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What is Permafrost

Permafrost is an open-source DeFi trading framework. It is an agent runtime built around a stable Strategy SAPI: write a deterministic Go strategy, register it, and the framework handles exchange adapters, swap routing, position reconciliation, PnL accounting, risk gates, the killswitch, decision provenance, and LLM augmentation.

Strategies are first-class extensions, not patches. Each strategy lives as its own subdirectory under strategies/, calls strategy.Register in init(), and is enabled by adding one blank-import line to both cmd/permafrost/strategies.go (for the CLI's strategy backtest) and cmd/permafrostd/strategies.go (for the daemon supervisor). The framework knows nothing about any specific strategy -- BuildStrategy is a pure registry lookup.

The OSS framework ships six reference strategies: noop, dca_buy, market_maker_basic, plus three Bittensor alpha-token strategies (alpha_dca, alpha_momentum, alpha_yield). Real strategies -- basis trades, additional market makers, anything you can express as deterministic Go -- are yours to build, share, or keep private under strategies/private/.

Status​

MVP. Single-operator, local-first. v2 will introduce hosted vaults with on-chain accounting; the v1 framework is designed not to preclude it.

Who is this for​

  • Quant operators who want to run a self-custodied trading bot without trusting a centralized service or learning a Python framework's idioms.
  • Strategy developers who want a real Go agent runtime to plug into instead of building one from scratch.
  • Teams that want to ship multiple strategies on shared infrastructure (one daemon, one database, one set of risk rules).

What you get out of the box​

Framework

  • A deterministic agent loop with paired-execution invariants (swap-before-order for delta-neutral trades).
  • Exchange adapter for Hyperliquid (perp), with OpenOrders + idempotent place/cancel.
  • Swap adapters for Solana (Jupiter), EVM chains (1inch v6 -- Ethereum, Base, Avalanche, BSC), and Bittensor (Subtensor add_stake_limit / remove_stake_limit for subnet alpha tokens).
  • A self-custodied keystore. Private key bytes never leave the internal/wallet boundary. Solana ed25519, Hyperliquid/EVM secp256k1, Bittensor sr25519 (SS58 prefix 42).
  • Position reconciliation, PnL accounting, NAV tracking.
  • A real killswitch -- cancels every open order, flattens shorts via reduce-only market orders, and (opt-in) liquidates spot legs back to USDC via the configured swap router.
  • Pre-trade risk + circuit breakers (drawdown, daily loss, funding flip, …).
  • Optional LLM-veto path via an OpenAI-compatible inference client (OpenAI, OpenRouter, Groq, vLLM, Ollama, etc.).
  • Decision provenance: every order links back to the exact prompt and model response.
  • A CSV-driven backtester.

Reference strategies

  • noop -- minimal smoke-test strategy.
  • dca_buy -- deterministic dollar-cost-averaging into a configured spot asset.
  • market_maker_basic -- paired bid/ask quoting on Hyperliquid with optional LLM veto.
  • alpha_dca -- DCA into a fixed set of Bittensor subnet alpha tokens.
  • alpha_momentum -- rotate into top-K subnets by rolling price momentum.
  • alpha_yield -- stake into highest stability-rank subnets, periodic rebalance.

Operator tooling

  • make demo -- one command from git clone to a paper-mode agent posting decisions in your terminal.
  • make demo-bittensor -- one command spins up Postgres + permafrostd + Subtensor in Docker and runs three live alpha-token agents against a freshly bootstrapped subnet.
  • permafrost init -- interactive setup wizard (config + keystore passphrase + first-agent template).
  • permafrost doctor -- preflight check for Go, Docker, DB, keystore, inference providers, RPCs, registered strategies.
  • permafrost strategy-new <name> -- scaffolds a new strategy package and registers it in the build.
  • A multi-arch Docker image (linux/amd64 + linux/arm64) published to GHCR, with a cli compose service for one-off commands.
  • A read-only Trading Desk web UI -- arctic-themed React + Vite dashboard with hand-authored pixel-art SVG sprites of the cast.

Next steps​