Perpetual Protocol uses the virtual AMM (vAMM) pricing design in the V1 version, while the newly released V2 uses an architecture similar to Uniswap V3 with aggregated liquidity as the core.
Original Title: “First Class Warehouse [Public Due Diligence] In-Depth Report: Perpetual Protocol”
Author: First Class
Perpetual Protocol is a decentralized perpetual contract protocol built on Ethereum. Its V1 version uses a virtual AMM (vAMM) pricing design, which realizes that there is no need for market makers to provide liquidity and no need for market makers as counterparties. Perpetual contract transactions that can be carried out. At the end of June, Perp announced the V2 version built on the second layer of the Ethereum network with Uniswap V3-style aggregate liquidity as the core.
Project summary
Perpetual Protocol is a decentralized futures (perpetual contract) Dex built on Ethereum.
The V1 version was launched on December 14, 2020, and the current trading volume is around US$90 million per day. In the V1 version, it uses a unique vAMM mechanism for pricing and achieves unlimited liquidity. This mechanism does not require a special liquidity market maker (LP), and only contract traders can trade, that is, it sets An automated trading mechanism in which contract traders act as counterparties to each other does not require a “contract seller”, which solves the problem that contract exchanges rely on LP, and at the same time, LP is prone to large losses, and has strong originality. At the same time, V1 has some problems, such as the need to manually adjust the k value (not enough to be decentralized), slippage, and accidents in extreme markets. So the team designed the V2 version.
In the V2 version announced at the end of June, Perp will be coupled with Uniswap V3. Perp V2 will be directly installed on Uniswap V3, introducing the role of Maker (market maker), using Uniswap V3 style aggregate liquidity method to make market, with ” The “default market-making strategy” lowers the market-making threshold of ordinary LPs. In addition, V2 will implement the “Permissionless Market Creation” mechanism, which is Uniswap’s classic free currency listing mechanism . At the same time, the V2 version was also set up on the second-tier network Arbitrum.
From the perspective of the track, the overall potential of the decentralized futures exchange (Futures Dex) track is huge, and it may gain a hundredfold growth. At present, there are only thousands of active traders in each futures Dex project, so the track is high-quality The projects have good potential.
Basic profile
Project Description
Perp is a decentralized futures exchange that currently provides perpetual contract products. It continues to develop the vAMM pricing method in the form of AMM. In the V1 version, Perp separates pricing and settlement, and removes the market maker (ie AMM The role of liquidity provider in China, hereinafter referred to as LP).
Basic Information
Detailed project
team
According to LinkedIn, Perp currently has 7 team members, all of whom are in Taiwan. According to the project party, Perp has some members in other regions, and also added more developers and external teams, but there is no more public information about these personnel. The 7 members include 2 co-founders, 4 developers, and 1 growth manager.
Yenwen Feng (冯彦文), co-founder, graduated from Taiwan National University in 1993 with a bachelor’s degree, majoring in electrical and control engineering, and obtained a master of science degree from Taiwan National University in 1999, majoring in computer science. Since the start of the business in 2004, until the founding of Perp in December 2019, 6 startups have been created. The first few companies span multiple fields, including financial companies; they have entered the cryptocurrency field since March 2018. Both Cinch Network and Decore, which were successively established in the year, are products in the cryptocurrency field, and Cinch’s product is a decentralized option agreement. From the background point of view, Yenwen Feng has the triple professional and entrepreneurial background of finance + computer + cryptocurrency trading, and is the founder of cryptocurrency trading projects with relatively complete experience.
Shao-Kang Lee, co-founder, obtained a master’s degree in science from National University of Taiwan in 2009, majoring in software engineering, and worked as a software engineer for three years. After 2012, he started his own business as a co-founder. He has been with Yenwen Feng since 2014. The co-founders of all entrepreneurial projects, especially Cinch and Decore, as well as the current Perp.
Vinta Chen, a senior software engineer, graduated from National Taiwan University of Science and Technology in 2010 with a bachelor of science degree in computer science. He has been working as a software engineer since 2011. He joined Perp and was responsible for the development of two teams. Joined Perp in December 2020.
Shao Ku Tien, a blockchain developer, received a master’s degree from Guocheng University in 2020, majoring in computer science. His previous internship includes cryptography and blockchain experience. He joined Perp in September 2020.
The core team of Perp, especially the co-founders, have experience in entrepreneurship and the cryptocurrency industry, and are mainly developers. The team is currently expanding and relying on external teams for development. From the team’s experience, it is sufficient to support the development of the project, especially the development and product capabilities. The actual progress of the project will be mainly determined by other factors.
funds
So far, two rounds of investment have been disclosed.
In 2018, the seed round, with an unknown amount, was invested by Binance Labs.
In August 2020, it received a strategic investment of 1.8 million US dollars . The lead investor is Multicoin Capital. The other investors are: Zee Prime Capital, Three Arrows Capital and CMS Holdings, LLC, as well as Alameda Research, Binance Labs, Andrew Kang, George Lambeth, Calvin Liu, Tony Sheng, Alex Pack and Regan Bozman.
Code
Figure 2-1 Perp code submission
Figure 2-2 Situation of Perp code contributors
According to public information, Perp went live on December 14, 2020, and then continued to develop new features. Its team has at least 4 developers. Judging from the frequency of code updates and the situation of contributors, it is consistent with the situation of public information.
Perp’s current main product is Perpetual Exchange (V1), a decentralized perpetual futures exchange. The bottom layer is the Perp protocol.
V1 version
product
Figure 2-3 Perp V1 trading interface
The product details are as follows:
AMM/Order Book: Organize transactions in the form of automated market makers (AMM) or order books. It is the basic classification of decentralized exchanges. Perp uses virtual AMM (vAMM, see below) for trading, and does not use order books. , Which belongs to the AMM exchange.
