Published March 26, 2024
Humans possess an intrinsic fascination with speculation, a trait that binds us across cultures and generations. Blast’s native yield and gamified incentives are the perfect match for the long-tail of users looking for high-risk high-reward opportunities.
Perpetual contracts, or perps, are a distinctly crypto-native financial instrument, first brought into the mainstream by Bitmex. They have consistently captured the attention of traders, due to the capital efficiency that results from not having to own the underlying or deliver it by a specific maturity date.
While many attempts have been made to bring perps on-chain, Ethereum’s high transaction costs were an impediment for this narrative to take off, often forcing teams to develop their own application-specific chains. However, appchains break composability and fragment liquidity. This is where Blast has an advantage to onboard those projects who can make the most out of existing primitives, like concentrated liquidity, to offer perps that are only possible in DeFi, offering a clear differentiation with which CEXs simply cannot compete.
We have been genuinely impressed by the caliber of the candidates operating on Blast’s Big Bang competition. They demonstrate a clear understanding of traders’ needs, crafting solutions that are as innovative as they are practical. From our point of view, some of these platforms have the potential to mark a zero-to-one moment for perps trading on-chain, reminiscent of what Uniswap achieved for spot asset swaps.
Infinity Pools isn’t simply a perps provider, but rather a DEX with inherent perps infrastructure capabilities. One of the most attractive features of Infinity Pools is its ability to provide traders with theoretically unlimited leverage and no liquidations. This is possible because the protocol uses AMM (Automated Market Maker) liquidity and the concept of borrowing from a concentrated liquidity range, as opposed to relying on the standard order book model seen in traditional exchanges.
Infinity Pools positions itself in the midst of a significant problem in DeFi; leverage. Leverage is complicated, and different protocols have taken different approaches to provide on-chain traders with what they want. Problems arise when it comes to liquidation management, fee payments, oracle risks, etc. Providing higher leverage ratios relative to a trader’s provided margin means there’s no guarantee that liquidation can cover the cost of the loan used to fund leverage trading, resulting in defaulted loans.
The Infinity Pools approach involves securing liquidity to cover these risks beforehand, so that leverage can be properly unwinded without risk of default. A pool of concentrated liquidity dubbed the ‘Public Pool’ provides funds for traders to borrow, and then place into their own ‘Private Pool’. Each trader has their own pool, from which only they can swap with.
Another benefit of Infinity Pools is the ability to trade any asset permissionlessly. Use of its smart contracts free the protocol from having to rely on external price feeds via oracles. Leveraged traders borrow funds from LPs. making it possible to seamlessly support long-tail assets in a permissionless manner.
These attributes are what sets Infinity Pools apart from its peers:
10x More Assets: Similar to Uniswap, InfinityPools allows for a substantially greater number of assets to be listed and traded.
10x Faster Listings: The permissionless nature ensures rapid listing of assets without the bureaucratic constraints typical in centralized exchanges.
10x More Leverage: Traders can leverage positions significantly higher than traditional platforms, with 1,000 to 5,000x leverage on crypto assets, 10,000 to 20,000x on forex pairs, and up to 100,000x on correlated or pegged assets like stablecoins.
No Liquidations: In traditional perpetual markets, capital is divided among traders, market makers, and liquidators. InfinityPools eliminates liquidation penalties, ensuring that more capital remains between traders and market makers, enhancing expected returns for traders.
No Counterparty Risk: InfinityPools doesn’t rely on oracles, and positions are settled in a predetermined, mathematically guaranteed manner, mitigating counterparty risks.
The team at Infinity Pools consists of core contributors to Lemma Labs, which raised from notable investors including Standard Crypto, Dragonfly, Nascent, Multicoin, Robot Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Uniswap Labs Ventures, Wintermute, GSR, Kronos, and Folius Ventures, in 2021. Core contributors have a variety of backgrounds, including experience working at 0x Protocol, Goldman Sachs, Bridgewater, Uber, Paraswap, and more.
