ApolloX & Helio Protocol AMA Recap - Jun. 1, 2023 – Help Center

Speakers:

CaptainX - Founder, ApolloX

Lorena - BD & Ops Lead, Helio Protocol

Xuan - Community Lead, Helio Protocol

Note: This AMA recap has been edited for length and clarity. Listen to the full AMA here: https://twitter.com/Helio_Money/status/1664194084846841856

Questions

Could you give us a brief introduction of yourself and your role, and your protocol?

Hi everyone, thanks Xuan and Lorena for having me here. This is CaptainX, founder of ApolloX.
ApolloX is a DEX where you can trade futures with just your wallet. Our TVL is more than $50M currently, the largest among derivatives DEXs on BNB Chain.
We started about 1.5 years ago. We received investment from Binance Labs and 6 other investors.
We have 2 versions of our product. V1 is order book perpetuals, V2 is on-chain perpetuals. I’ll share more about V2 today.
Personally, I used to be a futures broker and started my career in the traditional finance industry. I then moved to one of the top CEXs before we started ApolloX.

Let’s talk more about Helio’s & Apollox’s new partnership. As some of you know, we previously integrated HAY as a margin asset in ApolloX V1 order book trading. Now, we have deepened our partnership with a new HAY integration on ApolloX. Could you share more about the partnership and what it entails?

We already support HAY as a margin asset to be used as collateral on V1.
On V2, it is a peer-to-pool model. Our pool is called ALP, which stands for ApolloX Liquidity Provider. Users can now stake in the ALP pool and become market makers for V2 traders. V2 traders trade against the ALP pool.
This time, we are supporting HAY as an eligible asset in the ALP pool. For HAY users, if you stake HAY in the ALP pool, you will earn rewards from several sources.
We are also considering supporting HAY as a margin asset for V2.

Lorena: It has always been a great pleasure to collaborate with ApolloX. Recently, HAY has been supported for the ALP pool. Actually the APY is quite attractive now, it’s actually more than 20% for ALP staking. I think it’s a good opportunity if you’re interested.

Could you elaborate why this partnership would be beneficial to users?

For ApolloX users, they have 1 more asset they could use to mint ALP, to provide liquidity and earn rewards.
For HAY users, they can earn ALP rewards from 3 sources. The first source is APX, ApolloX’s native token, that we distribute as rewards. The other source is from fees paid by traders. Part of that goes to ALP. Both of these sources of rewards are risk-free. And as Lorena mentioned, the APY of the risk-free return is around 20% right now.
The third source, and I want to remind everyone this is not risk-free, is from market making for V2. But if you look at the data, chances are in the long-term, ALP will be profitable, but this is not guaranteed.
And guess what, due to the generosity of Helio Protocol, they are providing $500 HAY weekly for users who mint ALP with HAY. As long as the HAY in the ALP pool is below $300,000, you’ll get more HAY rewards as compared to staking your HAY on Helio itself. You’ll enjoy a higher return of your HAY staking rewards plus all the ALP rewards that I just mentioned.

Helio and ApolloX have also recently launched a joint campaign together. Can you share more with the audience?

Besides the $500 HAY rewards distributed weekly, there is another campaign launched with a $2000 prize pool, also provided by the Helio team.
If you use HAY to mint ALP, and you are in the top 50 minters with at least $100 worth of HAY, then you’re eligible to split the prize pool.

Any future plans for users to look forward to?

As long as we see more HAY in the ALP pool, we’d like to support HAY as a margin asset for V2 trading. We definitely want this cooperation to be an important use case for HAY, and we’d like to see more HAY in our ALP pool.
Hopefully we could still match the staking rewards for HAY in our ALP pool as it grows.

Lorena: Just to add, ApolloX is one of our most important strategic partners. We’re always happy to work on more collaborations and campaigns for ApolloX and Helio users. We’re definitely looking forward to add HAY as a margin asset to ApolloX V2 trading, and in future we could come up with more interesting co-marketing ideas to motivate users to try out both platforms.

About ApolloX V2

Captain, earlier you talked about V1 and V2. Can you elaborate on what makes V2 different from V1?