Contract type: The contract provided by Perp is a perpetual contract, which is a kind of futures contract, which is unique to the field of cryptocurrency trading. The difference from traditional contracts is that it will never expire, but will be fixed Renewal at the time. That is to say, each time period, according to the market price and position situation, one of the long/short parties will charge the other party a funding fee while continuing to hold the position, which is equivalent to re-opening a contract.
Trading pairs: Currently, Perp V1 provides 18 trading pairs, including ETH/USDC and BTC/USDC, YFI/USDC, DOT/USDC, SNX/USDC, AAVE/USDC, etc.
Long/short: Users can go long or short in Perp V1 transactions.
Leverage multiples: The selectable leverage multiples are between 1x-10x, and each 0.5x is a gear. For example, you can open a 3.5x long position, but you can’t open a 3.6x one.
Funding fee: Similar to the traditional perpetual contract design of a centralized exchange, the perpetual contract holders on Perp pay/collect a fee at regular intervals, and the fund fee on Perp is paid every hour. (See below for calculation method)
Settlement and collateral: Perp uses USDC for settlement and as collateral, that is, it does not use other assets for position opening and settlement, regardless of whether it holds BTC or AAVE contracts, it uses USDC for position opening and settlement.
Business logic
Overview
Figure 2-4 Overview of Perp business logic
The business logic of Perp V1 is as follows:
In the trading link, the virtual AMM is used for pricing, and the actual opening/closing funds enter and exit from the Vault. There is only USDC token in the Vault, and opening/closing only affects the amount of USDC in the pool;
In the liquidation process, the price is fed by Chainlink. When the margin rate is lower than 6.5%, the position will be liquidated, and the profit after liquidation will be distributed between the insurance fund and the liquidator. The insurance fund is used to make up for the loss of liquidation after the position is closed when the market fluctuates sharply;
The staking provider does not act as a liquidity provider on Perp. It is only the initial provider of the insurance fund. It bears the risk of loss when the insurance fund is paid and enjoys the fee income.
1) Virtual AMM pricing
Virtual AMM (vAMM): The virtual AMM in the Perp protocol refers to a pricing transaction model developed on the basis of the constant automatic market-making formula of spot Dex (x*y=k).
vAMM uses AMM’s x*y=k method for pricing, but does not actually exchange the two currencies. Instead, after the price is provided by the AMM formula, funds are in and out of the Vault instead of directly in and out of the AMM pool, achieving a single Currency long/short positions are opened and closed in Vault.
Figure 2-5 The working principle of virtual AMM: Use AMM to determine the price, and funds in and out of the fund pool
vAMM works as follows:
x*y=k, Price=y/x
Assuming that there was originally 10,000 USDC in the Vault, and x=100, k=100*10,000, then Alice uses 100 U to open a long position twice and the changes are as follows:
table 2-1
Calculation:
Since Alice injected 100 U, the leverage of 2 times means that y=10,000+100*2=10,200 in vAMM,
x=k/y=100*10,000/10,200=98.04
Then Alice’s ETH position is: 100-98.04=1.96.
Similarly, if Bob continues to inject 100 U to open a long position with a leverage of 2 times at this time, the vAMM formula will automatically calculate his long position as 1.89 ETH;
Table 2-2
At this point, if Alice and Bob close their positions successively, Alice gains 8 U of profit and Bob loses 8 U. Note that the order is very important. In essence, according to the meaning of AMM, the latter buyer will have a higher cost than the first buyer, and the latter seller will get a lower consideration than the first seller (in exchange for Less U), so Alice gains while Bob loses, which is also reflected in the virtual AMM.
More importantly, the gain of one trader is equal to the loss of another trader, which is similar to traditional peer-to-peer futures trading.
At the same time, there is no oracle involved in this process, and there is no need to obtain prices from outside. However, changes in external prices will obviously drive arbitrageurs to carry out arbitrage, making the price on Perp close to the external price.
Perp virtual AMM and AMM mechanism comparison:
Table 2-3
2) Elastic (floating) k value
The value of k in Perp’s vAMM formula x*y=k is not a fixed value. The determination of the value of k is one of the most important factors for the operation of Perp’s vAMM. If the value of k is too small, it is similar to the depth of a centralized exchange In a shallow situation, opening and closing positions with a larger amount will easily lead to price fluctuations on the market; if the value of k is too large, it will easily lead to too small price fluctuations on the market and not catch up with the price fluctuations outside the market, resulting in excessive Arbitrage space, the funds that have been placed on the market are easy to be arbitrage and cause losses to traders.
Currently, the k value is manually adjusted by the project party, and the k value of the currency is determined by referring to the k value of the corresponding trading pair in Uniswap. The future direction of the value of k was once determined by an algorithm and adjusted automatically as the market changes. (The development of the “floating k value” algorithm was previously planned by the project team, but after the team weighed the pros and cons, the floating k value was abandoned in the V2 solution.)
3) Calculation of fund rate
Perp provides a perpetual contract, and a fund fee is charged every 1 hour. It is calculated in accordance with the rules of the cryptocurrency derivatives exchange FTX. The formula is as follows:
FundingPayment (funding fee)=PositionSize (position position)*FundingRate (funding rate)
FundingRate is calculated by subtracting the hourly TWAP of the index price from the hourly TWAP (weighted average price) of the marked price and dividing by 24:
Figure 2-6
The index price comes from the Chainlink feed price . If the FundingRate is positive, the long position holder needs to pay the fund payment, and the short position holder will receive the fund payment. If the interest rate is negative, the reverse is true.