Infinity Pools plans to launch its mainnet soon, after undergoing audits on March 1st. For those looking to get involved, users can trade on a sandbox environment here. It should be noted that there is currently only one asset available for trading, which is $ETH. It is also worth mentioning that while Infinity Pools can theoretically provide ‘unlimited’ leverage (up to 10,000x), this is not necessarily applicable for all assets. Learn more about Infinity Pools in our dedicated insights report.
100xFinance offers spot and perps trading using a Central Limit Order Book (CLOB) with a focus on delivering a CEX-like experience with self-custodial accounts. The platform also offers a cross–margin system for more capital-efficient collateral management. Specifically, each 100x account can create 256 sub-accounts. Users will be able to access features they’ve come to expect from perp DEXs including market, limit, and stop loss orders.
Base assets available to trade include $ETH, $BTC, $SOL and $BLUR, with $BLAST being a confirmed pre-market futures market. Users can trade these assets directly through the dApps frontend or use the protocol’s API to build their own automated strategies.
100x’s design emphasizes capital efficiency, leveraging cross-margin and integrating with Native Blast Yield for enhanced returns. Aiming for a mainnet launch by mid to end of March, 100x plans to introduce trading in a variety of assets, including pre-launch perpetuals for tokens such as $BLAST, as well as MOVE contracts for trading volatility. These contracts are like perps except you can make money if the price moves in either direction, unlike perps where you only make money if the price moves in the correct direction. 100x’s inclusion of MOVE contracts is the primary differentiating factor between it and other perps DEXs on Blast and other networks, especially as more DEXs begin integrating pre-market trading and multichain asset trading of coins like $SOL.
Another key feature of 100x is its implementation of Gas-free trading, using an EIP-712 signature pattern to achieve this. Users sign an intent-based message to tell the platform what action they want to take, and this signature doesn’t cost gas. In addition to just saving gas fees, this means users don’t have to maintain a minimum balance to pay for gas. Users can even designate another address that can sign for trades on the users’ behalf, although these ~’sub-signers’ can’t withdraw funds themselves.
The fee structure, designed to facilitate on-chain settlement between takers and makers, promises competitive rates, with specific incentives like native Blast Yield on $USDB and $ETH, 100% protocol points distribution to traders, and unique 100x Finance Points for platform engagement. Taker/Maker fees for perps trading will be 2/-1 BPS, with Maker rebates offering an extra appeal for liquidity providers, encouraging participation and enhancing market depth.
100x Finance’s partners include oracle and price feed providers including Pyth and Stork, security and auditing firms including Dedaub, Sherlock and Immunefi bug bounties, and of course, Blast, the host network.
When trading, it’s prudent to manage risk and be wary of both initial health and maintenance margin levels. Initial health values will prevent any new trades from being opened on any given accounts subaccounts if the value drops to 0. Alternatively, when maintenance health drops to 0, this will qualify account collateral as liquidatable. Liquidations will target naked perp positions first, then spreads, then spot assets; this is according to each of these position’s unique risk parameters. Additionally, liquidators can liquidate positions from an account until their initial health value is 0, to prevent accounts from being overliquidated. The 100x insurance fund notably takes 25% of the profit generated by liquidators, with Account health being calculated as follows:
Despite being heavily incentivized, it is worth noting that the core team of contributors is known for their previous work at Rysk Finance, which brings a track record of both innovation and previous success building in DeFi. Specifically, the 100x team has collectively written 4 protocols in the derivatives category, holding upwards of $5M, and enabling $200M+ in volume with 0 incidents to date. This can potentially be a testament to the protocol’s security, in addition to Audits by Sherlock and Dedaub on February 26th and an additional audit coming in the future.
For those looking to get involved, the platform is yet to launch and turn on trading. However, those interested can look out for further announcements regarding 100x Horizon, the project’s incentive scheme which will allow users to earn “pre-XP” by completing certain actions for both 100x and its partners. 100x will also be sharing its developer points with users, as well as providing them with 100xP and 100x points, its own incentive schemes.
Blast Futures (BFX) is a perps DEX offering native yield that automatically compounds for passive income while offering an all-in-one platform with advanced trading tools.
