Hubble Exchange: Update #1
On Development, Community and Design
Even though it feels like forever, it’s only been about a month since we first announced Hubble. So much has happened and we’ve grown very swiftly as a community, finding our groove in the space and synthesizing our mimetic culture.
As a team, we’ve had calls with many projects who’ve welcomed us into the ecosystem, such as Pangolin, Trader Joe and Avalanche themselves.
It’s been a packed month. Let’s unpack it.
Hubble Tech Update — 1
Smart Contracts
- The Hubble technical specification was first published for review on July 16. We received many comments and suggestions, incorporated feedback, and improved the spec. Special thanks to Saurabh and Calvin! They will be receiving a “Hubble Gold Contributor” NFT.
- Since Hubble works on a multi-collateral margining system, we designed a robust 3 tiered liquidation scheme, which was published in September.
- Smart contract work was kicked off in August. Since then we have completed most parts of the vAMM, margin account, funding payments, liquidations, and insurance fund. We are currently working on the oracle module and integrating with chainlink price feeds on Avalanche.
- We follow very high testing standards which include a good mix of unit test and integration testing. On Sep 9, we were at 29 test cases. We are at 61 now. We acknowledge that number of test cases isn’t an indicator for anything significant, it’s just a fun way of giving a sneak peek into our development progress. The codebase will be open-sourced post mainnet launch.
Design
The user interface mocks were completed and shared with the (🔭,🔺) Fam on our discord. More details are below. You can still take a sneak peek at the design by being part of the fam.
User Interface
The UI is under active development. We have created most of the components and are now working on wiring the UI with smart contracts.
What’s happening on the community side?
We’ve taken the Avalanche community by storm.
- Over 2k+📝 Signups for Alpha Testnet
- Over 2.3k+ 🐦 Followers on Twitter
- Over 2.4k+🧍♂️Hubblers on Discord.
Events
- AMA hosted by Pangolin
- AMA with Avalanche Vietnam.
- ‘Basics of Perpetual Futures 101’ by Samneet Chepal.
Initiatives:
- The Creation of (🔭,🔺) Fam.
- Perpetual Futures Quiz
- Introducing XP and Levels in the server.
- The Mod Guild 🇻🇳🇯🇵🇹🇷🇷🇺🇫🇷🇹🇭
AMA hosted by Pangolin
This was our first ever AMA, hosted by Leo from Pangolin. We talked about Hubble, Perpetual Futures, Avalanche and everything in between.
AMA with Avalanche Vietnam Recap
There were over 250+ questions asked by the community. We were really impressed by the questions and had a lot of fun answering them.
Here’s some of the questions:
One of the main concern for leveraged trading is liquidation. How do you protect investors’ position from price volatility such as flashloan attacks?
We use chain link oracles, which are battle-tested and very reliable price feeds. We don’t depend on any one exchange for the price feed so traders can be confident the price feed is reliable and flash loan attack proof.
Liquidity, Transaction fees and slippage are always the 3 important factors in financial services. How does Hubble exchange solve the above problem to attract more users? What innovations will it likely make to improve users’ trading experience?
Good question. There are three questions in one, so I’ll address each one separately.
- Liquidity
Since Hubble does not use a AMM, there are no liquidity providers. Instead, traders provide liquidity to each other.
2. Transaction fees.
This is why we are building on Avalanche — near-instant transactions and at an inexpensive price. Perfect for perpetual future traders, especially high frequency traders.
3. Slippage
Slippage is a phenomenal that occurs when the intended/expected price is different from the executed price of the trade,
On Hubble there is no order book where a lack of liquidity can cause slippage! Instead, we use a vAMM design, liquidity and slippage is not an issue — you can be assured the trade you make will be close to the market price (though there might be a rare discrepancy in case of extreme market conditions). Hubble uses Chainlink oracles for the price feed, and then the funding rate incentives contract price to stay as close to the spot price of the asset. The funding rate is a fee imposed on either long or short positions to encourage the market price of the contract to mirror the spot price of the underlying asset. This is used by all perpetual futures exchanges and its a battle-tested mechanism, not novel to Hubble.
The result we will achieve will be an unparalleled trading experience never seen before on a decentralized futures protocol. Across all chains, Hubble will likely be the fastest and with the most features, thanks to cross-margin, multi-collateral and eventually, tokenized positions.
In case Hubble issues its own token in the future, will the token holders have the right to vote and govern the project under a DAO structure?
