It has been some time since we have been able to provide an update on where our efforts lie. First, we will start off with a quick summary in what happened from our peak to where we are now. Then we will reveal our current approach and then things that we are keeping an eye on that might change that approach. Oh, and an Airdrop!
1. What… Happened.
Leading up to October 2022, Investin was on a wonderful streak, with all-time high trading volumes and AUM on the protocol. These were funds ran primarily over Mango Markets and delivered returns to their investors. Behind the scenes, we were in talks with a number of protocols for further integration.
During this time we also decided to open source the Mango based funds to further promote the growth and security of the Solana DeFi Ecosystem.
And then, it all changed. Mango markets would be exploited on October 11, 2022 by a trader who is now under arrest. Thankfully, all investors would be made whole but it would shut down the most liquid perpetuals futures protocol on Solana for the foreseeable future.
As the ecosystem recovered from that, in early November FTX and Alameda would be revealed to be fraudulent. This caused substantial turmoil as many protocols lost their treasuries and market makers lost significant funds.
Unfortunately, to this day the Solana DeFi Ecosystem suffers from a significant lack of liquidity leaving us unable to safely deploy our investment pooling service. Any forced trades would slip 10% or more at the size that our top funds had in September 2022.
2. What… We’re focusing on moving forward.
Since the liquidity problem became apparent we have looked for anything we could do to improve that. We were close with the teams deploying OpenBook, the community fork of Serum markets. There were talks from market makers to use our investment pooling on OpenBook and this inspired much of our recent work.
Mango, Zeta, and Drift have released their perpetual futures of their own and have made great steps in improving liquidity for their ever increasing users. However, for the 2 most traded crypto assets (BTC and ETH) there is still a lack of liquidity.
There is something missing. Perhaps, a decentralized exchange with a mechanism that guarantees liquidity and no slippage.
As a matter a fact, we’ve built just that. Welcome to Flash.Trade.
Features that you can expect include:
1) Tradable assets: BTC, ETH, and SOL. More to be added later.
2) Fast no slippage trading. Your full size is executed at the quoted price. All in 3 clicks.
3) Margin. Trade with leverage to maximize your gains and capital efficiency up to 50x.
4) Participate as the only liquidity provider to all trades being taken on the exchange. A majority of fees generated will go to the liquidity providers and anyone can deposit and withdraw at will.
5) Completely Decentralized.
More features will be revealed in due time.
This type of exchange would allows us to deploy our investment pooling funds due to guaranteed limited slippage on trades which cannot be said for any exchanges available to Solana users now.
As you can imagine, this will be quite the endeavor but so far things are going well! Helping make this a reality for Solana users will be our focus for the next 3–6 months and we believe it is the best way forward given the state of Solana DeFi.
3. What… may change our plans.
While we are very excited about this new direction we will be keeping a close eye on the Solana Ecosystem as we build this. A lot of the infrastructure for Investment pooling is already coded and built. It is a matter of deciding to deploy once it is safe to do so.
If any of the decentralized perpetuals protocols succeed in achieving close to the amount of liquidity that Mango had in September of 2022, we will be deploying our investment pooling service then.
To the Managers and Investors out there: We have read your DMs, feedback, and suggestions. We know there are managers ready to go and waiting for this as well. Investors want to see the returns they were experiencing. We hear you and are moving forward in the best way to give that back to you as soon as possible.
Airdrop Details:
We understand that IVN holders entrusted us to continue working on Investin as the platform and we have not forgotten about you. We do plan to deploy Investin’s hedge funds as soon as liquidity comes back to Solana DeFi.
In the meantime, however, there will be an airdrop for stakers of IVN that would vest in Flash.Trade’s token. A set amount of that token has been allocated for IVN stakers. There will be a vesting period of 1 year where your IVN will be locked. Your share of the total airdrop will be proportionally distributed.
Be on the the look for an announcement of the staking date! It will be around April 30th, 2023.
About Investin: We are a decentralized trustless hedge fund management protocol aggregating Solana DeFi to provide a one-stop shop for all things trading.