One of the key features and differentiating factors is the use of Dynamic AMM that ensures that liquidity is provided in a smart way. BFX introduces a hybrid model that mixes AMM liquidity with a Limit Order Book, such that every position against the AMM and/or CLOB has a direct counterparty on the other side. The way this works is by superimposing the AMM’s liquidity curve onto the order book, allowing for passive liquidity provisioning into an order book.
For context, standard AMMs facilitate easy market entry through straightforward deposits, yet they compromise capital efficiency, a key advantage of order books. BFX recognizes these tradeoffs and introduces its Dynamic AMM. This innovation allows for passive deposits while optimizing liquidity. Unlike traditional xy=k models, the Fusion AMM adjusts bid/ask levels based on real-time market prices from various exchanges, rather than trade execution alone.
This hybrid model ensures that liquidity is always available and that the exchange can offer the tight spreads that characterize Central Limit Order Books(CLOBs). Anyone can be a market maker on BFX with an automated strategy that will optimize for LP returns. This is achieved with an integration with Elixir.
It is also worth noting that BFX shares a close relationship with Rabbit X (RBX). Both of them share the FAMM (Fusion AMM) technology and maintain a strategic relationship.
On the incentives side of things, BlastFutures is also committed to redistributing 90% of any airdrop or developer token that it receives back to users. Post-mainnet there will also be referral programs, allowing users to earn 16% bonus points.
Users have three ways to earn these rewards: by trading on BFX, inviting friends, and staking in the Dynamic Automated Market Maker (AMM). The allocation of points and gold to traders is based on trading volume and average position size, while inviting friends offers bonus points and gold, including a bonus for invites’ earnings. For stakers, 50% of points and gold are allocated to Dynamic AMM vault LP, with distribution based on TVL and duration of staking, promoting longer staking periods for more rewards. On top of these incentives, the project has displayed proactivity in listing in-demand tokens to trade, adding $SLERF and $BOME, memecoins on Solana.
SynFutures is a perpetual DEX that builds on the strengths of its proprietary AMM. This framework distinguishes itself by enabling single-token concentrated liquidity for derivatives trading, markedly enhancing capital efficiency and simplifying market participation.
SynFutures addresses the complexities and limitations of traditional liquidity provision by permitting concentrated liquidity in derivatives trading with a single token. Unlike traditional liquidity models that require liquidity providers (LPs) to contribute assets for both sides of a token pair, the Oyster AMM model allows for liquidity to be concentrated within specific price ranges using just one token, and incorporates leverage to boost capital efficiency. LPs are only required to specify the width of the price range instead of the lower and upper price of the range. All of this is achieved while retaining the permissionless nature of asset listings.
This model allows LPs to commit a fraction of capital across specified price ranges, boosting APYs.
At the same time, the integration of features such as a stabilized mark price mechanism and a dynamic penalty fee system to counteract price manipulation and flash loan attacks, ensures market integrity. This is done to protect LPs and limit order makers without impacting normal trading behavior. Hence, when a trade results in a greater deviation of the fair price to market price than before the trade, a stability penalty is charged in addition to the normal trading fees paid to LPs or limit order makers.
Additionally, the Oyster AMM’s approach to margin as opposed to inventory (as in traditional models) drastically improves capital efficiency for derivatives trading. The incorporation of an on-chain order book, native irreversible limit orders, and a simplified fee structure further refine the trading mechanism, making it more accessible and efficient.
SynFutures’ approach to derivatives trading is validated by its substantial achievements, including $23.14B in cumulative trading volume and a diverse listing of 246 pairs. With a strong backing from leading investors and a commitment to 100% airdrop to its users, SynFutures is also present among the Blast Big Bang Winners. SynFutures has raised $38M so far during different rounds from investors including Pantera, Polychain, Dragonfly, Standart Crypto, Framework, Hashkey Capital, and more.
SynFutures offers users the opportunity to triple their rewards through Blast, Blast Gold (Big Bang developer airdrop), and the new Oyster Odyssey (O_O) points program. It also airdrops O_O points to users of Blast, dYdX, GMX, and holders of Pudgy Penguins. Liquidity providers (including AMM LPs and makers) and traders (takers) are rewarded with Blast Points, Blast Gold, and SynFutures O_O Points, based on their contributions and trading volume, respectively. An initial snapshot on April 9, 2024, will kickstart the distribution of non-transferrable tokens as part of the rewards, with the program set to continue for up to three months.
