Pricing
Firelight prices coverage from a per-market premium rate that reflects the risk components the protocol monitors in real time. This page explains, at a high level, what drives a premium and what is published on-chain. It avoids formulas. The methodology reference is in Risk and Pricing Model.
What drives the premium
A market's premium reflects Firelight's live view of that market's risk, built from two independent sides:
Economic side. Market-driven risk. The protocol monitors a near-term bad-debt view (how likely a bad-debt incident is over the next 30 days, and how severe it would be) and a structural graph overlay that watches relationships between collateral and the loan tokens it backs. Both contribute to the economic component of the premium.
Technical side. Code and infrastructure driven risk: smart contract bugs, oracle and integration fragility, upgrade patterns, and chain-level posture. This is scored separately and forms the technical component of the premium.
Across both sides, signals are organized across the same four risk components and updated continuously:
Blockchain
Network incidents, finality and validator health
Protocol
Audit status, exploit history, oracle and admin-control changes
Asset
Volatility, liquidity depth, depeg behavior
Strategy
Leverage, composition, liquidation headroom
On top of the expected cost of covering a market, the premium includes the cost of the capital backing it. Higher monitored risk on either side means a higher rate. A critical signal (such as an active exploit or a lapsed audit) can remove a market from coverage entirely.
What is published on-chain
For each approved market, the Cover Registry publishes, refreshed every 30 days:
Base premium rate
The market's premium as a percentage of coverage
Available limit by protocol
How much coverage capacity remains available for that protocol this period
Within a period the published rate is fixed for program operators. Between periods it can move as the monitored risk view updates.
From rate to program operator premium
A program operator's premium is the coverage-weighted blend of the per-market rates across the markets they select, applied to the coverage amount for the 30-day period and paid through the vault operations. The quote shows the blended rate, the per-market rates that drive it, and the total premium due.
Numbers in any worked example are illustrative. Published rates and available limits vary by market and period, and the detailed pricing methodology is under active calibration. Cover Registry values take precedence.
Capacity limits
Coverage on a market is available only up to the published available limit for that protocol. If a program operator's requested allocation exceeds the available limit, the matching engine reduces the allocation to what remains and either reallocates within the program operator's declared set (if capacity exists) or returns a partial match with a proportional premium refund. Markets not on the approved list cannot be quoted.
Where to read next
Risk Pricing Framework for the high-level model.
Risk and Pricing Model for the methodology reference.
Claims Process for how a covered incident becomes a payout.
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