gTrade January 2023 Recap
Raising the Bar to New Heights
Hi gTraders,
Our Arbitrum launch took months of concerted effort to put together, but it paid off in a big way in January. This past month was the most profitable in gTrade’s history, surpassing the highs of April 2022!
Last month, gTrade set new all-time highs for trading volume, earnings, and distributed profits, including a significant high mark for $gDAI Vault TVL. Key growth drivers included: the Arbitrum launch, two new asset class listings, the $100k trading contest on Arbitrum, increased composability through partnerships/integrations, and the heightened presence of gTrade on crypto media.
We break down all of these catalysts and the underlying metrics in this recap, chronicling the behind-the-scenes work that made January a landmark month for the protocol.
Let’s dive in!
January 2023 Revenue Distribution
Profit distribution, trading volume, and vault TVL all more than tripled from December to January:
- Monthly Traded Volume went from $1.10B in December ➔ $3.42B in January.
- Profit Distribution went from $624k in December ➔ $2.3M in January.
- $gDAI Vault TVL (Polygon + Arbitrum) went from $14.4M at the end of December ➔ $42.7M in January
Trading Volume All-Time-High & Liquidity Efficiency
Peak volume: gTrade had higher trading volume during individual weeks of January 2023 than it did over the entirety of December 2022!
gTrade saw over $900m in volume across each week of January, surpassed $1b in weekly trading volume for 2 of those weeks, and set an all-time high for single week trading volume on the platform from the 23rd to the 30th.
These new highs in volume have also allowed the platform to showcase its unrivaled capacity for liquidity efficiency. The combination of gTrade’s unique synthetic architecture, and its unified liquidity model (the $gDAI Vault) allowed it to effortlessly facilitate over $1B in weekly volume with only $20M-40M of liquidity.
A New User Milestone: Over 10k gTraders
User growth was a key contributor to the record breaking month. gTrade started January with 9,164 users, and ended the month with 10,463 users! This 14.1% monthly increase is one of the largest seen on the platform, both in absolute and relative terms.
Profit Distribution All-Time High
$GNS stakers were some of the biggest beneficiaries of the explosion in trading volume, racking up their own record-breaking month in terms of fee accrual.
gTrade set a new all-time high for trading fees during the week of January 23rd, bringing in $839k in platform fees off of the record $1.19B trading volume.
$GNS Stakers receive 34% of all platform fees, resulting in $707k over the course of January!
In total, gTrade has accrued $2.3M in earnings in January to place third on Token Terminal’s 30D earnings leaderboard, behind only Ethereum and OpenSea. Few protocols have earnings that so closely track their revenue — but with only $15.3k in token incentives over this 30D period, over 99% of gTrade’s protocol revenue translates directly to earnings.
$gDAI Vault TVL All-Time High
$gDAI Vault TVL between Polygon and Arbitrum reached a new all-time high of $42M in January!
January’s vault TVL constitutes an 82% increase from the previous all-time-high of $23M in 2022, which showcases the demand for the $gDAI Vault on Arbitrum as the majority of this influx in TVL came from the new chain:
Given that the $gDAI Vault was launched on Arbitrum on January 1, 2023, this influx in vault TVL of $25M $DAI occurred only within the span of 30 days!
As of writing, the $gDAI Vault is currently the largest holder of $DAI on Arbitrum with a balance of over $32M $DAI, accounting for 31.85% of the entire supply on the chain.
As the Arbitrum $gDAI Vault grew and the over-collateralization remained strong and growing, we decided at the end of January to increase the percentage of trading losses going to $GNS burns up from 1% to 3%!
We’ve gone over the key metrics that added up to a record-setting month in January, but what are the factors that have driven this demand for gTrade?
New Asset Classes: Commodities and Indices
The $gDAI Vault’s single-liquidity model for all trading pairs enables gTrade to offer a multitude of asset classes as well as more exotic pairs.
In January, we listed two new asset classes on-chain:
Commodities:
- $XAU (Gold) — 0.01% fixed spread, 0.05% fee — up to 250x leverage
- $XAG (Silver) — 0.04% fixed spread, 0.08% fee — up to 150x leverage
Note: These assets have different fees and spreads because Gold (XAU) is a Tier 1 commodity on gTrade, while Silver (XAG) belongs to Tier 2.
Indices:
- $SPY (S&P 500)
- $QQQ (NASDAQ-100)
- $IWM (RUSSELL 2000)
- $DIA (Dow Jones Industrial Average)
All indices feature 2–35x leverage, a 0.05% fee, a 0.01% base spread, and a max open interest of $1M.
More info on the fees and spreads per asset class can be found here.
Most importantly — both commodities and indices on gTrade have zero price impact! After all, the price of gold can’t be manipulated.
We also added support for our $GME, $TSLA, and $AMZN pair’s post-split prices!
The addition of these new asset classes is timely, as trading them counts towards your leaderboard standing for the 100k $DAI Trading Contest on Arbitrum, which we briefly revisit below.