Blitz, powered by Vertex’s Edge, is a DEX focused on trading efficiency, operating on the Blast L2 network. It provides fast access to a wide range of spot and perpetual markets with low trading fees. The platform integrates spot trading, perpetuals, and a money market, maintaining user control over assets. Blitz has competitive fees that are among the lowest in the DeFi space: zero basis points for makers and two basis points for takers across all markets.
Blitz offers a vertically integrated suite of DeFi products, including spot markets, perpetual markets, and integrated money markets, all within a single application on the Blast L2 network and universal margin accounts enabled by default. This cross-margined DEX protocol allows users to engage in trading activities across different asset classes without needing to switch between multiple platforms.
The platform utilizes a hybrid model that combines the best features of Automated Market Makers (AMMs) and Central Limit Order Books (CLOBs) to optimize liquidity and trading access. With Blitz, traders can efficiently manage their portfolios using unified cross-margin, which aggregates multiple positions’ liabilities to offset margin requirements, enhancing capital efficiency. Additionally, the integration of money markets enables borrowing and lending activities directly within the DEX, further streamlining the trading experience. Blitz aims to support more EVM-compatible chains, enhancing liquidity and trading opportunities for its users. Most importantly, all of this liquidity is unified in a single order book thanks to Edge’s integration.
A notable feature of Blitz is its synchronous order book liquidity through Vertex Edge, making it the first cross-chain solution of Vertex Edge. This approach aims to unify Blitz’s liquidity with the Vertex order book DEX on Arbitrum, attempting to provide a consistent liquidity pool across chains and reduce liquidity fragmentation. Vertex Edge functions as a sophisticated liquidity layer that synchronizes order books across multiple blockchains, facilitating seamless trades and enhancing liquidity access without the complexities traditionally associated with cross-chain trading.
Blitz’s technical setup is inspired by Vertex on Arbitrum, featuring a hybrid on/off-chain architecture that combines an off-chain Sequencer with on-chain settlement, aiming to ensure fast matching and scalability across the Blast network. Blitz provides its users with first access to a combined liquidity profile, integrating both Blitz and Vertex order books, enabling trades against a comprehensive source of cross-chain liquidity directly within the app.
Since its deposit only launched a week ago on March 1st, 2024, Blitz has gained $8.14 million in TVL and attracted over 2,600 users with a fully functioning Blitz app launching soon.
Blitz has also launched a Points Program but has not disclosed any specific backers, investors, or the existence of its own token. However, the points might be convertible into a token in the future. This points system is aimed at encouraging community engagement and could lead to further developments in rewards for the platform’s users. The platform has also announced plans to distribute 100% of its $BLAST developer allocation to the Blitz users.
While we’ve already detailed several key perps projects that won the Big Bang contest, there’s one more winner that we think our readers should be aware of; Bloom.
Bloom is a blast-native project, providing ‘simplified perpetuals trading’. The project is currently in its beta phase. Users can’t currently trade but they can participate in the project’s early LP program, consisting of depositing $USDB for $bUSDB, to receive native yield, blast airdrop rewards, and bloom points. Lockers of $bUSDB also receive a 5x points boost as well as an NFT.
Bloom aims to come in and solve some of the common pain points with perps trading relating to UX. Sponsored transaction costs will be used, as well as 1 click trades. Users deposit $USDB for $bUSDB to be used as collateral, earning native yield in addition to Bloom and Blast points with capital available to be used for margin trading.
The DEX will utilize Pyth oracles for low-latency pricing, as well as an additional Binance API checker. $SOL will be one of four base assets initially provided for trading, with the other 3 being $BTC, $ETH, and $BLUR. 100+ assets are planned to be added for trading by year’s end.
LPs receive 60% of protocol revenue, as well as 100% of Bloom’s $BLAST airdrop allocation, as well as Bloom points.
