Story

GPU rental prices are super volatile but there's no derivatives market to hedge. I built a perpetual futures platform to see what this could look like.

The idea is airlines hedge jet fuel, starbucks hedges coffee beans - as GPU compute becomes critical infrastructure the same hedging tools should exist. Not sure if anyone actually needs this but it was interesting to build.

How it works: - Pulls live H200 spot prices from Vast.ai every 15s into a tradeable index - Full perp mechanics: funding rates, mark price calc, real-time P&L - Event-driven Rust backend with supervisor pattern and circuit breakers - Next.js frontend with TradingView charts, real-time WebSocket updates

What's real vs simulated: - Real: Index construction, funding rate engine, forward curve, state persistence - Simulated: Order book depth and trade matching (its a single-client demo)

The backend is the part I'm most proud of - isolated tasks coordinated by a supervisor, each has it's own state machine so if one component fails it doesn't take down the others. Tried to build it with production patterns in mind even though its just a demo.

Also made a 15-page derivatives pricing doc that covers the economic model and hedging scenarios. Basically: rental prices = f(CAPEX, utilization, depreciation) so futures pricing reveals market expectations about GPU supply/demand.

GitHub: https://github.com/zacharyfrederick/compex

Would love feedback on the architecture or if the market mechanics actually make sense. First time building something like this.