Sub-account

A secondary trading account linked to a master account, with its own balance and positions but no private key of its own. Everything on it is signed by the master account or by an authorised agent wallet.

Definition

A sub-account is a separate ledger under the same ownership. It holds its own collateral and its own positions, and it is margined on its own, but it is controlled entirely from the master account and has no independent key.

What it is for

Separating risk that should not be pooled. Under cross margin, everything in one account shares collateral, which means an experiment can drain the buffer under a position you intended to keep. Moving the experiment into a sub-account puts a wall between them.

The same reasoning applies to running several strategies at once, to separating an automated strategy from manual trading, and to keeping the accounting for a set of trades cleanly apart.

What it is not

It is not a second identity. The link to the master account is on-chain and visible, so a sub-account gives no privacy and no separation from anything the master account is subject to.

It is not extra protection against a compromised master key either. Whoever controls the master account controls every sub-account under it.

Practical points

Funding moves between master and sub-account as an explicit transfer, which means a sub-account can be liquidated while collateral sits idle next door. If you are running one, know how quickly you can move funds into it.

Fee tiers, staking discounts and referral relationships may be evaluated per account or across the group depending on the venue, which is worth checking if a discount matters to your costs.

Where you will run into it

In the account menu of perpetual DEXs that support them, and in API setups, where a bot is commonly pointed at a dedicated sub-account so its exposure cannot reach the main balance.