For example: in the above example of the transaction between Alice and Bob, if Alice has closed his position, Bob has not closed his position (see Table 2-4):
Table 2-4
As shown in Figure 2-7, after the price of ETH changes, it is at US$104, that is, the marked price of ETH on Perp is US$104. As time goes by, it reaches the time point for calculating the funding fee (Funding time) , At this time Chainlink feeds the price to Perp, the price 106 fed by Chainlink is the index price (TWAP Oracle Price), and the on-site price 104 is the marked price (TWAP Market Price), and the FundingRate is calculated as follows:
FundingRate= (104-106)/24= -0.083
At this time, if the marked price TWAP<index price TWAP, the funding rate is negative, shorts pay longs; otherwise, if marked TWAP> index prices TWAP, longs pay shorts. In the design of the fund rate, Perp is consistent with the rules in the centralized exchange. The existence of the fund rate is mainly to encourage arbitrageurs to establish positions, especially in the unilateral market stage. (The rising market encourages the establishment of short positions, and the falling market encourages the establishment of long positions.)
Figure 2-7 The difference between the weighted price of the oracle and the weighted price in the market, the funding rate will encourage the two to be close to each other
4) Liquidation
When the margin ratio drops to 6.25% or less, liquidation will occur. This rule is the maintenance margin (Maintenance Margin) .
The liquidation is started by the liquidator’s robot. As a reward for the liquidation, the liquidator receives 1.25% of the 6.25% deposit, and the remaining up to 5% of the deposit is deposited into the agreement insurance fund.
5) Insurance Fund
At present, 50% of the transaction fees earned by the Perp V1 protocol go to Staking holders and 50% go to the insurance fund. When the system encounters accidental losses such as losses in the liquidation process and capital losses, the insurance fund will first pay for these losses as the first line of defense.
The current staking reward program encourages token holders to put their PERP into the insurance fund for staking. Participating in staking will get 50% of the fee income and bear the risk of loss due to insurance fund compensation.
Figure 2-8 Insurance fund operation process
Compared with AMM and order book, vAMM has the following characteristics:
Table 2-5
technology
At present, due to the explosive growth of the DeFi ecosystem, the Ethereum main chain has been congested and gas costs have skyrocketed. The overall use of the second-tier network for the DeFi project to speed up transactions and greatly reduce transaction fees has become a highly certain choice.
Especially for derivatives of DeFi projects, due to the expected large scale of transactions in the future, frequent transactions, high requirements for high timeliness, low handling fees, etc., the use of a two-layer network is even more indispensable. Most of the futures Dex track projects have chosen to use the second-tier network to deploy products or test networks.
Perp chose the xDai solution for the use of the Layer 2 network/side chain. The reason is that when the Perp product was launched, xDai had already determined the available L2 network products and was able to support the current scale of transaction volume. According to the information provided by the project party, after each second-tier network solution is implemented and stable operation for a period of time, it may refer to the future xDai and other second-tier products and operations to consider whether to migrate. If it is migrated, it is estimated that it will take several weeks to develop.
As of March 20, Perp has achieved a smooth operation of the current trading volume on xDAI. First-class positions have conducted actual tests on Perp products, and position opening/closing operations can be completed within a few seconds. According to the information provided by the project party, about 70% of the traffic on xDai is generated by Perp operation.
At present, Chainlink has been feeding prices on xDai and has realized one of the important infrastructures.
Figure 2-9 Schematic diagram of the structure of Perp running on xDai: Important facilities such as clearing office, vAMM, insurance fund, etc. are all running on xDai, while Staking is running on the Ethereum main network
Summary: Perp’s vAMM realizes that it does not require LP as the counterparty, and only the traders can game with each other to realize AMM-like pricing and unlimited liquidity transactions. The comparison in Table 2-5 shows that vAMM avoids the loss of market makers (because In fact, there is no need for market makers), and at the same time, it can maintain 100% liquidity, and through the existence of arbitrageurs to achieve basically the same price on and off the market (Perp even developed an arbitrage robot to encourage ordinary users and other non-professional market makers Participate in arbitrage). The price is an L-shaped price arc similar to the AMM mechanism. Traders need to endure a certain slippage. However, this rule makes the vAMM rule superior to the AMM rule in the application of futures trading, avoiding the solution of the impermanent loss in AMM. A serious problem is a simple and effective solution, and compared with complex AMM and order book rules, it is free from high dependence on professional market makers and liquidity providers.
V2 version
The Perp project party announced the V2 version on June 30, 2021. The name is Curie . The focus is to use Uniswap V3 to construct a new Perpetual Protocol built on Arbitrum. This version changes the whole business logic object is to reduce the flowability of a polymeric slip point, the advantage obtained by high capital efficiency and set up in the layer 2 network Arbitrum obtain high transaction speed.
At present, only the plan has been announced for the V2 version, and the product has not yet been launched, but the roadmap has been announced.
Product scheme and business logic
Concentrated Liquidity
Perp’s aggregate liquidity relies on Uniswap V3. The original vAMM logic in V1 runs on Uniswap V3, concentrating liquidity near the current price to improve capital efficiency. This is one of the key points of this V2 version. If it is successfully implemented, capital efficiency will increase many times.
The specific implementation is:
Perp V2 provides leverage for LPs, called ” Leveraged LPs ” (Leveraged LPs).
At the same time, create pools with v-Token on Uniswap V3 , such as vUSDC/vETH. v-token is a token generated by the Perpetual Protocol system. It is currently only used for market making and transactions in the Perp system. These pools are actually built on The current Uniswap is built on Arbitrum’s V3.
If the LP provides 1,000 USDC to the Clearing House for market making, the Leveraged LPs function can add vUSDC within 10 times, that is, the system can add 10,000 vUSDC to the system at 10 X. This 10,000 vUSDC becomes the LP. The total amount of liquidity (also called ” credit “) placed in the system, LP can add it to the corresponding assets and ranges, for example, it can be divided into 5,000 vUSDC and vETH worth 5,000 vUSDC, and added to the corresponding liquidity pool.
