The Peak - Edition #2, July 2023
The Peak is a monthly newsletter for the Vertex community. Join us as we unpack the past month’s highlights for the community; trading stats; and new features and markets.
July 2023
July - did that ever fly by? Feels like just yesterday we released the first edition of The Peak. Well, we have good news for you. This edition is just as packed full of updates.
What we’ll be covering in the July issue (TLDR);
- Big releases: Vertex referral program & push notifications.
- New markets: 6 new perp markets - $LTC, $OP, $BCH, $SUI, $APT & $COMP.
- Market stats: Historic days, including being the #2 perp DEX by 24H volume.
- New features: Position-sharing themes, order lines, and trading shortcuts…
- Partnerships: Elixir, Nansen, deFarm, and DeBank.
- Incentives: Trade & Earn epoch 4 + the final week for the Altitude program.
- Events: Vertex takes on Paris and London.
- Thought: What goes on behind an exchange.
- Community Spotlight: Some of our favorite community content + new Vertex Intern.
What’s coming up?
Let’s get into it!
Big New Release
Vertex Referral Program: Do you still have frens that use CEXs? Or what about the users tired of latency and performance friction limiting the experience of most DEXs? Well, it sounds like they haven’t used Vertex.
Good news - you can now Refer Them & Earn! The Vertex Referral Program is live! Anyone can start referring new traders via their unique link. Simply:
- Navigate to the Referrals Page on the app.
- Copy your link and share it on socials, in telegram chats, and to your friends.
- To access your referral link you must have deposited funds on Vertex.
Details: Recieve the equivalent of 10% worth of the trading rewards your referrals earn. Referrals also get a 10% boost in their rewards. Everyone wins!
For example:
- Bob refers Sally with their referral link
- Sally trades on Vertex and earns 1100VRTX at the end of the epoch.
- Without the referral link, Sally would have earned only 1000 VRTX.
- Bob earned 110VRTX from his Sally referral (10% equivalent of Sally's rewards).
Push Notifications: Vertex partnered with Notifi to make it easier to get outside and touch the grass. No longer do you need to watch the chart to see if your order fills. Instead, traders can receive notifications to their preferred destinations, including email, Telegram, and Discord. Available notifications for traders sent directly to their accounts include:
- Order Fills
- Margin Usage Alerts
- Liiquidations
- Vertex announcements.
We’re working with the Notifi team to introduce more notifications in the future. To get started with notifications, simply click on the 🔔in the top right of the Vertex desktop app. You can also read the tutorial in the blog post.
Vertex Stats Dashboard: While some great community dashboards exist already (like this one on Dune), we’re excited to share the official Vertex Stats Dashboards. Monitor all things Vertex, including inflows and outflows, user growth, and historical volumes per market! We’ll be using these dashboards to share weekly updates on our twitter (like this) and in our newsletters (see Market Stats & Growth below).
New Markets
Throughout July, Vertex introduced 6 new perp markets. Each market is eligible for $VRTX token emissions. To learn more about each market, please refer to the margin requirements and token emissions docs.
Perp Markets
This brings the total Perp markets on Vertex to 13!
Vertex’s design unlocks the flexibility to add new markets for traders. We’ll continue to add new perp markets throughout the month of August, and perhaps some unique new collateral types 👀
Market Stats & Growth
Vertex had a big month, surpassing the $3B total volume mark – landing on the 2nd place spot for Perp DEXs by 24h volume a couple of times throughout July.
Below are some market stats starting July 1st up until the time of writing – July 30th:
Volumes
- Total Vol: $3.8b
- Avg Daily vol: $52.25M
- First $150M+ 24h period!
Hottest markets:
- Hottest Perp: ETH-PERP
- Total vol: $313.5M
- Hottest Spot: wBTC-USDC
- Total Vol: $62.4M
Users
- Total users: 3,600
- New users in July: 1962
- Avg daily new users: 65.4
TVL
- Total TVL: $8.15M
New Features
Position Sharing THEMES (link)
In the last edition of The Peak, we covered position sharing – the ability to share how your perp position PnL on Twitter. On July 26th we released themes for position sharing. You now have the ability to choose a theme when sharing your PnL. For each theme, there’s a positive and negative version. Have fun!
Shoutout to the legend @loomdart for their contributions here.
Order Lines
After placing a limit order or entering a position, you will now see a line on the Tradingview chart that represents that action. Green means a buy order or long position entry. Red means a sell order or short position entry. Within the line includes the size of the order or position – on the Y-axis towards the right will be the price.
- Canceling orders via orderliness: Another feature of order lines is the ability to cancel open orders. If you head to the market with an open limit order you will find it on the chart. There will be an (x) in the right side of the box that contains the size of the order. Click on this to cancel the order! If you have 1CT turned on, this will be automatic. If you don’t have 1CT turned on, you’ll need to sign a transaction.
Remembering Analysis
A common point of feedback we received was a given trader’s technical analysis for a market would disappear after leaving or refreshing the trading window. Our devs quickly addressed this and rest assured – your TA will stay!
