Speakers:
Captain X - Founder, ApolloX
K - Chief Ecosystem Pilot, BNB Chain
Chef Mochi - Head Chef, PancakeSwap
Gabriel - Global BD and Online Marketing, Alpaca Finance
Note: This AMA recap focuses on Captain’s answers and has been edited for length and clarity. Listen to the full AMA here: https://twitter.com/i/spaces/1BRJjZeVWppJw
Introduction
- Hi everyone, glad to be here again. This is Captain X, founder of ApolloX!
- In short, ApolloX is a futures DEX where we offer leverage trading for almost all the major coins. We have two business arms. One is DEX, the other is called DEX Engine, where we help our partners launch their own futures platform. We have also just launched our V2, the new product which we would like to introduce today. It is also a futures product but users will trade against a liquidity pool we call ALP.
Discussion Questions
Could you share what is new with your platforms and what kind of products are you shipping around this time?
- As mentioned, we want to introduce our V2 product today. The biggest change is that in addition to the existing Order Book model, we added a Peer-to-Pool model. But it is still a futures product where traders will get leverage from trading against the pool with margin, rather than other borrowing and lending models. The pool itself does not have to have the asset the users are trading which offers more flexibility for assets listing. For example, on the first day of our launch we not only supported crypto pairs but also two forex pairs for trading.
- We also support multiple assets in our ALP pool. Besides stablecoins, we support BTC, ETH and BNB. Given this diversification, it will help with risk management. For example, in a bull market these non-stablecoins would enhance the solvency ability of the pool itself.
- Since this is a pure futures model, we do not have interest rates. Thus our trading fees are also within the lowest tier amongst all the futures DEXs.
- Another reason we are excited about V2 is that we can serve totally new and different kinds of users. Besides the traditional trading users, we can also serve staking users as the ALP pool itself is a relatively low-risk and high-yield product. If you are a staker seeking a good risk return profile, definitely take a look at our ALP pool.
- Basically, the revenue for ALP comes from 3 sources: Firstly, the APX token rewards we injected into the pool. The APY is around 30% now and we have more than 8 million in the pool.
- Next, market making PnL and from the fees injected into the pool. Currently we inject 50% of trading fees into the ALP pool. These 2 sources are deemed as real yield. We know there are probably more staking users compared to trading users. We are happy to serve these users with our V2 product!
What is the potential for projects to collaborate with each other? Given these newer products and upgrades, what is the potential for the 3 (ApolloX, Alpaca and PancakeSwap) projects to work together? And what sort of partnerships would be possible?
- We have been working together with PancakeSwap for quite a long time. As mentioned, we have two business arms and one of them is DEX Engine. PancakeSwap is one of our first DEX Engine partners with whom we launched a Perpetuals platform together. In addition, we have launched V2 on PancakeSwap’s Perpetuals page. For now, it is a soft launch.
- We will also reach out to Alpaca. Perhaps Alpaca could take a look at ALP and review some leverage staking products. We are open to cooperation on our side.
Assume there are some DeFI protocols/founders in the audience who are looking to collaborate or build something with. What would you pitch to them, what would you naturally want them to work with you on?
- There are two major kinds of cooperation we are seeking, number one being trading cooperation. We just had a partner introduced to us today — the product is about building infrastructure for fund managers. In addition, they would like to integrate a futures platform for their users and it has to be a DEX. Thus, given our V2 we think this is a perfect opportunity for us.
- I would like to say social trading also falls into this category, so if a product wants to build a social trading DEX and a futures trading venue we would definitely like to cooperate with them.
- The other kind would be staking cooperation. A platform could build leverage staking given the risk return profile of our ALP. They could lend some assets to their users for their users to stake on ALP with leverage.
- As mentioned, we support non-stablecoins in our ALP pool, so if users do not want market risk, some products can help with hedging these non-stable coins in our pool and offer users market-neutral staking. That would also be the kind of cooperation we are seeking.
Obviously, the space is becoming more competitive. How are you thinking about your overall strategy and what are you planning in this market given that there are new players who are doing similar things in slightly different ways?
- Competition is inevitable. If you look at how many DEXs are in the market, there probably will be as many perpetual DEXs. What we can do is just to deliver better products — and this is the intention we have for V2.
- Hopefully we can incentivise the hot narrative of perps trading on BNB Chain, just like how it is on Arbitrum.
- Product-wise, a new asset class would attract users to the product. Users always chase after the hottest product in the market, whether it’s crypto or not. This is one direction in which we want to satisfy our users.
- The other one is risk management. We support a lot of assets in the pool and we do believe we have robust risk management, especially for the bull market.
On the topic of expansion, as more protocols come over to BNB Chain, there’s also the other direction of BNB Chain projects going to other chains. Curious to hear from you guys about what you think about the multichain strategy? Do you have plans to go beyond BNB Chain and how you look at this in general.
- It is relatively easy for us to migrate to other chains for our V1 product. Actually we already support Ethereum and Arbitrum for V1. The next step is to support zkSync since we do see that its market adoption is high and competition is relatively low there.
- For V2, it’s different. As Gabriel mentioned, safety is one thing. Another consideration is if we set up an ALP pool on Arbitrum, the liquidity will be split.
- It’s a little complicated but we’re still considering it. Even though competition there is higher, we do want to join the competition on Arbitrum.
In 2023, aside from the things that are imminent, what is the mid to long term roadmap between now and the end of 2023? What do you have in the pipeline that you can share?
- In Q2, our focus will be on our V2 product and we will keep refining it. We will launch a trading rewards program next week.
- Currently, the trading fee for DEXs is generally higher than CEXs. But with this trading rewards program, we would like to bring the fees to a minimum level. Some users may even get more APX token rewards as compared to the commission fees they paid.
- We will also keep listing new assets and this is not limited to crypto.
- We also expect to bring a referral system over to V2 by the end of Q2.
Risk Reminder: Crypto trading carries a risk. All trading activities are done at your discretion and at your own risk. The information here should not be regarded as financial or investment advice from ApolloX. ApolloX will not be liable for any loss that might arise from your use of any financial product.
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