After the LP has determined the allocation of the corresponding assets, the system mints the corresponding v-token. According to the above example, the system mints 5,000 vUSDC and 2 vETH worth 5,000 vUSDC (calculated based on the ETH price of 2,500 US dollars), and the LP can make the market according to its own The strategy allocates these v-tokens to the corresponding intervals on Uniswap V3.
Figure 2-10 Schematic diagram of virtual liquidity of V2
In addition, LP’s 10,000 vUSDC can also be used as a trading quota, that is, LP can open positions within the 1,000 vUSDC quota as a trader in the system.
Uniswap transaction fees: Since the clearing house acts as both an LP and a trader in these pools, and Uniswap V3 does not start charging protocol fees at present, all transaction fees belong to LP, so Perp’s net transaction fees on Uniswap V3 are zero. (That is, LP does not need to spend transaction fees on Uniswap, but Perp itself still charges traders a transaction fee)
Maker
The Perp V2 version introduces the role of market maker (Maker) for the first time, and its market making method is as described in the “Aggregate Liquidity” section above: After Maker has obtained the credit granted by the system, it can follow the market making method on Uniswap V3. Place vUSDC on the Tick in the price range where you want to make the market. (For details of Uniswap V3’s market making method, please refer to the corresponding research report and article)
Benefits: The market maker will receive the transaction fee paid by the Trader to Perpetual Protocol. Note that this part of the fee is not “the fee paid by the trader to Uniswap V3”. As mentioned above, since Perp is in the Uniswap V3 pool, the system actually plays the role of market maker and trader at the same time, so the fee on Uniswap Is 0. What the market maker gets is the fees charged by the Perp protocol itself.
This change makes the gains and losses of making a market on Perp closer to making a market on Uniswap V3. There may be free losses (IL), but since the liquidity placement range is near the price, the capital loss will increase compared to the previous vAMM.
But another problem is that the previous vAMM can provide unlimited liquidity (although the price of any AMM to provide unlimited liquidity is extreme prices when the market fluctuates sharply), but after the introduction of Uniswap V3, Perp may lose unlimited liquidity. One advantage. The original vAMM can be traded without a counterparty, but the vAMM under the Uniswap V3 mode requires the counterparty as a source of liquidity to be traded.
On this issue, Perp intends to supplement with an insurance fund: the insurance fund will act as the counterparty in the absence of liquidity.
Insurance fund
The insurance fund already exists in the V1 version, and its role and function are: when a problem occurs in the system and causes a loss to the trader, especially when a settlement failure occurs, the insurance fund will pay.
In the V2 version, the insurance fund has two new responsibilities:
When there is no liquidity, as the counterparty to trade with the trader (user), that is, the supplement to the Uniswap scheme described above, makes liquidity a supplement.
Participate in payment when the naked position/long and short positions are unbalanced, that is, if the long and short positions are unbalanced, for example, a long position has a position of 100 vETH and a short position has a position of 120 vETH, the insurance fund will act as the counterparty for the unbalanced part.
In fact, 1 is a special case of 2, and its essence is also the imbalance between longs and shorts, which leads to the use of insurance funds as counterparties.
Note that in V1, the arbitrage robot can theoretically smooth the deviation between the market price and the index price caused by AMM-style trading in the Perp system, so the insurance fund is only used when the arbitrage robot fails or xDai settlement issues or Perp protocol fails.
In V2, case 2 will also be flattened by arbitrage robots on the market. Normally, the role of insurance funds is a supplement except for the use in 1). In view of the fact that in V1, Perp has passed the method of requiring traders to split large orders under extreme conditions (only a brief description here, please refer to relevant information for details), in 519, Perp has no pins inserted in the market. In V2, there will also be robots and related mechanisms. It is expected that their mechanisms will make “position imbalances” that require insurance funds to pay only a very rare situation.
Joint Margin Model and Multi-asset Margin (Cross-margin&multi-assets collateral)
Joint margin is the “wide position mode” , which uses all the balances of the account to establish multiple positions, unlike V1, which sets up a separate balance for each position (a separate balance is equivalent to a position-by-position mode).
Multi-asset margin is multi-currency margin. V1 uses USDC single currency for settlement, and other assets cannot be used for transactions. V2’s multi-currency margin means that multiple assets can be used for trading, and at the same time, A currency can be used for B currency contract transactions. For example, trader Alice can use ETH as collateral. To open a long position in the contract market and hold a long position in BTC, you need to calculate the profit and loss of BTC/USDC first, and then calculate the profit and loss of ETH/USDC—that is, the actual exchange rate between BTC/ETH, and finally decide that Alice will get it back Is there more or less ETH? If the price of BTC against USDC drops, but against ETH increases, it is possible that Alice will get more ETH.
Permissionless Market Creation
This function realizes one of the common pursuits of the entire decentralized derivatives exchange: to achieve ” unrestricted and full currency listing” like Uniswap.
At the same time, Perp V2 supports Uniswap v3’s TWAP (Time Weighted Average Price) and Chainlink as the index price source of the oracle. This means that if an asset has a price input on these platforms, anyone can create a permanent one from it. market. Asset selection at that time may no longer be limited to cryptocurrencies-foreign exchange, commodities, and even stocks. In V1, only Chainlink is the source of price feed.
When discussing on social media, the Perp project party stated that it would set a K value upper limit for the free creation of the market, that is, “K is not higher than the K value of the corresponding Uniswap spot pool” to avoid losses to users due to price manipulation. (This kind of manipulation is similar to the Rock Pool existing on Uniswap V2-“looting the liquidity pool” , that is, filling a large amount of assets instantly and looting another asset, such as the ABC/ETH trading pair, and instantly filling the pool with 100,000 times the number of ABC , Looted almost all ETH)
Limit order and stop loss order
This feature was determined to be developed in V1, and has been actually developed and developed by the community team www.apex.win .
