Author: Allison Lu
Translation & Proofreading: Min Min & A Jian
Source: Ethereum enthusiasts
- Babbitt Column | From Highlights to Fall: P2P Brings Revelation to Defi
- Babbitt Column | Career View in the Blockchain Era
- Gavin Wood: Zuckerberg's Libra has fundamental problems, or is included in historical footnotes
- Zhu Jiaming: The biggest area of blockchain application is finance, which will bring significant innovation to double-entry bookkeeping
- Borrow money to the DeFi agreement? Good returns, but first assess the risk
- The United States is beginning to worry? Billionaire Michael Novogratz says China's digital currency revolution will weaken US financial status
Editor's note: Original title was "Science | Derivative Liquidity Mechanism"
In the first part of this series, we introduced synthetic assets. In this article, we will introduce different liquidity and trading mechanisms.
In the process of trading crypto derivatives, liquidity is mainly affected by three aspects:
1. Risk: What risk exposures exist? Is there a standard (for example, each BitMEX perpetual contract holds $ 100,000 worth of Bitcoin) or is it customized (for example, Song and Lubin's famous bet)?
2. Custody: Where is my collateral? How to liquidate?
3. Transaction mechanism: How can the two parties to the transaction identify each other?
Centralized order book (also known as a centralized exchange)
-Traders see exchanges as counterparties in a centralized order book-
The most familiar way of trading derivatives is through a futures exchange. Exchange operators define standard terms for risk and clearing. In order to effectively carry out clearing management, the operator usually keeps the pledge of the trader. They are also responsible for maintaining a centralized order book and matching both parties to the transaction. Liquidity itself produces liquidity, and network effects are difficult to replace. Exchange operators may have a monopoly.
In addition, when trading on a managed futures exchange such as BitMEX, the counterparty to the trader is actually the exchange. If the exchange disappears, or if risk management is not in place, traders will lose their synthetic assets and collateral.
-Treating an exchange as a counterparty means that if the exchange goes down, traders will follow gg-
In order to separate the various parts of the centralized order book without affecting its liquidity network effect, we can use smart contracts to separate the three areas of risk, custody and trading from each other. For example, UMA smart contracts can specify standard risk units in detail and keep the pledges of traders. However, both parties to a transaction can still identify each other through a centralized order book.
Distributed (also known as point-to-point)
-In peer-to-peer derivatives trading, traders directly trade-
In peer-to-peer transactions, both parties to a transaction can negotiate directly. The bet between Jimmy Song and Joe Lubin is one way to reach an agreement. However, they need to bear the risk that the other party may lie on their books. In this case, a smart contract can be used to lock the pledge to ensure that Jimmy does not overcharge. However, such peer-to-peer transactions may be relatively rare and highly customized, which makes it difficult to transfer risks and increase liquidity.
Decentralized Order Book (also known as OTC)
-Off-market making is a golden mean-
If you are interested in OTC trading and how to use UMA contracts to reduce transfer risks, please contact us.
Regardless of the method used to trade these derivatives, all derivatives need to be settled through price predictors (translator's note: there needs to be a way to confirm the market price and then judge the profitability of both parties). If you can control the oracle, it doesn't matter whether your counterparty has pledged a deposit in a "decentralized" smart contract: because you can steal its assets. Some fiat currency market oligarchs use their power to manipulate the pricing of derivatives1 , 2 . We believe that we can use the power of blockchain oracles to achieve network effects without relying on existing strong forces.
In the next article, we will discuss the importance of economic assurance for blockchain oracles, and our proposed solution: UMA Data Verification Mechanism (DVM).
1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libor_scandal
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