DerivaDEX – a new DEX for derivatives contracts on Ethereum – is unveiling their new DeFi product along with announcing a $2.7M raise from leading investors.
We’re finally ready to reveal DerivaDEX, a derivatives DEX rivaling the performance and UX of centralized exchanges while letting traders keep control. Learn about our team, our DDX token, and our strategic investors – then sign up for early access! 🔥🔥https://t.co/0p5xZMJOmt
— DerivaDEX (@DDX_Official) July 2, 2020
DerivaDEX is aiming to build a community-owned exchange for traders to speculate on and hedge with a suite of leveraged derivatives products in a non-custodial, transparent nature in line with the ethos of DeFi. On brand with the current trend, the exchange will be underpinned by native governance token (DDX) which will be distributed to users via a liquidity mining model. While details are sparse, DerivaDEX is planning on launching in Q3 2020 while also kicking off a series of incentivized opportunities for early partners and adopters, including testnet competitions, insurance mining, and more.
With today’s announcement, the team also disclosed their $2.7M investment round led by some of the top investors and community members in DeFi. Notable names include Polychain Capital, Dragonfly Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Three Arrows Capital, Calvin Liu, and others.
In the broader lens, DerivaDEX is looking to bridge the gap at the intersection of trading and blockchain engineering to build an intuitive, secure, transparent derivatives exchange that can compete with the liquidity and UXs of centralized exchanges while providing the security and transparency of DEXs.
DerivaDEX is attempting to solve this with three core properties:
- DerivaDEX DAO – a decentralized autonomous organization responsible for managing the protocol and minimizing any single point of failure. The DAO will be governed by the protocol’s native token, DDX.
- Open Order Books w/ on-chain settlement: DerivaDEX’s system offers capital efficiency by building an order book market style with off-chain price fees, matching engine, and liquidation operators to solve for speed and efficiency. Moreover, this design enables the DEX to represent any asset in existence with minimal slippage.
- Liquidity Mining: DerivaDEX is aiming to leverage the emerging trend of liquidity mining to bootstrap and incentivize participation in governance and operations of the DEX.
Closing Thoughts
With current non-custodial derivatives exchanges dominated by dYdX along with the recent entrance of MCDEX, the DeFi derivatives exchange sector is starting to heat up. Given BitMEX’s historical dominance in offering perpetual swaps, there’s no shortage of an addressable market for these protocols either. Billions of dollars in volume are traded on a daily basis with these exchanges, so offering a non-custodial and entirely transparent alternative (with an intuitive UX) should be enticing for the DeFi community.
The cherry-on-top with the recent entrants of MCDEX and now DerivaDEX is the introduction of liquidity mining (or yield farming). Users can now earn some attractive rewards by using the respective exchange products, something that dYdX and CEXs at large currently lack.
As mentioned, the team is planning on launching a suite of incentivized programs for new users to test out the product. If you’re keen on getting involved, you can sign up here to be notified of any of the upcoming programs.
For more details on DerivaDEX, you can read up on their official announcement post here. And if you’re looking to stay up to date on the latest developments with the new exchange, make sure to follow them on Twitter!
Analyst at Bankless – one of the leading resources for open finance. Lucas is an active contributor to the DeFi ecosystem with appearances in other notable DeFi outlets including The Defiant and Our Network. He has years of experience working with dozens blockchain and token startups where he focused on token economics, marketing, and growth.