Two major announcement today from dYdX and newcomers Futureswap. dYdX launched a private alpha for perpetual leveraged bitcoin futures today. https://medium.com/dydxderivatives/dydx-launches-btc-perpetual-contract-market-68f59b193f7e
The interesting thing about dYdX's new protocol is that funding interest on positions is paid by whichever side is less-leveraged (no liquidity providers, just long and shorts balancing out).
"Like other perpetual contracts, we use a “funding rate” to incentivize traders to take the “unpopular” market position and help tether the price of the Perpetual. The funding rate operates similarly to a dynamic interest rate on traders’ positions, paid by longs and received by shorts, or vice-versa, depending on market conditions."
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ceMNUTN1FmK6fYmtWz1qB6QGgSAIx6WpevODRmmV28k/edit
But the Futureswap exchange is a lot more interesting as the leverage available is a lot higher (20x vs dYdX's 10x) and liquidity providers are able to profit from their funds being used by leveraged traders who pay a fee on each trade, in addition to a dynamic funding rate (DFR). It's basically Uniswap but with up to 20X leverage and no slippage on larger trades.
The FDR is similar to dYdX's funding rate mechanism but with different characteristics.
With just a 100 $DAI at 10X leverage you can go long 5.8716 ETH with a liquidation price of 160.57.
Futureswap launched in alpha today with a single pair ETH/DAI and LPs can now deposit funds to test it. The pool now has a 463 ETH and 65k DAI with most of the funds borrowed by traders. The APY is 2.55%
All of this is completely on-chain! https://exchange.futureswap.com/
Note: This is alpha-level software so you should not risk more than you're willing to lose. Futureswap says an audit from OpenZeppelin is still pending, so I would be extremely careful until the report is released. There could be all sorts of unknown risks here, so be extremely cautious.
