Contango 💃🏾🕺 (@contango_xyz) • Hey
Perps built through looping,
the native way of trading on-chain
Live at: https://app.contango.xyz/
Publications
- Short 2023 recap:
→ Contango launched 106 pairs on 6 chains
→ Integrated with 11 lending markets
→ Settled +$ 10M volumes
What's coming:
→ Token launch 👀
→ Morpho Blue integration!
→ Further expansion into more chains/markets
- After 3 weeks of hectic integrations across chains and lending markets, we’re now focusing on delivering some important features asked by the community:
→ switch between margin and size when opening (shipped already!)
→ market impact shown on the trade review ticket (shipped already!)
→ dashboard for pair selection and arb detection (coming soon 🎁)
- We've been heads down on integrations: Contango now taps into 10 lending markets and offers 99 trading pairs. Plus, the app is officially a Christmas tree of rewards. 🎄 Small recap of what we’ve done: 👇
New markets:
→ Spark was added on Mainnet and Gnosis
→ Aave v2 got integrated on Polygon and Mainnet
→ Lodestar has been added on Arbitrum
→ Moonwell has been added on Base
→ Granary has been added on Optimism
New pairs for degen speculative plays:
→ rETH/wstETH
→ cbETH/wstETH
→ cbETH/rETH
- We spent the last couple of weeks on integrations: Contango is now live across 6 chains, tapping into multiple lending markets and offering a total of 97 pairs, including forex on EUR and USD. Most pairs offer rewards too. A quick recap of what we’ve achieved: 👇
New markets:
→ @lens/aaveaave is now fully integrated across 6 chains.
→ @lens/radiantcapital has been added to Arbitrum, and Lodestar too, with $LODE rewards.
→ Agave has been integrated on Gnosis and offers $AGVE rewards.
→ Sonne has been integrated on both Optimism and Base, with $SONNE rewards.
→ Exactly has also been added on Optimism, with $esEXA rewards.
New pairs:
→ EUR pairs from both Stasis and Monerium have been added.
→ GNO pairs have been added on Gnosis chain.
→ OP pairs have been added on Optimism
→ LINK pairs can be traded on 4 chains now via Aave.
→ Multiple pairs with USDC, DAI, USDT, LUSD have been added, allowing greater arb opportunities.
- Exciting news for the @liquityprotocol.lens fans out there.
We’ve shipped a bunch of LUSD-denominated pairs, across all chains!
Plus, we added some stable/stable pairs too, like DAI/USDC.
Want more pairs? Let us know and we’ll make it happen.
- If you’re preparing for the bull market and want to build up a large perp position over time, you need two things:
1) deep liquidity
2) funding rates with low volatility
You could achieve this by looping manually on @aaveaave.lens
Or you could just use Contango, on any major chain.
- cPerps are officially live on Mainnet and Polygon too! 🚀
→ Now cPerps are enabled by @aaveaave.lens $2.4B liquidity across 4 major chains.
→ At a quick glance, you can compare funding rates across chains to find the best one for your trading needs.
Trade cPerps at: https://app.contango.xyz/
- This gotta be the smoothest trading experience ever:
Contango + Rabby wallet 😌
→ You compare funding rates across chains and pick the best depending on your trading needs.
→ Rabby will automatically switch to the right network for you.
Awesome.
- Watch @defidad.lens roasting Kamel Aouane, co-founder of Contango.
In this 30-min episode they unpack the journey of Contango from Expirables built on fixed-rate markets, to cPerps built on @aaveaave.lens.
https://youtu.be/QvVH6JR3gMs?feature=shared
- We're going full steam: last week Contango brought cPerps to Optimism too, after a successful launch on Arbitrum. All trading pairs are already liquid, thanks to @aaveaave.lens. We’re expanding to more chains (Polygon? 👀) and markets soon.
If you haven't tried cPerps, these upcoming events might be for you:
🔔 19th Oct, demo day on Optimism
🔔 24th Oct, AMA with the ArbitrumNews DAO
Give us a follow and get the latest info here on Hey :)
- For our Italian frens 🇮🇹🤌
Questo giovedì sera alle 18:30 saremo ospiti di The Crypto Gateway per una bella chiaccherata sui futures, la defi, e le novità che Contango shipperà a breve.
Mi raccomando registrarsi previamente qui: https://learn.thecryptogateway.it/evento/call-con-esperto-su-contango-protocol-2/
- Savvy traders and whales don't normally go above 5x leverage.
That's why they trade through apps like Defi Saver.
We spoke with a couple of them, and learnt a few things, like:
Never trade market news.
https://twitter.com/Contango_xyz/status/1711298344033665354
- Looping on money markets has always been popular.
But no one ever called it “perp” trading.
Maybe you should refresh what looping is, and then start doing it the proper way.
A brief explainer: https://medium.com/contango-xyz/what-is-looping-78421c8a1367
- cPerps are the elephant in the room that everybody missed.
