gTrade Quarterly Report: Q1 2024
I — Introduction
Q1 has been the most successful quarters in gTrades history, highlighted by the introduction of multi-collateral trading and implementation of STIP campaign. Multi-collateral trading enables traders to open positions using two widely used new collaterals : USDC and WETH. On the other side, the STIP campaign that kicked of in January offered 4.5M ARB tokens to incentivize our platform.
Multi-collateral & STIP, in combination with many of our other efforts resulted significant growth in for many key indicators and hitting several milestones like hitting a new all time high on our daily volume.
Looking ahead to Q2 2024, gTrade will undergo significant technical updates aimed at substantially enhancing our traders’ UX by the introduction of v8 and v9. This will include an audit for the entire codebase, Smart Contract Trading, Partials, gas fee reductions, increased position sizes per address, and much more.
II — Key Metrics
In the first quarter of 2024, gTrade has consistently been in the top 5 perp DEXes in term of volume (data from DefiLlama volume https://defillama.com/derivatives).
Cumulative volume
gTrade’s cumulative volume grew from $53.86b to $67.73b, rising by more than $13.87b (+25.8%). General market volatility continued to the upside for the majority of Q1, especially for majors. This, alongside the presence of the Arbitrum STIP-campaign, naturally contributed to this growth.
GNS token holders revenue
GNS Stakers earned over $5.8m in Q1 vs $2.27m in Q4, representing an impressive +155.5% increase in direct revenues for stakers. With the introduction of multi-collateral, $GNS stakers now earn revenues in $DAI, $USDC and $WETH, making staking even more attractive.
Throughout the majority of Q1 2024, $GNS consistently ranked among the top three tokens in terms of holder revenue. This achievement, bolstered by multi-collateral options and STIP incentives, highlights the effectiveness of last year’s tokenomics upgrade, which saw $GNS stakers’ revenue soar by over 60%
Unique traders, amount of trades
Q1 2024 unique traders increased by 35% reaching 24.7k cumulative daily traders since inception. Compared to the previous quarterly report, the larger increase is due to several factors, including the introduction of multi-collateral and Arbitrum STIP incentives.
III — Market Dynamics
The latest quarterly report underscores the increasingly competitive nature of the perpetual DEX market, which appears to be nearing saturation with the entry of numerous AMM and orderbook-based perp DEXes. Airdrops and incentives continue to dominate, driving the volume rankings. It remains to be seen if these trading volumes can be sustained once the initial airdrops and trading rewards come to an end.
Specifically, perp DEXes operating on Arbitrum have experienced a notable rise in trading volume market share, coinciding with the initiation of “Short-Term-Incentives Program (STIP)” incentives. Conversely, trading volumes on Optimism have diminished following the end of their incentives.
In the face of escalating competition, gTrade is strategically distinguishing itself from competitors on multiple fronts:
- gTrade continues to lead the perpetual DEX market in offering Real-World Asset (RWA) trading, including FX and commodities. To enhance our dominance in the sector, gTrade has become the first perpetual DEX to list two new rare metals, Platinum and Palladium after having listed Oil (WTI) last year.
- gTrade continues to employ an aggressive listing strategy to boost user retention and attract new traders. gTrade offers the highest number of pairs available for trading As of the end of Q1 2024, more than 157 trading pairs are available on our platform. Traders can rely on finding the latest hot pairs on gTrade shortly after they are listed on major centralized exchanges.
- gTrade has innovatively structured its incentive distribution system to enhance gamification, competition, and user retention. Unlike typical fee rebates offered by competitors, our system introduces two new categories — Absolute PnL and Loyalty — that encourage traders to not only compete for the highest positive PnL but also to stay loyal to the platform.
- gTrade is the perpetual DEX that offers the highest leverage : 150x in cryptos, 1000x in Forex and up to 250x in commodities.
- gTrade offers 24/7 deep liquidity : unlike orderbook perp dexes that usually see their liquidity depth shrink and spread explode during extreme volatility leading to significant price wicks, gTrade offers a smooth trading experience due to its AMM and price impact model.
For detailed analysis on metrics of STIP program; please refer to this article Gains Network STIP Addendum : https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/final-gains-network-stip-addendum/23398
IV — Achievements and upgrades in the past quarter
A. BD & Marketing
Marketing:
- The marketing team transitioned from an external agency to being led in-house, enabling greater control over branding, content marketing, and social media strategies.
- Key marketing initiatives in Q1 focused on the Arbitrum STIP program, APAC GTM strategy, multi-collateral feature.
- Twitter followering surpassed 60,000, and a dedicated Chinese-language Twitter account (@gTrade_zh) was established to better engage Chinese-speaking users.
- Strategic partnerships were built with KOLs and content was distributed via prominent media outlets such as TechFlow, Cryptowesearch, and ABmedia.
- The KOL referral program was successful, bringing in the second-highest trading volume referrer among all referrers on gTrade.
BD:
- The BD team saw a leadership transition, with Rick & Joseph taking on the role after the departure of the former BD lead Lunaman.