V1 is our order book perps. It is an important product for us that serves a different type of users. For V1, as long as you connect your wallet and make a deposit, the trading experience is smooth and more CEX-like. It’s more friendly for newbies or CEX traders who just moved to DEX. Trading fees are also lower.
For V2, one of the most important aspects is that we brought the entire trading and settlement process on the blockchain. It's 100% self-custodial and 100% transparent. For users who care about these more, V2 is suitable for you.
Another aspect is ALP. V2 serves not only futures traders — which is quite a niche market — but also users who are more risk-averse and looking for staking rewards to earn passive income.
ALP has a good risk-return profile, with relatively low risk but high return.

To follow up on this, are there incentives for people to trade on V2 instead of V1 then?

We are running a trading rewards program now.
Since settlement is 100% on-chain, the gas fee and commission is higher compared to CEX and to our V1. But with the trading rewards program, we have this formula to give around 95% of the commission back to traders, using our own token APX. You can see this as only paying 5% of the usual fees.
This is very friendly, commission wise.

For the last question, are there any upcoming ApolloX developments you can share?

We launch 3-4 new trading pairs every week. We currently have about 20.
Since we adopted a futures model rather than a borrowing and lending model for ALP, we don’t need to have the assets in the ALP pool to launch new pairs. That gives us more flexibility. We can launch crypto and other asset classes. We have 6-7 forex asset pairs now. We may support indexes as well to bring users more attractive assets.
We have risk management enhancements from time to time. For example, we just launched a dynamic mint and burn fee for ALP. We have a target ratio for each asset in the ALP pool. If the assets slip below the ratio, the mint fee is lower. If above, the burn fee is lower. We’re about to launch dynamic slippage as well. If the position holding of the pool is imbalanced, and if your trade balances the pool, your slippage will be lower. If your trade increases the imbalance, the slippage will be higher.
Currently we’re working on a referral program for V2.
For V1, currently we support BNB Chain, ETH, ARB. We will expand to zkSync very soon.

Twitter Q&A

@torrichubby What challenges have you faced so far in developing ApolloX, and how have you addressed these challenges to ensure the platform's success?

The most difficult challenge is market adoption. DEX/DeFi users are still much smaller compared to CEXs. This is frustrating, but we still have a long way to go and this should be a joint effort of all DeFi users.
For us specifically, one difficulty is risk management especially for V2. Having a pool on the blockchain is complicated and there is a potential for hackers to exploit the pool. We’ve seen many pools get hacked, and we learn from them. Hopefully we do well enough on that front.

@MrVernom2000 Are there any specific prerequisites or requirements for users who want to participate in the trading program on the ApolloX V2 platform?

There are no requirements at all. You just need a wallet to use our product.
We distribute trading rewards based on the fee commission. The more you trade, the more rewards you get.

@zxshi What factors led to the selection of HAY as the first destablecoin to be added as collateral under Multi-Assets Mode on ApolloX DEX, and how does this decision reflect the potential and unique features of HAY?

To be honest, there’re not many destablecoins in the market. But the number one reason for choosing HAY is because we trust in the asset quality of HAY and we wanted to have HAY in our ecosystem.
We also want to encourage HAY users to try out our product and stake in ALP.

@LinhPham_Anh69 Can you explain in more detail how Binance Oracle's low-latency solution customized for ApolloX V2 prevents MEV and front-running transactions, and how this benefits on-chain derivatives trading?

We use two oracles: Binance Oracle as the main oracle and Chainlink to check the data accuracy.
To prevent front-running, the feed has to be accurate. Although we update the price feed frequently, the price for each trade is determined after the order is placed. When users place an order, we will get the oracle to give us the most up-to-date for that asset. Hence we cannot use some edited price to settle the trade. This is how we prevent front-running.
As mentioned, we use two oracles. When there is a trade, we get the price feed from Binance Oracle but we’ll compare that with Chainlink. If there’s a big difference (larger than 1%) the trade will be refused. We only proceed with the trade when prices from both oracles match.

@namdoan_HCM There are lots of milestones laid ahead for the 2023 Roadmap, which one excites you the most?

For us, we are excited to continue to grow V2. That’s our focus for the rest of Q2, at least.
There are many new V2 developments in the pipeline and we’ll continue to improve the trading experience.

V1 is still a core product and we’ll expand to multichain and continue to list new contracts.

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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Questions

About ApolloX V2

Twitter Q&A

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