The most leveraged markets in defi are money markets, like @aaveaave.lens
Why build yet another perp protocol when the liquidity is right there, under your nose?
Learn about cPerps in our intro piece: https://medium.com/contango-xyz/an-introduction-to-cperps-4dbb4a58b602
- We chose to integrate with @aaveaave.lens because it’s the biggest lending market in defi.
The cPerps we just launched can already benefit from its $150M liquidity on Abitrum. 🔥
Not bad for day one.
Other cool advantages here: https://medium.com/contango-xyz/our-partners-aave-e8cdd8b05806
- We just launched cPerps on Aave!
cPerps are built through looping on money markets.
Looping is the native way of trading on-chain.
Everyone has been doing it for +6 years.
If you haven’t, now you have a proper trading interface to do it: https://app.contango.xyz/
cc: @aaveaave.lens @stani.lens
- Last sneak peek before the official launch 👀
Can you spot the new thing Contango will offer?
Our new product will be unveiled tomorrow, on Discord first 👉 https://discord.gg/x3dync2edA
cc @aaveaave.lens
- While preparing for our v2 launch, we’re partnering with Sixdegree Lab, a talented team of data wizards, to carry on more research on the derivative space in #defi.
Results to be shared soon!
cc @springzh.lens 🤝
- Brilliant report on derivatives, by Three Sigma.
Contango is still the market leader of the “expirable” section (although it doesn't really belong to the vAMM label).
And things might change soon! 😉
Kudos to this great effort at recapping the endless derivative landscape! https://threesigma.xyz/blog/defi-perpetual-landscape
- What if expirables were just one of the products offered on Contango?
What if we told you Contango might soon be in a completely new quadrant?
(FOMO mode: ON)
- We spent the last couple of months with our heads buried into building a new product. Here’s a sneak peek into our UI. Can you guess what we’re cooking on the side? Little alpha in the screenshot👇
- Ok, anon.
Maybe you’ve placed a few test trades.
But are you really a Contango connoisseur?
Test your Contango knowledge with our @Galxe campaign #4.
(And don't forget the other three 😉)
https://galxe.com/contango/campaign/GCMDTUN7JB
- If you haven’t placed a trade on Contango yet, here’s an excuse to redeem your soul: our third @galxehq.lens campaign is out.
Place a trade before the 30th June and earn yourself an Early tradeeer NFT.
And don't forget the other two camapigns! https://galxe.com/contango/campaigns
- Wtf is the basis rate you see on Contango?
Simple.
It’s the difference between the expirable price and the spot.
Low basis? ▶️ Cheaper leverage to go long!
High basis? ▶️ Cash and carry time! (see more on: https://bit.ly/3I5cUJ8)
- Billionaires don't want you to know this one simple trick.
DCA into #ETH by longing it with 1.2x on https://app.contango.xyz/
Liquidation price: $344 🔥
Basis rate per unit: +$0.43 🔥
Initial deposit: just $1466 per 1 ETH 🔥
(NFA, DYOR)
- Everyone trading #PEPE while the real deal is longing some #ETH at a safe leverage without any carrying cost (literally 0% a few days ago).
-NFA, DYOR-
- @defidad.lens just wrote a great tutorial on Contango's expirables (thank you sir 🙏)
Why does he like expirables so much? It's simple:
1) cheap fees
2) predictable costs
Still not convinced? Learn from him on the latest Defi Alpha newsletter from @thedefiant.lens (premium content) 👉 https://thedefiant.io/defi-alpha-expirable-futures-with-contango-on-arbitrum
- Reminder: https://app.contango.xyz/ is also mobile-friendly.
Use it with your mobile version of Metamask and place a trade on the go in just a few seconds! 💃
- After a tour of @contango_xyz.lens, I feel like some are sleeping on expirables.
The equivalent 1H funding rate to open an ETH/USD long (3X leverage for a 10 ETH position) expiring Sept 29 is just 0.000118%!
Meanwhile, the same ETH long on a perps platform cost ~50X at 0.0059%/hr.
- Are expirable instruments cheaper than perps?
Arthur Hayes offers an insight into the past performance of perps vs dated futures (aka expirables).
Results? Expirables are historically 10% cheaper (now even more on app.contango.xyz).
Arthur’s full article: https://blog.bitmex.com/all-aboard/
- We just released a trading guide that explains the different use cases for expirables. A spreadsheet is included to help you estimate profits and costs for each example.
Play with the numbers and craft your next trade.
https://bit.ly/41j9VEa
- We renovated Contango’s UI and now you can easily compare the basis rate with funding fees on perp trading platforms. Turns out that longing ETH on Contango can be 100x cheaper!
Full explanation here: https://bit.ly/3mLlCEE
-
We’re officially audited! 🥳
You can now trade on app.contango.xyz with more leverage, lower maintenance margin, and no funding fees.
Learn more here: https://medium.com/contango-xyz/contango-is-officially-out-of-beta-trade-now-a7d5bc38601b
- *-- Disclaimer: Geek post about testing below* 🤓 --
What is testing? 👉 Testing is running controlled inputs against your code and validating that the expected outcomes are produced.