The V2 version will run on Arbitrum, the second layer of the Ethereum network
Arbitrum is a two-layer network project that uses fraud proofs (as opposed to zero-knowledge proofs) for verification. It is based on Optimistic Rollup and is calculated offline, while the data is on the Ethereum mainnet, and 100% supports EVM, which means it is against the Ethereum mainnet. The project migration used to be more friendly, but the overall security of Optimistic Rollup is not as good as zk-Rollup. There are already many Dex projects on Arbitrum, including Uniswap V3, Bancor, Sushiswap, etc., and Mcdex, which is the same futures Dex as Perp.
Perp official said in the introduction of V2 that the speed of V2 may reach 65 times that of V1, but this multiple needs to be carefully referred to. The actual situation needs to be observed after its V2 is online.
Perp V1 is set up on the Ethereum side chain xDai. According to the data disclosed by the project party, the transaction volume contributed by Perp accounts for more than 70% of xDai. In the case of no actual landing of the second-layer network, xDai is indeed an available solution. On the other hand, xDai has a trading volume bottleneck. As Perp’s trading volume further increases, extreme market conditions are prone to congestion or even obstacles in the face of an instantaneous surge in trading volume. This potential problem may be resolved in Arbitrum.
Adopt Uniswap V3 and Chainlink as oracles
In the V1 version, Perp only uses Chainlink for price feed, and Chainlink is on the Ethereum side chain xDai where Perp is located for low-latency price feed. In the V2 version, since Perp actually uses Uniswap V3, the two are naturally in Arbitrum, so it is very convenient to use Uniswap to feed prices.
Tokens and economic models/Staking
According to the information disclosed by the project party, staking and profit sharing will be started as soon as possible after the V2 version is online, but the rules are different. The biggest change is due to the introduction of Maker (market maker). The general will transfer part of it to market makers, and the amount of funds required for insurance funds will be reduced.
In addition, in addition to the transaction fees generated by the transaction pairs set by the project parties in the agreement, the market deployed by Perpetual DAO (that is, the free currency part) will share the transaction fees with the token holders participating in staking. There are three parts of agreement revenue that will be distributed:
Transaction fees in the open market;
New markets created by users;
Proceeds from lending through mainstream lending agreements through funds held in Clearing House Vault and Insurance Fund.
Figure 2-11 Schematic diagram of Perp V2 transaction fee distribution
Technical logic
This part of the content has not yet been disclosed, the first-class warehouse will continue to pay attention.
development of
history
Table 3-1 Perp events
status quo
Operational data
Six months since the launch of Perp V1 products, the operating data are as follows:
Figure 3-1 Operational data displayed on Duneanalytics
Figure 3-1 shows that Perp’s 7-day transaction volume is 660 million U.S. dollars, 7-day fee income is 660,000 U.S. dollars, and the average daily transaction volume is about 90 million U.S. dollars.
Since its launch, the total transaction volume has exceeded US$20 billion (approximately 200 days).
There are currently 18 trading pairs, all of which are USDC single currency trading and settlement.
future
Perp’s currently visible future is undoubtedly the gradual implementation of V2 products, functions and plans. The project party announced an undetermined route in the following order:
Figure 3-2 Curie’s roadmap of V2 version, which will gradually realize various functions
Route map details:
Table 3-2 Roadmap details
Economic model
The Perp V1 economic model is relatively simple, that is, a 6-step cycle: “1. The transaction fee reward obtained by staking increases>2.PERP value increases>3.PERP consensus enhancement>4. Protocol consensus enhancement>5. Transaction volume increase>6. Transaction cost increase> back to 1”.
The above design may reflect one point, and it is also a consensus of the current DeFi project: In view of the history of Uniswap being attacked by Sushiswap vampires, the Perp project attaches importance to community development, holds currency and rewards the development of the community, and avoids forks.
In the V2 version, the economic model may be revised, see the “V2” section above for details.
Token role
The PERP token is designed as a utility token (utility token) that encourages governance and equity-like. The current design has two main functions:
For community governance, it has not been implemented for the time being. According to the progress planned by the project party, it may be implemented after community voting is conducted 9 months after the mainnet is launched;
Staking sharing handling fee will be implemented in the first quarter of 2021 (March) according to the plan, but as of March 21, there is no confirmed launch date.
Token distribution and unlocking arrangement
The total supply of PERP tokens is set at 150,000,000. Token supply can be issued through inflation through two mechanisms, and the probability of these two mechanisms is very low:
The token distribution status is as follows:
Table 4-1 PERP token distribution
*Note: In the description of the official document, the team and advisors will be allocated 21%-36,000,000 tokens, and 21% of the total 150 million tokens will be 31,500,000
Figure 4-1 PERP token distribution
The lock, unlock and release arrangement of PERP tokens (may be changed in V2):
Figure 4-2 Token unlocking schedule
Table 4-2 PERP Token Unlocking Arrangement (Explanation of Figure 4-2)
competition
industry analysis
Overview
Perp belongs to the futures exchange (Dex) in the Defi-derivatives track, and belongs to the subdivision track of “AMM futures Dex”. Currently, decentralized exchanges include Perpetual Protocol, Mcdex, dFuture, etc. The common point is that the price is generated by AMM or in a manner similar to AMM. Corresponding to it is the futures Dex organized by the order book (Order-book). The futures Dex of the order book includes dydx, DerivaDex, Injective Protocol, etc.
status quo
At present, cryptocurrency futures have surpassed spot trading and become a huge market. according to
According to TokenInsight statistics, in 2020, the trading volume of 43 centralized futures exchanges reported a total of 12.31 trillion U.S. dollars (average 34 billion per day), an increase of 402% from 2019, and the total market contract positions at the end of the year were 17.03 billion U.S. dollars, an increase of 485% for the year .