- ETH Denver: meeting partners, hosting a first Arbitrum-based PerpDEX dinner, and participation in Arbitrum GovHack.
- Secured partnership with Stork Network to enhance Chainlink DON with additional price feeds
- Set up & secured several partnerships for the upcoming v8 release.
- Ensuring co-marketing efforts with newly listed projects.
- Visited Taipei Blockchain Week & set up collaborations with Chinese and Japanese communities (Talk Chain, Crypto Hiroba and more).
- Engagement with numerous ecosystems to continuously assess opportunities for gTrade.
B. Product & development
Introduction of a highly anticipated feature : multi-collateral trading.
- Traders are now able to open leveraged positions using WETH & USDC as collateral on top of DAI. This enhancement responds directly to longstanding requests from our trading community, and we are delighted to finally bring it to fruition.
- Multi-collateral implementation has been a success as we have seen market share of trading volume in USDC & ETH gradually increase over time after implementation.
- Here is a bar chart showing the daily volume share by collateral
- In our analysis of the weekly moving averages for the market shares of USDC and WETH, a distinct upward trend is evident. USDC, after reaching a peak market share of 37.38%, has since leveled off, maintaining a steady range between 25% and 30%. Meanwhile, WETH’s market share has shown variability, oscillating between 4% and 10% over the same period.
- The new vaults gUSDC & gETH are already showing increasing healthy overcollateralization
Introduction of gTrade in-house incentives : instead of distributing incentives in form of fees rebate only, gTrade chose to innovate in order to attract all type of traders, increase stickiness, user engagement and retention. In order to achieve this, 3 categories were created :
- Fees : fee rebate for traders. Each trader’s share of rewards is determined by his otal fees paid against all protocol fees of the week.
- PnL : rewarding traders for achieving positive pnl, encouraging them to score a higher positive pnl each week. Each trader’s share of rewards is determined by his total profits against all other traders with positive pnl.
- Loyalty Points : the more days a user trade, the higher his reward. Each trader’s share of rewards is determined by his total loyalty points at the end of the week against all other traders points.
Implementation of a Portfolio dashboard section : traders can now monitor their P&L, staking, referrals and future incentives rewards all in one place. This is an important front-end feature that was previously lacking on gTrade. Thanks to this new addition, traders are now able to accurately track their performance.
Significantly increasing the backend processes to list new hot pairs : as soon as new hot pairs are listed on major CEXes such as Bybit, Binance or OKX, the pair is immediately listed on gTrade with often a timewindow inferior to 24h.
V — Roadmap
After releasing multi-collateral trading, Gains Network core contributors are committed to make gTrade become the most attractive trading platform for all type of traders by releasing new advanced trading features and reducing trading costs.
- Improving spread & borrowing fees : gTrade is committed to improve trading conditions for all type of traders. The implementation of 0% price impact on BTC/ETH trading and the increase in max open interest positions gTrade as a leading choice for scalpers and short term traders. The next steps in our roadmap include narrowing spreads on altcoins and optimizing borrowing fees on majors and altcoins.
*At time of report release, there is no more price impact when trading on BTC/ETH - Smart contract trading — v8 : trading contracts will be opened up to non-EOAs, for improved composability with the broader DeFi ecosystem and more sophisticated integrations.. Some limitations will be removed (no more max collateral per trade, no more 3 trades limit per pair etc). Up to 20–30% of gas fees will be saved on all type of smart contract interactions, and many other improvements.
*At time of report release, v8 is already released - Add or remove collateral to a position (~ June 2024) — v9 : traders will be able to add collateral to an existing position in order to avoid getting liquidated. Inversely; traders can chose to remove collateral on a trade without closing it because the pnl is largely positive.
- Partials (~ June 2024) — v9 : Traders will finally be able to take profit or increase their position size.
*At time of report release, v9 is already released - Volume Fee Tier — gTrade Credit : in order to attract large volume traders and open the door to more sophisticated trading entities and arbitragers, a progressive decreasing fee structure with increasing volume will be implemented. With v8 launching, a significant number of partners will be integrating gTrade.
*At time of report release, gTrade credit are already released - Improving onboarding experience (~ June 2024) : gTrade will have a new onboarding feature integrated through a partnership with Li.Fi. This will simplify the process for new traders to bridge & deposit collaterals and gas funds from other ecosystems to start trading on our platform. Coinciding with this, users will see an improved fiat onramping experience. With targeted marketing approaches, user acquisition is expected to become much more efficient.
- Extension of the STIP (~ June 2024) : with the Arbitrum STIP-bridge campaign set to go live, Gains Network is anticipating to continue its successes during the STIP period as 2.25M ARB will be distributed across various gTrade stakeholders. And, with the above-mentioned updates in place, gTrade’s chances of sustaining its growth trajectories are significantly increased. Hence, as an Arbitrum-native PerpDEX, gTrade is well-positioned to pursue mass-adoption in 2024.
For a deep dive into protocol stats, updates and what’s on the horizon, make sure to check out the gTrade Quarterly Report: Q1 2024 —
https://indd.adobe.com/view/690ae6a1-18f3-4e20-b6ab-547f392fb0bc
