper and no pending order.
4

Close

A reduce-only market order closes the position. Then Phoenix collateral is withdrawn and Ember converts phUSD back to USDC in the margin account.
Opening is one transaction. Closing and withdrawing are two.

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Markets and leverage

Vanna only allows markets listed in its oracle’s market book. Each market has a leverage cap: the order’s exposure, plus every other open position, must stay within the cap × the trader’s Phoenix collateral. On the hosted fork: A margin can hold at most 4 open Phoenix positions.

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Risk

The whole Phoenix account counts as one collateral line in the margin’s health factor: collateral plus each position’s equity at the oracle’s index price, net of funding and the fee to close, floored at zero. Borrowing power counts losses but not unrealized gains. If the margin becomes liquidatable, a liquidator closes the Phoenix positions with reduce-only orders priced close to the index, withdraws the collateral back to the margin as phUSD, then repays part of a debt and takes phUSD (or another allowed token) in return, all in one transaction.
Stock perps (TSLA, META) use an index that goes stale while the stock market is closed. Those markets carry lower leverage caps for that reason.