Figure 5-1 2019 Q4-2020 Q4 Full Market Futures Trading Volume
However, the main trading volume of cryptocurrency futures is currently still in centralized futures exchanges, mainly Binance, FTX, Bybit, BitMex, OKEx, etc. The latter two were once the main battlefields of futures trading, but with the outbreak of regulatory issues , And the huge growth achieved by the first two in 2020, the situation has changed, but the above and other centralized exchanges still account for more than 90% of the scale of futures transactions.
At the same time, the “perpetual contract” was created by the cryptocurrency exchange FTX in the cryptocurrency market. Although this form exists in the traditional financial world, it is not a mainstream trading product. In the cryptocurrency market, perpetual contracts It is a major mainstream trading product.
At present, there have been several “seed players” on the decentralized futures exchange track, but they have not yet developed on a large scale. Currently, Perp, one of the largest trading projects, has a daily trading volume of only about US$90 million.
For the development of decentralized futures exchanges, you can refer to the development process of spot Dex, such as Uniswap, Sushiswap, Bancor and other exchanges.
主流的现货Dex 均在产品打磨期和上线期经历了较长时间（数月到一两年不等），然后才实现交易量暴涨，经过不到一年的交易量大规模发展期，目前Dex 整个赛道交易量能够达到中心化交易所交易量的10%-20%，在行情剧烈波动期，Uniswap 的日成交量还数次超越Top 3 的中心化交易所。
_图5-2 Dex 交易量图，展现了2019 年1 月至今的交易量变化情况，非常明显是从2020 年5 月后开始爆发式增长
_
由此可见，去中心化期货交易所还有极大发展潜力，有可能从目前全赛道日交易量在亿级别发展到每日百亿美金级别（每年3.6 万亿美金） ，接近中心化交易所的交易量。
竞品项目概述
AMM 类期货Dex 大多数于2021 年前后推出，此前都处于产品刚推出继续完善的阶段。但自dydx 推出之后，市场已进入一个新的阶段，将时间和市场发展阶段作为新的坐标来看，2021 年7 月以及未来的半年至一年中，整个期货Dex 赛道将处于「产品继续完善，运营之战开打，等待赛道爆发机遇出现」的阶段。
此前我们对期货Dex 赛道产品机制进行的剖析仍然有效，但接下来需要更多的关注产品完善的节奏和运营上的发力，当然，最终都落到数据上。
本文将以期货Dex 赛道中的dydx 和Mcdex 作为竞品进行对比，同时Perp 主要以V2 作为机制对比的对像，而数据取Perp V1。
与Mcdex 的比较主要讲集中在两个同为AMM 式期货Dex 的机制对比上，而与dydx 的比较将集中在两种完全不同路线的期货Dex 之间。
Mcdex
Mcdex V3 是一个采用「指数价格+复杂AMM」（相对于x y=k 的简单AMM 而言）方式进行定价的期货交易所，相对于Uniswap V3 的聚合流动性来说，它可以称为「集中流动性」机制：采用复杂AMM 使得流动性被动集中在价格附近*。Mcdex 每个合约都需要运营者（Operator）/ 流动性提供者（LP）/ 交易者/ 清算者几个角色，由LP 充当交易对手方。其定价机制设计，是由外部预言机提供指数价格，然后将风险敞口作为系数调整后，形成报价，目的是将头寸尽量集中在指数价格附近，降低滑点，并使得多空双方头寸互相接近；Operator 是单个永续合约的创造者和运营者（比如ETH/USDC 合约运营者），Operator 需要引入资产的指数价格，并设置买卖价差/ 滑点等一组风险参数的初始值，并且可以在运营过程中调整参数。Operator 创建合约无需许可。
dydx
dydx 是目前期货Dex 赛道龙头，目前架设在以太坊二层网络Starkware 上的StarkEx 的可扩展引擎上。从分类上看，在AMM/ 订单簿式交易所的分类中属于订单簿式交易所，在主动做市/ 被动做市机制中设定中属于主动做市机制，是首个上线并可用的期货Dex。dydx 项目自其成立起就获得了头部资本的支持。长期受到整个区块链行业的高度期待和认可。
竞品要素对比
核心业务逻辑
Perp：通过与Uniswap V3 耦合的vAMM 进行交易，由LP 提供流动性，进行类似Uniswap V3 的聚合流动性做市，且由于将引入默认做市策略（接入其他协议），预计大部分LP 将保持被动做市，少数体量较大的LP 将为大型做市商，其类型仍属于「主动做市型AMM」期货Dex。