Bloom also differentiates itself from other perp DEXs by offering leveraged LPing, via locking. LPs can help to provide more stability to the protocol via locking for certain periods of time, in exchange for a greater share of protocol fees. The term locking refers to a soft lock; users can actually unlock their funds instantly, but a fixed 10% fee will be dedicated from their withdrawn balance.
Here’s an example from the docs
“LP 1 invests $100 into the protocol. LP 2 invests $100 and then locks it for 6 months. This means that LP 1 has 100 points, while LP 2 has 500 points (100 base points + 4x boost). If earnings for LPs were $100, then:
Locking isn’t the only way to earn rewards; LPs can potentially receive 5-10x the native $USDB yield (5%, though this has been raised to 15% due to base MakerDAO $DAI rate).
LPing $USDB rewards users via a tier-based approach:
Like several of the projects on the Blast itinerary, Bloom is a very young project. Items on it’s roadmap include:
When it comes to the team behind Bloom, it consists of 11 crypto native members with experience across verticals including engineering, VC, investment banking, backend and frontend engineering, and more, with 20 years+ of crypto experience spread out across the team.
Co-Founders include:
Sehaj – previously blockchain VC, crypto DAO, fintech, and M&A experience.
Brank – previously worked on Big Data and software development, leading a fintech platform and assuming a quant trader role at a hedge fund
Bloom has taken investments from Pantera Capital and Galaxy Digital, among other investors.
Aark Digital: a perpetual DEX that allows single-sided and delta-neutral LP, while providing 1000x leverage powered by LSTs and LRTs.
HMX: a perpetual DEX that provides multi-asset and cross-margin collateral, leveraged market making, and 1000x leverage.
DTX: Oracle-based perps for degens built with native Blast yield with 100+ assets and up to 100x leverage that allows LPs to choose to earn from standard pools or the alpha pool based on risk preferences.
Opyn: a protocol where users can invest $USDC, or $ETH to earn during sideways or volatile markets depending on their expectations from the market.
SphereX: an order book-based perpetual DEX that allows 50x leverage.
IntentX: an intend-based derivatives exchange that allows 250 pairs to be traded, with low fees, greater liquidity, and capital efficiency.
Core Markets: a perpetual DEX that uses native Blast yield to subsidy funding fees and IntentX’s intent-based liquidity.
Fenix Finance: a DEX that employs Unified AMM to provide the best trading experience for LPs and traders.
SuperCharged: a gamified prediction and perpetual market that allows leverage trading with 10-1000x.
Our main takeaway is that the Blast ecosystem will count on a diversity of approaches to address the market needs of different perps traders. This enriches the ecosystem, enabling varied use cases.
Contrary to the popular opinion that there is only one way to trade perps, Blast is strategically hosting different order books and AMM designs that challenge the popular view that projects should have their own appchain in order to offer a CEX-like user experience.
In fact, the projects that strategically avoid creating isolated appchains can benefit not only from leveraging Blast’s native yield opportunities, but also from network effects and positive-sum relationships with other projects, exploring synergies within the ecosystem.
This can take the shape of order books that prioritize low-latency and high-performance, as well as sophisticated AMM designs that leverage concentrated liquidity to their advantage. We are also glad to see the adoption of cross-margin engines and the development of proprietary AMMs that don’t currently exist on any other chain.
All things considered, this puts Blast at the forefront of what innovation at the DeFi level looks like in order to take perps to the next level, not only competing versus CEXs in UX, but also offering features that are only possible on-chain, such as higher leverage for trading long-tail assets.
Blast Futures (BFX)
https://bfx.trade/portfolio/referrals
SynFutures
https://oyster.synfutures.com/#/odyssey?tab=earn_points
Blitz Exchange
https://app.blitz.exchange/points
Revelo Intel has never had a commercial relationship with BLAST or any other project mentioned above. This report was not paid for or commissioned in any way.
Members of the Revelo Intel team, including those directly involved in the analysis above, may have positions in the tokens discussed.
This content is provided for educational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice. You should do your own research and only invest what you can afford to lose. Revelo Intel is a research platform and not an investment or financial advisor.
