Greetings from Hxro headquarters!
Throughout Q4 of 2022, Hxro core contributors have achieved a number of key development milestones to move the network forward on its path towards reaching a state of complete decentralization. Here are a few of the biggest updates we plan to cover:
- Parimutuel protocol v2
- Hxro’s v1 staking module
- OpenHxro and Iconic Markets integrations
- sAMM Liquidity Pools Launch
- esHXRO supplemental reward epochs
- Detailed development roadmap through beginning of Q2
Hxro by the Numbers
Network statistics as of 16/12/2022
Hxro community statistics as of 16/12/2022
Key Development Updates
Derivatives
Protocol overview
Hxro derivatives provide key primitive layer infrastructure for exchange, risk, margin, and settlement functions, and are built on top of two of the network’s native protocols, Dexterity and Spandex.
Dexterity is an open source collection of smart contracts on Solana that provides a framework for trading any instrument with a defined payoff function (such as options, futures, perpetual swaps, bonds, etc.). Named for its flexible framework, Dexterity enables the creation of various on-chain markets within decentralized trading applications. To take a deeper dive into the underpinnings of Dexterity, read the Dexterity whitepaper.
Spandex is Hxro’s customized derivatives risk engine. It is the first on-chain, realtime risk engine to use a portfolio risk-based approach to managing users margin and risk.
Hxro’s USDC collateralized perpetuals and expiring futures are now live on Solana mainnet.
In early Q4, core contributors announced the beta launch of Hxro’s USDC collateralized perps and dated futures on Solana mainnet. A BTC/USDC perpetual and 8 consecutive futures markets were featured at launch: 2 weeklies, 2 monthlies, and 4 quarterlies, along with associated exchange-supported calendar spread markets for each tenor. All markets are settled in USDC. The initial beta period was restricted to a convoy of early network contributors and whitelisted Hxro community members.
Capital blocks, designed to limit the size of capital deposits and withdrawals, are still in place on all user wallets as contributors continue to iterate improvements on Spandex – the networks risk engine. The community has been actively providing feedback to the core development team, leading to bug fixes and drastic improvements to the protocol SDKs.
The first Futures Calendar Spread Markets were launched on Dexterity.
At the beginning of December, the first BTC-USDC Dec22/Mar23 Futures Calendar Spread market was generated on Hxro Dexterity and listed live on OpenHxro.com.
BTC-USDC Dec22/Mar23 Futures Calendar Spread market on Openhxro.com
Calendar spreads—also called intramarket spreads—are types of trades in which a trader simultaneously buys and sells the same futures contract in different expiration months. In dexterity these transactions are atomic, therefore execution of both legs is always guaranteed.
One of the most attractive features of futures calendar spread trading is they carry a different type of risk exposure. Because a trader has both active long and short positions are at work in the market, the trader’s risk is more concentrated on the relationship between the movements of the various calendar months as opposed to the outright direction of the market. Because the Spandex risk engine is capable of margining positions on a portfolio basis (vs isolated), calendar spreads can also offer a considerable reduction in required margin.
Builder documentation for Hxro Derivatives can be found in the Hxro Gitbook. Currently, Python (Pypi) and typescript (npm) SDKs are available. For Rust docs, please connect directly with Hxro core devs in the Discord here.
Parimutuels
Protocol overview
The Hxro Parimutuel Protocol is an on-chain primitive providing the infrastructure for any peer to peer, floating strike option with a pool-based, pro-rata payoff. The protocol is currently capable of running a dual-outcome parimutuel market in any discrete time frame using any available on-chain data oracle. It can be used for financial transactions, gaming, and sports wagering among other things.
V2 of the network’s Parimutuel Protocol is now live on Solana mainnet.
Hxro’s Parimutuel protocol provides builders with the general infrastructure necessary to create customizable dual-outcome peer-to-peer event markets on any data provided by an on-chain oracle. The protocol is capable of integrating with both DeFi and CeFi applications. This gives builders the ability to offer alternative solutions that capture the UX of a CeFi app, while offering the real-time transparency and fairness of on-chain infrastructure.