$100k Arbitrum Trading Contest
Our trading contest on Arbitrum with $100k $DAI worth of prizes acted as an additional driver for trading volume in January. Our team spared no effort in creating a trading leaderboard that was not only aesthetically pleasing but also highly functional. It is the only trading leaderboard of its kind that can update PnL and ranking in real time!
New Integrations
We launched $gDAI, our first composable gToken, so that other protocols may build on top of the $gDAI Vault. The launch on Arbitrum has been well received by fellow protocols within the ecosystem, with many incorporating $gDAI and $GNS into their platforms.
- Trader Joe, one of the most well-known DEXs, launched a GNS/ETH Pool on Arbitrum which was instrumental in bringing new $GNS liquidity to the chain.
- Gamma Strategies launched Uniswap v3 GNS/DAI Gamma Positions on both Polygon and Arbitrum, for LPs to make the most of the liquidity they provide.
- Sperax launched a gDAI/USDs Demeter farm that earns depositors rewards in $SPA, $GNS, and $DAI.
- Beefy Finance added $GNS Vaults for both Polygon and Arbitrum to auto-compound $GNS rewards in just a couple of clicks!
- DeBank, one of the premier portfolio trackers in the space, now tracks both $gDAI vaults on Polygon and Arbitrum.
- InsurAce now provides insurance for both Polygon and Arbitrum $gDAI Vault, by covering smart contract vulnerabilities for both vaults.
- Kyberswap has listed $gDAI on Polygon and Arbitrum. LPs to their $gDAI pools receive improved swap rates and optimized fees on their platform.
- 0VIX Protocol has automated a liquidation-proof strategy that yields boosted $gDAI Vault returns on Polygon.
- Voyager, a cross-chain dAPP powered by Router Protocol, has whitelisted $GNS to allow users to swap/buy $GNS across 10 blockchains from the DApp!
- Giddy is a browser wallet that aims to onboard more retail users to DeFi by simplifying (and integrating) staking into its front end. It’s launched a $GNS Staking Pool in its app where users can stake $GNS in a single click — auto-compounded, with zero gas fees.
January gave us front-row seats to the power of composable network effects, ushering in a variety of new venues and use cases for both $gDAI and $GNS.
Crypto Media Exposure
The rise in trading volumes, fees, and TVL caught the attention of quite a few media outlets in January, including:
The Defiant, which published a piece on gTrade that highlights the platform’s edge for on-chain forex trading, showcasing the on-chain potential for one of the biggest markets in traditional finance.
Coindesk, which came out with an article highlighting gTrade’s massive $1.5B post-launch trading volume on Arbitrum. Two weeks after the publication of this article, gTrade has already doubled that figure to currently exceed $3B in Arbitrum trading volume.
Trading Experience
The dev team has been hard at work to optimize the user experience on gTrade. The following updates were made to enable larger position sizes, better spreads, and bigger max OIs:
Increased Max Collateral Size on Arbitrum
At the outset of January, the max collateral per trade on Arbitrum was 5k $DAI, which we have incrementally increased to a max of 50k $DAI per trade.
Increased Max Open Interest for $ETH from $3M ➔ $5M
This decision has helped propel ETH/USD to the top traded pair on gTrade during January, surpassing $1.5B in synthetically-traded volume. For comparison, aggregate volume for all pairs in December was $1.1B.
$BTC and $ETH Spreads
Both are now fixed at 0.04%, much tighter than the frequent .1%+ spreads seen previously. A win for users, who can now trade with more size and tighter spreads on gTrade.
Higher Timeframe Candles Load 20x Faster
We’ve optimized how higher timeframe candles (1hr and upwards) were generated on the front end. Higher time frame candles used to load slowly on gTrade, but they now load instantly!
Improved Price Feed Scaling on the Website Backend
We’ve come up with a solution that updates prices for the front-end and NFT bots more frequently while saving data transfer. The net result is a more efficient use of data and better UX.
What’s on the Horizon
January showed us what the platform was capable of achieving both in volume and liquidity efficiency when paired with demand from Arbitrum.
We’ve deliberated on what the next top priority should be, and decided to dedicate ourselves to progressing on the architecture for lookbacks in the upcoming months. This will give the oracles the ability to store recent past prices in memory in order to guarantee the execution of all orders, even if they are triggered slightly late (due to for example blockchain congestion).
We expect this addition will result in the most outsized returns for the protocol and users by:
- Guaranteeing the execution of take-profits, limit / stop orders, stop-losses, and liquidations on all pairs, for all asset classes.
- Decentralizing the pricing stream used by our front end and NFT bots, since each oracle will host one.
- Reducing the latency for trades by up to 1 second (oracles will use WebSocket instead of REST APIs).
- Improving the success rate for our NFT bots (no more missed triggers due to being 1 second late).
- Improving platform risk management through more accurate PnL (missing a liquidation or stop loss becomes impossible for example).
Lookbacks are one feature that ticks a variety of boxes for the protocol by improving UX, security, NFT bot performance, and infrastructure decentralization.
2023 started off with a bang for gTrade, and we have much more in the pipeline.
Are you ready to come along for the ride?