Why is this important? And what the heck is this video (below)?
Our team has a solid background in building trading software. We've always followed strict testing procedures (so-called "test-driven development"). It serves two purposes:
1. Address edge cases & security issues
2. Avoid tunnel vision and produce better quality code
Why we do it? 👉 Because we need to ensure that the code that was implemented behaves accordingly to the specifications we want, without the need to verify it in production ("test in prod").
What happens if you don’t do it? 👉 You risk having your code behaving in unintended ways, and you risk having costly avoidable mistakes that could go anywhere from simple bugs to catastrophic failure and death of the protocol.
What kind of tests does Contango do? 👉 At the SC level we run both unit tests and integration tests. All tests rely on foundry. The integration ones fork off blocks with a real deployment, ensuring both new and existing code works, upgrading where needed.
Even at the UI level we perform tests, despite this being pretty uncommon in front end development. For the UI we rely mostly on integration tests and end-to-end tests. The integration tests consist of running our UI against a controlled chain using Cypress, to automatically perform actions and validate that the UI behaves accordingly (indeed that’s what is shown in the video).
All tests run on every PR and commit merged.
Of course testing doesn't make you immune from bugs and exploits, but it helps reduce the likelihood of these events significantly.
If you have specific questions regarding our testing, ping us on Discord: https://discord.gg/x3dync2edA
- Yesterday in an excellent Bitmex podcast, Arthur Hayes talked about the interest rate parity (IRP), which is indeed the theoretical model behind Contango. What is it? Why is this relevant for Arthur and ETH staking?👇
Arthur is an arb trader at heart so he loves market inefficiencies. He argued:
"A key concept in TradFi is FX-hedged yield: big entities such as Asian insurance providers swap their domestic investments for USD and buy T-bills, selling a forward to hedge any FX exposure. Hopefully they're left with a positive yield, cause this triangular arb earns them something that they shouldn't have (if you believe in the traditional IRP model)".
Can you do the same in crypto?
In Arthur’s own words: "If ETH has a native 5-6% yield, I can fix that yield by selling a perp or future (or a Contango expirable 🔥) and remove any ETHUSD price risk, thus earning a net positive yield. So we'll see a situation soon where more fiat from TradFi will move into crypto to do these arbs. Cause as a fiat-thinking investor, if I can remove any crypto risk and earn a positive yield, then I'm gonna do it all day!"
In case you wanna try the above trade on Contango, remember you can hedge your ETH by shorting it with an expirable.
We're offering a June 23 maturity and will soon add a September one! 🗓️
***
Nerd appendix:
The interest rate parity model (IRP) states that the interest rate differential between two countries (read: currencies) is equal to the differential between the forward exchange rate and the spot exchange rate.
The basic premise of IRP is that hedged returns from investing in different currencies should be the same, regardless of their interest rates.
In other words: the dollar return on USD deposits is equal to the dollar return on EUR deposits.
So if e.g. USD rate is 10% and EUR is 8%, then the market expects an appreciation of EUR of 2% (or depreciation of USD of 2%).
Contango brilliantly uses the IRP model to quote you the forward (aka "expirable") price, given the other 3 variables:
- If 1-year ETH rate is known
- If 1-year USDC rate is known
- If spot price of ETH is known
Then Contango can give you the expirable price of ETH in 1 year 💃
https://twitter.com/BitMEXResearch/status/1640288600834158592
- What happens when an expirable instrument reaches maturity?
On Contango you can opt between:
· physical delivery: your position is settled in the quote currency
· cash settlement: you receive or deliver the base currency
Learn more details here: https://docs.contango.xyz/protocol/delivery
- Contango is still looking for early testers!
👉 Take part in *rewarded* 1:1 calls with our team and earn yourself a Discord role too! 👀
See our #announcement channel in Discord: discord.gg/x3dync2edA
- Clickbaity title, we know.
But really, who likes to be f*****?
An old but gold piece by one of our co-founders, Kamel Aouane: https://bit.ly/3EPrrXo
- Thanks to #defi composability, Contango has built a derivative market on top of fixed-rate markets.
Why fixed-rate markets?
Because they’re one of the biggest asset classes in traditional finance. And if you didn’t know this, you better read up 👉 https://bit.ly/3YKbSZb
- Contango is one of the many cool projects that Across Protocol invited over for their *Ape into Arbitrum* campaign.
Join us for a chat on Twitter today at 16 UTC and learn how to ape (with caution) into Contango 🐒
https://twitter.com/i/spaces/1YpJkgndPzYJj
- What is Contango?
Contango offers expirables, instruments that allow you to long or short an asset at a set date and price in the future.
Being fully on-chain, expirables have some unique properties that sets them apart from traditional futures or forwards contracts.
Don't be late to the party and learn about them now: https://bit.ly/41fsiu9
- Contango has landed on Lens!
💃