GammaX Raises $4 Million to Launch Crypto Derivatives Exchange on Ethereum Layer-2 Solution Cryptocurrency

GammaXa Singapore-based company building a new high-performance hybrid crypto derivatives exchange, announced the closing of a $4 million funding round, backed by the likes of zero-knowledge developer StarkWare and the liquidity provider Dexterity Capital.

Other investors in the round include Alphanonce, Cobo, Genesis Trading, Kyber, Ledger Prime, Matrixport, Profluent, Uncorrelated and 01Node, GammaX said in an announcement shared with Decrypt.

“Our mission is to create the world’s fastest, most comprehensive, easy-to-use and responsive exchange available to traders,” Defi Das, the anonymous co-founder of GammaX, said in a statement. . “To achieve this, we blend the best aspects of centralized and decentralized exchanges.”

Over the past few months, GammaX has interviewed “hundreds of traders around the world […] to find out what they want in a next-gen perpetual futures market,” said the co-founder of GammaX.

“What we hear is that many exchanges available in our industry fall short in various areas when it comes to a top-notch trading experience,” DeFi Das added.

Specifically, GammaX says that to achieve lower latency and better user experience, the platform’s order book and matching engine are kept off-chain, while settlement and custody of user funds are handled. chain via smart contracts.

“Completely decentralized counterparts are still not able to provide sufficient user experience for merchants, as the blockchain infrastructure is still in its maturing stage. Once the blockchain infrastructure catches up, we we can review this decision,” said GammaX Vice President of Marketing James Ryan. Decrypt.

Free transactions with GammaX

Unlike many other decentralized exchanges built on EthereumGammaX is built on StarkWare’s Layer 2 solution called StarkEx—a trading engine supporting a range of services, including derivatives trading.

Some examples of applications deployed on StarkEx include dYdX, a popular margin trading platform that follows the order book model, NFT-centric projects Immutable and Sorare, and decentralized spot exchange (DEX) DeversiFi.

GammaX indicates that trading perpetual contracts requires rapid price feed updates across a variety of trading pairs. Collecting this information is impossible to scale on Layer 1 in terms of speed and cost effectiveness.

StarkEx technology also brings other competitive advantages, such as the ability to maintain transactions at no cost. The only time a user has to pay transaction fees is when making a deposit or withdrawing funds from the GammaX smart contract.

According to Das DeFi, “Gamma symbolizes high energy and speed in physics and is also used in options trading as a measure of acceleration, which is why we chose the name GammaX.”

“GammaX has an experienced and entrepreneurial team with a proven track record of bringing innovative products to market,” said StarkWare CEO and Co-Founder Uri Kolodny. “We look forward to working with them to usher in a new era of derivatives trading.”

Beta launch of GammaX

GammaX plans to open its testnet to beta testers over the next few weeks before launching it on the mainnet later this fall.

There will only be two trading pairs at the start—Bitcoin and Tether, and Ethereum and Tether, both tradeable with 20X leverage. GammaX is looking to increase the number of available pairs when releasing from the public testnet or mainnet.

The same goes for adding new features: “This will be evaluated during the closed beta phase, where GammaX will work closely with merchants to assess which features are most important to them and which features make their lives easier. “, said the vice-president of the project. marketing president James Ryan said Decrypt.

According to Ryan, “GammaX will test exotic derivatives, cross-margining, as well as smart liquidity algorithms to provide deep liquidity to a high number of trading pairs.

Additionally, like many other exchanges, GammaX is considering launching its own token with a rewards structure that, as the exchange says, will appeal to beginners and advanced traders alike.

Incentives will include trade rewards, referral rewards, and so-called “earn to learn” opportunities, a program focused on educating GammaX users and helping them master the nuances of crypto derivatives.