Leverj, a decentralized cryptocurrency derivatives trading platform, today along with its liquidity providers are announcing the launch of Futures products (Perpetual Swaps) for bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) against USDT. Bitcoin and ether perpetual contracts against stablecoin DAI are already live.
Over the past 12 months, the DeFi ecosystem has grown exponentially, with the growth rate of trading volumes on decentralized exchanges (DEX) far outpacing centralized exchanges (CEX). In September 2020 trading volumes across DEXes grew by 121%. In the same month trading volumes on CEXes shrank, dropping by 51%.
Leverj builds off this trend by introducing a non-custodial, decentralized exchange that offers spot and futures trading, and aims to minimize some of the challenges associated with DeFi today.
“Both retail and institutional traders are tired of the counterparty risk of centralized exchanges,” said Fran Strajnar, CEO of Techemy Capital. “Until recently, this was the only choice. Uniswap showed the world how instant swaps can work in a simple yet non-custodial way. Leverj.io is the first derivatives exchange to crack the self-custody problem. This is a significant piece of the DeFi ‘money lego’ stack.”
With the whole DeFi industry demanding faster clearing, lower network fees, and general scalability, Leverj is the first application built on the advanced Gluon.Network protocol, an Ethereum scalability solution engineered specifically for high-frequency decentralized derivatives trading.
Leverj is actively supported by CoinShares, technology firm ConsenSys, stablecoin system Maker, and active investors Techemy Capital, a sister company of Brave New Coin (BNC). BNC is also supporting the Leverj product roadmap by supplying the high-frequency exchange the indices to power its upcoming perpetual swaps. BlockchainLabs.nz are the auditors.
All mentioned companies are investors in L2, the Gluon Network’s native governance token, which will be an important component of the decentralized exchange ecosystem. According to BNC research, in recent months various industry governance tokens have voted on over $5 billion dollars worth of material changes within the blockchain ecosystem including product and feature launches as well as significant M&A activity. Governance tokens are proving their usefulness in the DeFi ecosystem and are expected to continue growing in popularity.
By December 15, Leverj will launch two cash-settled futures products on their decentralized derivatives exchange Leverj.io: ETH and BTC perpetual swap contracts against USDT, and the third product, the BNC DeFi Index being listed against USD Tether in mid-January.
BraveNewCoin.com is providing high-speed indices and infrastructure for all futures products.
“In the spirit of decentralization, we are very excited to launch our DeFi index on a truly high-speed decentralized exchange,” said Pierre Ansaldi, Head of Product at Brave New Coin. “Leverj.io is a great venue to launch never before possible products.”
Leading digital asset investment firm CoinShares will be providing liquidity and market-making services for L2. Meltem Demirors, CoinShares’ Chief Strategy Officer, commented: “CoinShares has been pioneering liquidity solutions for crypto products since 2013. We are looking forward to bringing our capital markets expertise to the DeFi space by providing liquidity for this new on-chain, high-frequency trading venue.”
Techemy Capital is actively assisting Leverj’s Go-to-Market Strategy.
“Ethereum-based DeFi is reaching a singularity point with DeFi acting as a liquidity vortex, sucking in all financial and monetary value. Financial instruments are now democratized and permissionless. However, DeFi primitives such as derivatives and money markets can do only so much before hitting the underlying network constraints. This is where Layer-2 solutions like Gluon.Network become invaluable,” said Donn Krassiyenko, Head of DeFi Products at Techemy.Capital.
Maker is already live providing liquidity to the DAI based trading pairs.
Blockchain Labs has audited the Gluon Network codebase.
“We’re pleased with the professionalism and thorough approach Leverj has brought to building a protocol that can act as a decentralized clearinghouse for futures, options and swaps as Gluon Network participation and governance accelerate,” said Paul Salisbury, director of Blockchain Labs, which audited the Gluon smart contracts over the past three years to ensure they are robust and fit for purpose.
Consensys.net, being a large $L2 governance token holder since 2017, is also exploring a further synergy between its portfolio companies.
The futures contracts on the Leverj platform are powered by Brave New Coin’s digital asset data infrastructure, and CoinShares Capital Markets will provide market-making and liquidity to the exchange. Initial assets available on the platform will be Ethereum and ERC-20 tokens, as well as tokenized ETF products which are a collaborative effort between Brave New Coin DeFi and Techemy Capital.
Leverj is completely self-custodial by design, meaning that users always control their private keys and funds. Leverj runs on Gluon to deliver sub-second trading with zero gas fees. Originally created for the sole purpose of powering Leverj, industry demand for a fast and reliable Layer 2 solution has prompted the team behind Gluon to allow any DeFi project to utilize its network.
Earlier this year, Leverj partnered with Brave New Coin to ensure a full product pipeline for its exchange that is now coming to life. The companies referenced above are all collaborating to deliver further decentralized products, liquidity applications that benefit from using the Gluon Network.