Trading Shortcuts & Slider (link)
Previously, when placing a trade, users had the ability to manually enter the size of their order or use a 0 → 100% slider with 10% intervals. The update includes 4 additional shortcuts underneath the slider: 25%, 50%, 75% & 100%. Traders can quickly press on the shortcut to populate their order size. In addition, the intervals on the slider were reduced from 10% to 5% to enable ranges like 15%, 35%, 55% and so on.
As commonly requested features, order lines and trading shortcuts represent our team’s commitment to building the best trading experience for our community. We’ll continue to listen and iterate based on the feedback that you provide us 💪
Partnerships & Integrations
- Elixir – While this was technically announced in June, we didn’t have this section in our first edition, so no harm no foul. This partnership will bring Elixir pools to the Vertex orderbook. Instead of LPing into the Vertex AMM, users can provide passive capital (USDC) into Elixir’s pools, which will deploy market-making strategies on Vertex’s orderbook and earn rewards.
- DeFi Llama – The Llama is now tracking Vertex on their derivatives volumes dashboard! (This is where we ranked #2 perp dex the other day)
- Nansen – Vertex has been integrated on Nansen.ai as an exchange partner! You can now include and track your Vertex portfolio via the Nansen dashboard.
- deFarm – Vertex will soon integrate with deFarm to bring social investing via DeFi vaults to users! The deFarm integration enables users to tap into Vertex and deploy highly efficient trading strategies.
If you’re a team, builder, or just simply have an idea and would like to leverage Vertex’s innovative design, please reach out via socials.
Vertex’s Partner Network
We are excited to introduce Vertex’s Partner Network! The network represents groundbreaking partnerships between Vertex and industry-leading firms. By bringing together their unique strengths and expertise, Vertex is poised to unlock the full potential of DeFi.
The Network spotlights partners over the coming weeks, highlighting the unique value they bring to Vertex and the rationale behind their decision to unite forces. Each partner has been carefully selected based on their proven track record, innovative strategies, and commitment to driving growth in DeFi.
Ongoing incentives
Trade & Earn $VRTX
Epoch 3 of the initial token airdrop phase has concluded and Epoch 4 (out of 6 total) has begun. An update to the rewards page on the Vertex app also allows you to view and monitor your real-time rewards.
- To learn more about the reward program and how to get involved, please visit the Vertex rewards docs.
- To view & track your rewards visit the rewards page on the app.
Vertex Altitude
After 9 weeks of challenges, the Vertex Altitude program is drawing to a close. ONE MORE WEEK remains to complete the weekly set of challenges and earn the Altitude NFTs. The program officially ends on August 7th.
Altitude was a 9-week program that introduced users to Vertex through a series of challenges, or mountains. Each week a new set of challenges and a new Mountain NFT were claimable for competing participants. If you’re just discovering the program, don’t worry – you can complete all the past weeks that you missed up until now!
Once the program ends, the NFTs will no longer be claimable and are non-transferable.
👉 Join the program & claim your Altitude NFTs: LINK
But wait, what's this?
A 10th mountain, the one and only Everest.
We couldn’t leave out the most well-known mountain in the world… This BONUS challenge will be a time-limited event open for 1 week only and will be the final opportunity to participate in Altitude.
Maybe there will be something awaiting challengers at the end of this feat, including for those who have already been collecting. Everest commences on August 7th at 12:00 pm UTC.
Events
July was a busy month, URL and IRL.
- Paris - Vertex teamed up with Redacted Cartel x unshETH x vxCozycommunity to host a happy hour on the river Seine for EthCC in Paris. It was a great afternoon of refreshments, hors d’oeuvres, and conversations about how to build the future of France (DeFi). Here are some pics:
- London - Vertex co-hosted a happy hour with Pear Protocol in London. It was great catching up with builders in the UK DeFi scene.
It was great seeing so many community members at the events. We look forward to more opportunities to connect with the community IRL at future events 🔜
Content Spotlight
For this month’s content spotlight, we’re sharing one of many threads written by Vertex’s co-founder @AlwinPeng. Alwin has recently started sharing ideas and concepts on Twitter. If you're interested in learning more about DeFi and what goes into making Vertex, consider giving him a follow.
Thread: What it looks like behind the scenes of exchange
Alwin’s thread was posted after the XRP news which caused a large spike in volume in XRP-PERP on Vertex. Alwin breaks down why latency is so important, how days like this are make or break for exchanges, and how Vertex handled it.
Community Spotlight
The community loved the memes and threads this month. Oh, and there’s a @VertexInten account now? Please see some of our favs below, curated by Chief Vibes officer @pat & head of Community @jack
Looking Ahead
At Vertex, we don’t have a public roadmap collecting dust somewhere. Why, you might be asking? Because crypto moves too fast, and so do our engineers. We like to be flexible, prioritizing products and features as our community requests them. There’s also value in surprise product releases!
That said, here’s a glimpse of what we’re planning to focus on during the month of August:
- More markets for you to trade!
- Trigger orders.
- Portfolio dashboards.
- Portfolio naming & pfp.
- Realized PnL, funding & interest tables.
- A tool for visualizing risk & understanding margin.
- A markets page.
If you have ANY IDEAS OR REQUESTS please submit them here:
https://forms.gle/ASJnNXxC5PoHPZbm7
That’s all for this month’s newsletter.
As always, our team is here for you. Please don’t hesitate to reach out via Discord or Twitter.
#Vertex