Mcdex：获取指数价格后，复杂AMM 以多个指标调整价格后报价，由流动性做市商被动做市。而市场运营者（Operator）主动设置滑点等数据，其类型属于「被动做市型AMM」期货Dex。
dydx：采用链下低延时交易引擎撮合、链上结算的方式，资产非托管，主要由大型专业做市商做市。
定价方式
如上文「核心业务逻辑」中所述，Perp 通过vAMM 进行定价（按照Uniswap V3 的方式），而Mcdex 和dFuture 是在外部预言机馈送指数价格的基础上再以公式「加工」调整价格，形成报价。需要补充的是，Perp V1 在计算资金费率时需要用到指数价格，场内价格剧烈波动时计算清算价格也需要使用指数价格。
dydx 采用的是做市商做市、交易引擎撮合的方式匹配买卖方订单，严格来说没有「定价」，由市场博弈产生实时价格，并由于套利机器人的普遍存在，由套利者来搬平与其他交易所的价差。
图5-3 Mcdex 的复杂AMM 定价相对于简单AMM 的定价曲线，蓝色为Mcdex 定价
本文在这个维度上先比较Perp 和Mcdex 的定价方式。仅从定价角度来看，两种方式有较大的差别。首先， vAMM 方式形成的「场内价格」在交易的大多数时刻不依赖于预言机，能够很大程度避免预言机风险。外部预言机尽管发展良好，但Chainlink 依然在2020 年3 月左右发生两次问题，其中一次是由于312 极端行情，使得预言机宕机，预言机故障风险随着行情波动剧烈程度上升；同时，预言机价格操纵是一个常见的攻击方式，而操纵指数价格来大规模获利又是期货/ 合约市场的一个常见攻击方式；因此，两种风险叠加，使得使用预言机报价存在的风险隐患较大。当然，Mcdex 在该问题也有应对方式，Mcdex 的方式是提供预言机接口，由创立合约的Operator 承担提供预言机功能、降低预言机风险的责任，本质是以竞争促进Operator 来保证高质量的预言机报价。
这个方案相对Perp 更复杂，并且无法完全回避预言机攻击风险。尤其是Mcdex 的方式需要经历一个市场竞争淘汰的过程，也就是可能需要经历一个「预言机攻击容易发生」的阶段，来发现好的Operator 的合约，淘汰坏的和差的合约。
从这个角度看，Perp 的vAMM 自主定价模式优于预言机喂价加权模式。
另一个要点是， vAMM 方式形成的「场内价格」，具备一定的自主定价能力，在交易量沉淀在该交易所内后，能够获得一定程度的「定价权」 。
这一点可以参照Uniswap：由于采用AMM 定价，Uniswap 上的交易者互相博弈形成「场内价格」，由于其很多交易对的交易量在全网占比不小，因此Uniswap 本身也是一个价格来源，Uniswap V2 就具备预言机功能。而在大型中心化交易所中，交易者互相博弈形成相对均衡的「场内价格」也是价格的发现方式，从全市场来说，定价权是流动性聚集的结果，反过来，具备定价权也能够聚集流动性。若没有定价权仅接受外部报价，容易仅成为一个交易流量的沉淀池。而由于衍生品交易量远大于现货，因此其价格也能够反向影响现货。因此，选择自主定价而非预言机报价的项目在定价权和影响力上更有优势，有希望成为真正的衍生品定价场之一。
从「是否容易插针」的角度看这两种定价方式，此前采用vAMM 的Perp 出现了插针事件，似乎印证了其更容易遭遇插针。但首先，Perp 的插针问题一共出现了两次，第一次补充了套利机器人+预言机补充方式；第二次又增加了极端行情下，严重影响价格的开平仓被要求拆单执行这一限制，在519 中没有再出现插针，算是至少成功经历了一次极端行情检验；其次，虽然采取预言机价格，看似不容易偏离全市场价格，但去中心化合约交易所的优势很可能在长尾币种上，这些现货交易量不大的币种其「指数价格」容易遭到操纵，这一问题的实质是合约& 衍生品交易量和利益很可能超过现货，造成价格操纵。因此小币种合约（期货）价格独立定价、不完全依赖现货价格显得更为重要。从长期看，独立定价在小币种合约会是一个主流。
从以上分析也能看出，实际上Perp 的定价机制与订单簿式的dydx 差不多，谁具备定价权，在这二者之间不取决于机制，而取决于某一个币种的全市场最大交易深度出现在哪个交易所。以现货举例，有些币种最大深度在Uniswap，有些在Sushiswap，那么在这些币种上，Uniswap 和Sushiswap 就分别掌握了定价权。
运营机制之一：主动做市VS 被动做市
Perp：Perp V2 上可以进行主动做市，也可以采用项目方从外部引入的默认做市策略（协议），即被动LP 和主动做市均可，按照Uniswap V3 上七成为被动做市的比例[20]，未来Perp V2 上预期大部分也是选择默认策略被动做市的LP，加上少数大体量的专业做市商。
Mcdex：LP 是被动做市。
dydx：由专业做市商主动做市，甚至大型做市商能够做到一家独大，根据公开报道，做市商WinterMute 一度占其交易量40%[21]，是从体验到商业方面机制都最接近与中心化期货交易所的Dex。
在这个方面，主要比较同为AMM 的Perp 和Mcdex 在资金需求、资金利用和资金风险等方面的设计：
1） LP （流动性提供者）收益：Perp V2 中的LP 赚取的是手续费（具体细则尚未公布），V1 中没有LP，套利者可以赚取套利的利润，由于套利者是一群开着项目方机器人或自己写策略进行套利的角色，有概率转为V2 中的Maker，因此可以说V1 中的套利者将从获取套利利润转换为获取手续费；Mcdex 的LP 为被动做市，其收入包括手续费、价差和滑点收益、资金费用、强制平仓罚金、MCB 流动性激励等等。
2）无偿损失：Perp V2 中，由于在Uniswap V3 池中做市，因此将承受与V3 中相似的无偿损失；Mcdex 中的LP 不存在无偿损失。Mcdex 中的LP 所承受的损失则来自于头寸的不平衡，当多空持仓不平衡时，AMM （即Mcdex 本身）持有头寸，若风险暴露发生亏损，则LP 需要承担亏损。比如，此时AMM 持有ETH 空头仓位而ETH 价格上涨，则LP 承担亏损，但同时，按照Mcdex 的设计，此时系统对ETH 的报价会略低于指数价格，吸引交易者做多，以使得AMM 持有仓位向0 靠近。
