What is a Quanta index

Collectors use the word index for many things: the average in a price guide, a chart on a tracking site, a dealer's read of the room. On Quanta it means one exact thing, and that exactness matters because a market settles against it. This page defines the object: what the level measures, what counts as a constituent, how tickers work and what you hold when you trade one.

One number for the whole category

A Quanta index is a single number that follows the price of an entire category of graded collectibles. It is built from real sales of the cards in that category: the sales data behind the Quanta board, and the public on-chain record of vaulted card sales, each one settled in USDC with a price and a timestamp anyone can check. The index does not poll dealers, read asking prices or estimate. It takes what buyers actually paid and turns it into one level for the category. Where those sales come from is covered in The data source.

The object is the category. PKMN is not a single card. It is graded Pokémon as a whole, every card that trades often enough to be priced. When the level moves, the category moved, not one card having a strong week.

Constituents

The cards whose sales feed an index are its constituents, and each one is defined exactly: one card, at one grade, from one grader. A card in PSA 10 is a constituent. The same card in PSA 9 is a separate one. The same card in a BGS or CGC slab at a grade that looks equivalent is separate again.

There is a good reason for this. Collectors treat one card at two grades as two different objects and price them far apart, often by a wide multiple. An index that blended them would be averaging things nobody swaps one for one. Grade is part of what is being priced, and the constituent list records it card by card.

Constituents are chosen by rules, not by reputation. A card gets in because it trades often, between enough different buyers and sellers, above a minimum value, and it stays for as long as it keeps doing so. The reasoning behind each rule, and the filters that keep bad trades out, are in Methodology principles. Each index carries its own published specification with its exact rules and thresholds, and its constituent list is public alongside it (see Data and API).

The level

The level is the headline number on an index page. On the Quanta board every index is shown in dollars, rebased so that each one starts at $1.00 in May 2004 (a raw level of 1,000 equals $1.00). It is not the price of any one card and not a sum of card prices. Because every index shares the same starting point, a move reads directly as a ratio: an index at $3.00 stands at three times its May 2004 level, and any two indexes on the board can be compared side by side.

Each level is shown to two decimals, with its change over one day, one month, three months, one year and all time, and a full public history behind it. The board refreshes daily. A level is a measurement rather than a quote, so it is built to be recomputed: the history, the constituent list and periodic commitments are public, and anyone can check the number against the record.

Tickers

Every index has a ticker and a name. The ticker is a short uppercase symbol, and the name says what it covers. PKMN is graded Pokémon. It is the ticker of an index only: it is not the name of the project and it is not the protocol token (see The Quanta token).

When a category is deep enough to split, a segment adds a suffix after a hyphen: PKMN-V for vintage Pokémon, PKMN-M for modern, PKMN-U for ultra modern. Deep enough means each part has enough actively traded constituents to stand as an index on its own, measured exactly the way the parent was. How the family grows, and how the naming carries across categories, is covered in The index family.

A price you trade, not a slab you store

A position on PKMN is exposure to the price of graded Pokémon as a category. There is no card to pick, ship, store or insure. Think of the level the way you think of a published exchange rate: something you can look up, verify and trade against.

That is also what sets it apart from the value of any one slab on your shelf. The index measures the category as a whole.

Published and tradable

Every index on the board is published: level, history, constituents and specification, all in the open. A subset is tradable, meaning a perpetual market on that index runs on the Quanta DEX, on Solana, with USDC as collateral and leverage up to 20x. PKMN is the first tradable index, and its market is at /trade/PKMN.

An index page looks the same in both states. On a tradable index the trading panel is live, and nothing else differs: the level is the same number, computed the same way, from the same sales. Publishing does not depend on trading, and trading does not alter the index. What the market does with the level, and how the traded price is kept close to it, is explained in The DEX and Index price, mark price, last price. The first index, and the first market on the DEX, has its own page: PKMN, the first index. The sales every level is built from are the subject of the next page, The data source.