A: Hubble is initiating as a community-run protocol — decentralization is an ongoing priority. This will absolutely happen. In fact, after an idea suggested from a community member, we are fast-tracking the release of Hubble’s proposal discussion forum - it will be live after the testnet. We’re excited to see the proposals that emerge from the community and as a DAO are looking forward to implementing what the community decides.
Launching projects in a bull run is much profitable than during the bear cycle. In a bear run where most projects fail and sometimes fall into oblivion, how will Hubble stand the test of times?
This is a good question. During bear markets, capital dries up. TVL slumps. It’s one of the reasons we are building a perps exchange — regardless of if the market goes up or down, there will always be traders taking a directional trade whether that is longing the market or shorting the market. As long as there is trading volume, Hubble will be able to generate revenue even during bear markets as traders use it trade. Of course, there won’t be as much trading volume as there is during a bull market, but people will continue to trade and Hubble will continue to generate revenue.
What are your top 3 priorities in 2021?
- Launching safely and securely.
- Decentralizing the protocol with a community-run approach.
- Growing the trader-base.
What is Hubble’s most ambitious goal? What is the ultimate vision Hubble is trying to achieve within the crypto market?
What unites hubblenauts is a need to make a dent in the dex market share for derivatives. Binance and FTX is where almost all the perpetual futures volume is right now, Hubble is building a decentralized alternative to them that can compete side-by-side.
Introducing Hubble’s Lecture Series
We’re working towards educating the community on Perpetual Futures with a community-run lecture series.
The first on the list: ‘Basics of Perpetual Futures 101’ by Samneet Chepal is due to be on Oct 1 at 11:45 PM UTC.
Samneet is a quantitative analyst at Ledger Prime and we’re big fans of him at Hubble. It’s a pleasure to host him for Hubble’s first guest lecture. Thank you, Samneet!
The (🔭,🔺) Fam
A private channel was set up for the fam which has since become a hub for Hubble’s most active supporters, sharing feedback, ideas and making valuable suggestions to the trading interface. Over 110+ Hubblers are now part of the channel with new members adding the emojis to their bio everyday. (🔭,🔺) Fam will continue to be the place to get inside scoop and anyone can join!
A private preview of the trading interface is available to access as soon as you join, of course!
Perpetual Futures Quiz
In the spirit to refresh everyone’s knowledge on Perpetual Futures just before Hubble’s testnet launch in a few days, I designed a short quiz which was a lot of fun to make. Over 109+ hubblers have taken the quiz.
Introducing XP and Levels
Initiating a community-run protocol, we’ve created an economy within the Hubble discord to incentivize community members and quantitatively represent engagement. The leaderboard and ranks gamifies it. The more XP you have, a stronger community member you are. The higher your level, the more respek you earn from other hubblers and hubblenauts. If people are active community members, it’s tracked. That’s what it does and makes it viewable for everyone to see and appreciate.
The leaderboard represents XP — experience. This comes from discussions in the server. You can also earn XP by answering questions, providing product feedback, proposing ideas. Any positive value provided to the community can help get some XP.
What’s next for the Leaderboard and XP?
Each month, on the first, we’ll select the top 10 on the leaderboard for a commemorative NFT. For the month of October, the top 10 will get priority access to Hubble’s testnet deployment too.
Introducing Multi-Language channels and the Mod Fam
As part of Hubble’s plans to become community-run, the first set of contributors have been initiated into what we like to call: The Mod Guild. Currently, the guild consists of 6 members and its been quite the success so far with them taking individual initiatives and settings precendents. Hubble’s mod guild is working to moderate the following language channels:
- 🇻🇳 Vietnamese — moderated by Narutoof
- 🇯🇵 Japanese — moderated by Tarou
- 🇹🇷 Turkish — moderated by AA_Style
- 🇷🇺 Russian — moderated by Vincagame
- 🇫🇷 French — moderated by Leo Paul
- 🇹🇭Thai — moderated by Somchai
In October, we’ll be taking the Mod Guild to the next level by:
- Initiating a Coordinape Circle to track contributions.
- Hubble PFPs for Mod Guild members.
- Adding more languages, as they’re requested by community members.
On that bombshell, here’s a hubblehug.
We will be launching the Hubble Testnet in a few days. If you’d like to be an Alpha TestNaut and help us stress test, please join our discord, and fill out the form.
The development update was authored by Arpit.