The v2 release includes the integration of the network’s parimutuel Smart Automated Market Maker protocol (sAMM). The Smart AMM uses independent probability nodes that allow liquidity pools to automatically participate in each parimutuel event’s liquidity. It is designed to help solve a liquidity consistency problem often faced by parimutuels that run on a continuous market, while still being efficient enough to keep fees to parimutuel participants low. For those interested in learning more about the technical details of Hxro’s Parimutuel Protocol, the REST API and Python SDK documentation are available on Gitbook.
sAMM Parimutuel Liquidity Pools are now live on Mainnet
We have integrated the first sAMM (Smart Automated Market Maker) Liquidity Pool for parimutuels on mainnet. Because sAMM is guaranteed to provide two-sided liquidity in every parimutuel event being offered by the protocol, there will always be a two-sided market for non-sAMM participants to bet with (or against).
This current instance is supporting both the BTC/USDC 1 and 5 min parimutuel markets which are currently the only live markets made available by the protocol. As more markets are added, each one will have its own sAMM pool.
We’ve temporarily limited the number of users who are able to become LP’s to the sAMM pools, eventually contributors plan to open the LP pool to anybody who wishes to commit funds to it. sAMM pools are rewarded with a percentage of that pools transaction feess which derive from non-sAMM market participants.
For more information, you can read more here.
Network Staking and Rewards
Overview
In order to create the optimal alignment between the Network and its participants, a symbiotic relationship must exist between the value the network creates and its token. In a token-based ecosystem, a strong and scalable foundation contains a mechanism whereby token holders who are willing to stake their tokens to the network accrue a share of network value. In Hxro, staking rewards will derive from transactions made within the network on all parimutuel, perpetual futures, dated futures, and options markets.
100% of transaction fees generated by the Network accrue back to staked tokens, and other participants within the network who provide critical functionality (such as Network Treasury, Insurance Funds, Liquidity Pool Providers, and Volatility (THEO) and Probability (SAMM) Surface Providers). Stakers receive a pro-rata share of 50% of all network transaction fees, and critical participants receive the other 50%.
Hxro’s v1 staking module officially went live on 6/10/2022!
Token holders now have the ability to stake their HXRO, esHXRO and LHXRO at hxro.finance, a community-built application designed specifically for HXRO staking, governance, and rewards.
Network staking requires a user to lock their tokens in the Hxro staking contract. Tokens can be locked at intervals between a minimum of 7 days (1 week) and a maximum of 1095 days (156 weeks, or 3 years). The protocol encourages long-term staking for wallets who are willing to align with and participate in the long-term objectives of the network by awarding more stake weight. The staking contract includes a stake weight multiplier. This will apply on a linear scale to all staked tokens that lock for greater than 1 year (2x multiplier) out to the maximum staking period of 3 years (base stake + 3x multiplier).
Currently, the protocol receives USDC for derivatives and either HXRO (paid in esHXRO) or USDC for parimutuels. If tokens are staked for a minimum period of 7 days, earned rewards become claimable in 365 days (1 year) from the date they are earned. Conversely, if the tokens are staked for the max period of 3 years, earned rewards become claimable on the day they are received. A linear scale for reward locking applies based on the number of days a wallet chooses to lock its staked HXRO or esHXRO tokens.
The Network’s first staking audit was completed by SolShield and released on 15/9/2022.
Solana ecosystem auditor SolShield has completed its first audit of the Hxro Staking and Rewards contracts. This is the first step in an ongoing audit and consulting agreement for the network’s current and future derivatives, staking, and token related protocols. Audit results in their entirety can be accessed here.
esHXRO Supplemental Reward Epoch 2, 3, and 4 were released on 15/11, 30/11, and 15/12.
Hxro Foundation and Founders have pledged 10,000,000 esHXRO to early staking participants on the hxro.finance platform. The pledged esHXRO will be distributed at random to stakers on a biweekly basis over a six month period. The first four epochs were released to the community with the fifth epoch to be released on or before December 31st, 2022.
esHXRO supplemental reward schedule
Network Integrations
Custom oracle provider Jiritsu Network created a flexible and robust price oracle solution uniquely tailored to the settlement needs of the Hxro Parimutuel Protocol.
Jiritsu’s oracle solution fetches prices for coin pairs from multiple data sources at the precise time required by each parimutuel contest, and posts the average price for each coin pair to a Solana on-chain program. A ZK consensus mechanism is applied across multiple nodes to verify that fetched prices are reliably reported, and that the result was accurately computed. Anyone may repeat the process and verify any result at any time. This secure, off-chain process allows for maximum performance while ensuring accountability and fairness for Hxro’s on-chain parimutuel markets.