3） LP 做市方式：Perp V2 的LP 为主动做市，与Uniswap V2 上的LP 一样，大概率将以策略进行做市，否则将遭受较大损失，由于Perp 项目方将合作的策略做市协议尚未确定，目前讨论Perp 上使用的是主动或被动再平衡策略进行做市还为时尚早；Mcdex 由于是被动做市，LP 不需要采用策略。
4）资金利用率与滑点问题：得益于Uniswap V2 的高资金效率设计，进行聚合流动性做市的Perp V2 滑点显然将比V1 显著降低，V1 滑点问题是由于其滑点取决于K 值，而一旦某一个大单数额较大，对市场价格影响较大，则其开/ 平仓过程均容易造成滑点，而V2 中流动性将集中在价格附近，在流动性相对充足的情况下，滑点将显著减小；Mcdex 使用的成交价则是复杂AMM 调整指数价格后获得报价，不存在因流动性池交易引发的滑点，其系统中的“滑点”概念是最终成交价与指数价格之间差额的一部分（差额还包括手续费等等），由公式计算得出，与LP 资金利用率关系不大。
小结： Perp V2 和Mcdex V3 的差异很大程度上是主动做市商和被动做市商两种设置之间的差异。 Perp V2 设定了主动做市的规则，能够获得的优势自然是更小的滑点，以及以一个高资金效率进行做市，而缺点则是，需要承受一定的无偿损失，并且需要使用策略进行主动做市。 Mcdex V3 的被动做市形式，则延续了原本AMM 的设计逻辑，LP 无需操心和操作主动做市，因为复杂AMM 自动可以将流动性集中在价格附近，资金利用率也不低，其问题在于，当市场处于单边行情时，比如连续暴涨，甚至极端暴涨时，即便有各种措施促使交易者和套利者将场内的多空头寸恢复平衡，但AMM 仍有很大概率被动持头寸（若全市场都在单边做多），此时AMM 易在极端行情中产生损失，给LP 带来损失。
运营机制之二：是否完全无许可创建市场
Perp：从创建市场/ 交易对的角度，Perp 是项目方自建池子和交易对为先，也允许社区进行无许可创建市场，创建市场方式比较简单，理论上放置流动性即可，类似于在Uniswap 上创建池子（实际细则需等待V2 版本更多文档或产品落地），基本上只需要符合项目方对最大K 值的限制即可。这一设置，对池子的创建者要求不高，但同时也不能进行复杂的参数设置。
Mcdex：从创建市场的角度，完全是无许可创建市场，市场属于Operator （运营者）所有，Operator 可以在一定范围内、在市场运行过程中修改参数，能够进行滑点/ 点差等参数设置，同时，还需要清算者（keeper）角色来清算爆仓的头寸。这一设置对专业化程度很高需要复杂设置的Operator 友好，但对Operator 来说有开设市场的技术门槛。
dydx：dydx 目前是项目方添加交易对，也是接近中心化交易所的方式。
小结：从Perp 和Mcdex 两者创建市场的角度来看，Perp 更像是给持币大户甚至较大资金量的交易者自建市场准备的，Mcdex 是为专业的合约市场运营者准备的。从传统的角度看，甚至从安全的角度看，设置市场当然是专业人士的工作，而非小白的游戏——这一观点被运用到了类似UMA、Synthetix 这类合成资产项目的逻辑里：专业的技术团队创建基础设施，专业的市场运营者创建市场。但是Uniswap V1 正是打破了这个成见而成功的——提供了一个非常容易创建市场的场所。不过，在期货市场尚应观察这两个设定（专业化/ 低门槛化）的优劣，毕竟期货的波动更加剧烈。
dydx 采用的则是经典（传统）的专业做市商的方式，优点与中心化交易所一样，平时状态下体验更好。从创建市场的角度，与上述分析同样，由项目方直接审查并添加交易对，从安全性和审慎等角度来说更优，但从去中化和自由度的角度来说，模仿中心化的方式会稍弱。
这个维度或许是竞品比较中最重要的维度，因为在产品逐渐完善的情况下，运营机制和团队的实际运营方式维度的「运营之战」可能是下一阶段逐渐显现的要点，更接近于成熟的、中心化的方式，体验上显而易见的更优，因此dydx 仍然有较大概率继续是赛道龙头。
而Perp 和Mcdex 在探索的是另一条道路：如何用更加去中心化的方式组织整个期货交易市场，在大币种上和小币种（就全市场深度和交易量来说）上，是否其适用的机制是不一样的，是否有可能有社区驱动的自由期货市场。
由于去中心化期货市场尚在非常早期，我们完全可以继续观察上述项目在未来一年内的发展，并期待整个赛道交易数据增加十倍或百倍的爆发点。
运营数据
Perp：目前日均交易额在9,000 万美金左右，总交易额超过200 亿美金。
Mcdex：截止2021 年7 月8 日，Mcdex 依然V3 尚未上线，依然在测试网状态，此前V2 没有可以公允比对的交易量。
dydx：近期无准确数据，约占市场12%，但其后续爆发力可期。
Perp 作为有不错数据的期货Dex，从交易量和人数上都有一定先发优势。
总结：Perp 的机制和运营数据上都有比较明显的优势，这主要来源于其在核心业务逻辑和产品上的设计。鉴于期货交易所赛道本身的巨大潜力，三者都可能得到较好的发展，并且在运营方面还有较大可发挥空间，同时还有多个订单簿式期货交易所和多个合成资产项目等跨赛道竞品，并且不断有新品出现，目前离格局确定尚远，不能确定Perp 具备一定优势并有机会在未来占据去中心化期货交易市场的较大份额，并且有可能在长尾币种的永续合约交易上表现出独特优势。
参考资料:
《2020 年度数字资产期货交易所行业研究报告| TokenInsight》
https://www.chainnews.com/articles/053539718208.htmPerpetual Protocol 项目文档
https://docs.Perpetual.fi《数据不会说谎：Uniswap V3 表现到底如何？ 》
https://www.chainnews.com/articles/042974404954.htm《Uniswap V3 的「炼金术」：它的兴起对DeFi 市场格局有何影响？ 》
https://www.chainnews.com/articles/996491995061.htm《Nansen：透过两万多个地址分析Uniswap V3 真实做市情况》
https://www.chainnews.com/articles/190213879748.htm
