You buy a spot Stock Token, and your balance shows part of your holdings as settled and part as unsettled. This post explains what those two states are, why the second one exists, and why neither one changes what you paid.

The short version: the trade is done and the price is locked. Delivery is often instant. When it isn't, it takes a few minutes and wraps up on its own.

The Two States

A settled quantity is the part of the Stock Token you purchased and had delivered. It sits in your wallet and moves freely. You can trade it or transfer it like any other token.

An unsettled quantity is the part of the position you already own, where on-chain delivery hasn't landed yet. It appears in your balance under the same ticker, at the same price and the same size it will have when it arrives.

Both are positions you own at a price that is already confirmed. The only difference between them is whether delivery has finished. More often that not, trades settle the moment they are confirmed.

Why There Is Sometimes a Delivery Window

Spot trading on Arcus runs on request for quote (RFQ). You ask for a price, and professional market makers compete to fill it. Liquidity is summoned rather than parked, which means no maker sits on standing inventory in every Stock Token waiting for quotes. That is what keeps quotes tight across the listed names, rather than spread thin across all of them.

It also means the maker commits to your price first and delivers the Stock Token second. Where the Stock tToken is in inventory, those two steps happen simultaneously and the trade settles instantly. Where part of the Stock Token has to be sourced, delivery typically completes within about 3 to 15 minutes.

This is worth putting in context. Most equity markets settle T+1. A trade executed on a Monday is delivered on Tuesday, with a clearing and custody chain in between. On Arcus, the same process is frequently instant or a few minutes at most, entirely on-chain, and you can watch it happen in your balance.

(P.S: this applies only to spot. Perpetual futures never resolve into an underlying asset, so there is no delivery step on the perps side of the venue.)

What You Hold in the Meantime

The Balances tab splits every spot holding into a settled and an unsettled quantity.

Here, the top row holds 500 AAPL in total: 200 AAPL settled and 300 AAPL unsettled. The 300 is a trade still settling. The unsettled figure indicates the amount still on its way, and it moves across to settled after it arrives. Once delivery completes, the unsettled side reads zero, which is also what an instantly settled trade shows from the start.

Both figures are denominated in the Stock Token (here, AAPL) and are two delivery states of the same holding, not two different assets in your wallet.

An unsettled quantity is already part of your holdings. It tracks the same price and counts toward the same position, and it is fully backed while you wait: your funds sit in escrow on one side, and the maker owes you the delivery of the Stock Token on the other.

There is nothing you need to do in the meantime. Once the maker delivers, the unsettled quantity becomes settled on its own: no claim step, nothing to approve, nothing to sign.

Where Your Money Sits While You Wait

Until the remaining Stock Token is delivered, what you paid sits in an escrow smart contract rather than going to the maker immediately.

Makers deliver as a matter of course, and a failure to deliver would be an extraordinary event. The escrow is there for that case: if the deadline passes without delivery, you reclaim automatically the full amount you paid for the unsettled quantity. In sum, your funds stay on your side of the trade throughout, until delivery.

Two Things Worth Knowing While You Trade

Your price is fixed at confirmation. And the market keeps moving afterwards, in both directions. The Stock Token sometimes lands with your position already up, sometimes down. That is the ordinary exposure of holding a position, not something the settlement window creates. You would see the same movement if delivery were instant and the market moved a minute later. What you paid was set before any subsequent changes happened.

Timing is the one thing the delivery window changes. An unsettled quantity can't be sold or transferred until it settles. So, if you trade in and out quickly and a fill doesn't settle instantly, build those few minutes in. Once settled, the Stock Token can move freely.

Beyond that, there is nothing to manage. Your price is locked when you confirm, what you paid is held in escrow until the Stock Token arrives, and your balance updates itself the moment it does.

The settled and unsettled figures are there so you can watch settlement happen rather than wonder about it. Most markets settle out of sight, over a day or longer. On Arcus, it is often instant, or minutes at most, and on-chain, in a transparent column where you have visibility.

For the full technical mechanics, including details onan unsettled Stock Token, see the wrapped tokens page in the Arcus documentation.

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Arcus is a blockchain-based smart contract protocol that permits self-custodial peer-to-peer trading of Stock Tokens, cryptoassets and perpetual futures. Arcus is not a regulated financial services provider, and it is not available in the U.S., Canada, United Kingdom and other restricted jurisdictions.

Stock Tokens are tokenised securities that provide economic exposure to a relevant underlying equity instrument or ETP through a contractual claim against the Issuer for a cash Redemption. Stock Tokens involve risks not present, or not present to the same extent, in traditional stock ownership, including private-key loss or compromise, limited redemption access, liquidity constraints, price or tracking divergences from the underlying, and uncertain or evolving regulatory treatment.

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