Learn more at jiritsu.network
Iconic Markets completed its integration with the network’s Parimutuel and Smart AMM protocols.
On December 5th, Iconic Markets, a platform where gaming and crypto combine to offer simple, secure trading games, went live. While Iconic is technically still a “CeFi” front-end application (it provides custody for its users as well as other services), it leverages Hxro for its on-chain back-end infrastructure to power its flagship product, MoonRekt.
Beyond the network’s reference implementation of a parimutuel GUI, Iconic is the first app to integrate with Hxro’s Parimutuel and Smart AMM protocols.
Iconicmarkets.io GUI
Integration with the Hxro Parimutuel protocol allows Iconic Markets to provide users with the key benefits of on-chain markets, including: real-time transparency; provably fair, consensus-driven settlement; and consistent, dependable contract pool liquidity. The protocol is compatible with both DeFi and CeFi applications, which means that Iconic users can enjoy the transparency and efficiency of DeFi, with a CeFi interface.
Learn more at iconicmarkets.io or follow on Twitter @IconicMarkets
OpenHxro completed its integration with the network’s Derivatives protocol.
Openhxro.com GUI
OpenHxro is a web3, on-chain derivatives trading interface. The OpenHxro platform went live on September 28th as the first Trading UI application to integrate with Hxro’s Derivatives protocol. OpenHxro is the first DeFi trading application capable of providing single-click order entry for any tradable instrument. Additionally, it displays markets in a visually simple and easy-to-read vertical “ladder” format. OpenHxro’s market ladders allow traders to quickly enter and cancel orders with a single click. The ladder interface provides a clear visualization of market movements as bids and offers move against a static price axis. This style, which has become a widely preferred interface in the traditional trading world, offers traders the ability to quickly react to markets in both outright and spread trading capacities.
OpenHxro utilizes the Hxro derivatives primitive as its on-chain exchange, margin, risk and settlement layer. As this is the MVP version OpenHxro, the current functionality is limited to simple order entry, order cancels, and other key trading and data functions.
Plans for future iterations include the ability to quickly execute inter- and intra-market arbitrage, automate spread trading and other strategy-based functions, drag and drop order cancel/replace, and more.
Learn more at openhxro.com or follow on Twitter @openhxro
Roadmap:
Expect to see the following updates coming through Q2 2023!
Hxro in the News
Hxro Co-Founder @hxrobtc represented the network as a keynote speaker at the 2022 Solana Breakpoint conference.
In November, @hxrobtc was featured as a mainstage keynote speaker at Solana Breakpoint. This year’s event, hosted in Lisbon, Portugal, is the leading global conference for the Solana community. He discussed the case for on-chain derivatives, as well as the key considerations when building Hxro’s Spandex and Dexterity protocols. Watch his full presentation, “The Case for On-Chain Derivatives” here.
@hxrobtc represented the network as a speaker at the 2022 Web3 Expo.
Hxro Foundation is proud to announce that Hxro Network was one of ten projects selected for Futures and Options (“FIA”) Expo Innovators Pavilion and Pitch Competition, a leading event in the global listed derivatives and cleared swaps community. Of the ten projects selected, five were crypto native.
Hxro Co-Founder, Director, and network Core Contributor @hxrobtc spoke to global leaders in the traditional trading space about the benefits of building on-chain derivatives. His talk also covered Hxro Network, and how the Network is helping to facilitate the growth of a fair and transparent decentralized derivatives marketplace.
@hxrobtc represented Hxro Network twice during this year’s Web3 Expo in Las Vegas, Nevada. He sat down with @scottmelker to discuss the global crypto derivatives landscape, as well as participated in a panel discussion with industry leaders on the future of crypto and DeFi regulation.
Articles and Podcasts: Coindesk – Crypto Derivatives DEXs Reposition for Life After FTX
Crypto 101 Podcast – Episode 488: Dan Gunsberg of Hxro
Coindesk – Bitcoin Outlook as Earnings Season Kicks Off
Hxro will be represented at the following upcoming events:
- ICE London – February 2023
- Solana Crossroads, Istanbul – April 2023
- SBC Casino Beats, Malta – April 2023
Watch out on Hxro Twitter and Hxro Community Discord for more updates!