Key Concepts
Atomica is the credit engine underneath every Arenas Financing Market. This page defines the objects and terms used throughout the Atomica section so the rest of the docs stay short.
The building blocks
Financing Market
The market contract for one real-world program (e.g. Brazil – Coffee – USDC). Holds the request → approve → receive → repay logic and routes funds between borrowers and pools.
Pool (Financing adapter)
The liquidity side of a market. LPs deposit the asset token and receive pool shares; the pool supplies capital to the market when a borrower draws down.
Asset token
The single ERC-20 a market uses for both supply and repayment (typically a stablecoin such as USDC).
Access token (NFT)
A borrower’s eligibility credential in a market. Owning the access token is what lets an address create requests and draw down — there is no ERC-20 collateral to post.
Financing request
A borrower’s ask: an amount, a minimum acceptable amount, a rate ceiling (or fixed repayment), and a duration. Reviewed before any money moves.
Financing
An active loan created once an approved request is drawn down. Tracks obligations until repaid.
Obligations
The live on-chain accounting of what a borrower owes on a financing: principal, interest, and other obligations.
Intent
A standing liquidity offer from a pool — an amount available at a given rate. Draw-downs are filled from intents, cheapest first. See Intents & Liquidity.
Two kinds of financing
A request is created as one of two types, fixed at request time:
Interest-accrual — interest accrues over time against a borrower-set rate ceiling (
maxRate). Open-ended; repay principal and accrued interest whenever due.Fixed-repayment — the borrower commits to a single fixed repayment amount over a set duration, rather than an accruing rate.
The lifecycle at a glance
Every financing follows the same path. The important detail — often misunderstood — is that approve and receive are two separate steps:
The approver authorises an amount (possibly partial). This moves no funds — it opens a timed receive window.
The borrower later draws the money down themselves inside that window, with liquidity auto-selected from lender intents.
See Financing Request Lifecycle for the full state machine and statuses.
Undercollateralized & approval-gated
Unlike a typical money market, Atomica has no on-chain collateral and no price-based liquidation:
Eligibility is the access token, not locked collateral.
Every draw-down requires an approver’s sign-off.
Repayment is backed by an off-chain legal agreement, enforced off-chain.
A non-performing loan can be sold on a secondary market at a discount, with proceeds refunded to the pool’s LPs.
See Roles & Permissions for who can do what, and Atomica Risks for how these trade-offs are managed.
Supported networks
Base
8453
Mainnet
Arbitrum One
42161
Mainnet
Boba Network
288
Mainnet
Base Sepolia
84532
Testnet
Sepolia
11155111
Testnet
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