Simple FRR

Simple FRR is the lazy, set-and-forget baseline. It lends your whole share at FRR — Bitfinex’s Flash Return Rate, the platform’s average funding rate — so you match the crowd and get taken quickly. It is the Beginner-tier option in the Lazy / FRR-tracking category and takes no parameters.

1. How it works

In Stratum, a currency strategy is one container whose capital is split into allocation buckets, and each bucket runs a single algorithm on its slice. Simple FRR rests that slice as one offer priced at FRR for the bucket’s chosen loan length. Because FRR is the platform’s average funding rate, an offer placed there sits with the crowd and fills fast.

FRR is the lazy anchor every Stratum algorithm references. Simple FRR is the most direct use of it: no premium, no tiers, no rate timing — just the market average.

2. When to use it

• You want hands-off automation and near-certain fills.
• You are happy taking the market average rather than reaching for more.
• You want the simplest possible starting point before exploring the spread, maturity-aware, and event-driven strategies.

3. The tradeoff

Simple FRR never beats the average — that is the cost of simplicity. When the rate spikes, you are already lent out at the old rate and miss the peak. Its return potential is Low and its liquidity is High. Strategies like Rate Spread, Spike Catcher, or the percentile-aware carry algorithms exist precisely to chase the rates Simple FRR leaves on the table, at the cost of more complexity or slower fills.

4. Parameters

Simple FRR has no parameters to tune. You only choose the loan length (period) for the bucket and how much of your capital to allocate to it. Everything else is automatic.

5. Backtesting and what to expect

The same algorithm code runs in live trading and in backtests, so a backtest of Simple FRR exercises exactly what will run on your account. Backtests are modeled against real historical Bitfinex funding data and are explicitly optimistic — they assume full-size fills and ignore order-book depth and market impact. Backtests are modeled, not a guarantee, and past performance does not predict future results.

You are lending to margin traders and bear the credit risk of Bitfinex’s collateral system; Stratum does not guarantee returns. You can explore modeled outcomes on the calculator.

6. How Stratum runs it

Stratum places these offers for you through a scoped Bitfinex API key with funding read and write access — withdrawals and trading are rejected. Keys are encrypted with AES-256-GCM, and two-factor authentication is required before any key is stored. See how to add a Bitfinex API key and the security overview.

Browse all strategies on the strategies page.