The only constant in the world of digital assets is change — there is never a dull moment to be had in crypto and innovations continue to roll in day in and out, in unremitting efforts to deliver better financial products, usability, efficiency and freedom to individuals globally. In particular, decentralized finance (DeFi) ended 2022 on a high after the importance of decentralization — self-custody, permissionless access, transparency with unparalleled security — returned to the spotlight. How will DeFi applications fare this year?
According to CoinTelegraph, crypto derivatives are set to take center stage this year, seeing greater revolutionary changes from what many already know of derivatives thus far. And it is in 2023 that ApeX Pro is prepared to offer access to greater nuanced, decentralized derivatives products while the upward momentum continues to press on strong.
Deeper Dive into Derivatives
Derivatives (in both the traditional and digital asset markets) have long been the preferred trading product of choice for seasoned and institutional traders due to the flexibility in trading options — allowing traders to hedge against market volatility and receive relatively stable returns.
And despite accounting for only 5% of crypto derivatives trading volume in 2022, the macro shift towards decentralized infrastructures and models indicates potential ballooning growth for decentralized derivatives trading in 2023 and beyond.
This is in part due to decentralized derivatives models that are geared towards more efficient and transparent trades, improved user experience and greater trading customizations that boost capital efficiency. ApeX Pro has made significant headway on this front by delivering permissionless access to the perpetual swaps market on an interface that's familiar to most traders:
Deep liquidity on 10 available USDC perpetual contracts with high transactions speeds at the lowest costs across popular EVM chains — dynamic deposit and withdrawal options
Order book interface with visible asks and bids while keeping to the principles of a decentralized platform
Smaller trading capital sizes and multiple order settings are available
Self-custody of funds in a trustless environment
As we see a more pronounced shift of traders from existing crypto centralized exchanges (CEXs) and decentralized exchanges (DEXs) shifting into derivatives DEXs in particular, we can certainly expect more diverse and nuanced derivatives trading options and products emerge down the pipeline.
Infrastructural Innovations
Platform innovations come with consistent upgrades in the platforms' underlying architecture — finding the best integrations to enhance scalability, efficiency and speed is a baseline across decentralized derivatives exchanges (DEXs). For example, ApeX Pro has partnered with StarkWare to utilize its Layer 2 scalability engine StarkEx to not only optimize trades multi-fold but also to provide enhanced safeguards over a user's funds and data.
Improvements to the product stack are limitless; from providing concentrated liquidity and market depth to better bridging and on-ramps, and more, fortifying and expanding the potential of derivatives DEX's architecture remains high on the priority list. And more importantly, these improvements remain anchored in the principles of decentralization — greater transparency, privacy and security, where authority and ownership lie in the communities that support these DEXs.
That is a critical driving factor behind ApeX Pro's long-term goal — to integrate social trading and SocialFi elements into the product stack. Traders can look forward to a derivatives DEX with Soulbound Tokens (SBTs), copy trading and other features in-built. ApeX Pro is taking Web 3.0 forward by focusing on the basics of DeFi and empowering the community to engage in dynamic participation across a burgeoning, interconnected ecosystem.
Seamless Onboarding for Any Trader
Derivatives are likely to lure in traditional investors, but motivating them to simply step into crypto derivatives is insufficient. The key to increasing the size of the decentralized crypto derivatives pie and retaining these new groups of traders is to offer seamless transitions between typical trading platforms and derivatives DEXs.
There may be significant inertia to using DEXs to trade derivatives in the long term if products or platforms look unfamiliar to traders; this is why new derivatives DEXs on the scene are considering onboarding-friendly enhancements to their platforms. New upcoming DEXs are also likely to design their platforms in ways that would accommodate the swift and hassle-free shift of traders from one product to another.
ApeX Pro is a big proponent of combining the best CEX designs with DEX features, and this is evident in its order book interface. And going one step further, ApeX Pro's integration with Bybit has opened the gateways for its 10-million strong user base, of which a majority of users may find DEXs and DeFi alien to them, to easily make their forays into decentralized trades without leaving a CEX at all.