[Shipped] Launch pDEX v2 & hit 650k In trading volume.

What’s a privacy problem I am trying to solve?

Incognito’s pDEX is the first decentralized and confidential exchange in the world.

We want to increase usage of pDEX. One of the ways to measure usage - is trading volume.

Trading Volume comparison

Monthly trading volume
Kyber ≈ $189M
Uniswap ≈ $175M
pDEX ≈ $0.5M

Why it’s importnat:

Higher trading volume on pDEX attract more user, brings Incognito pDEX as a strong confidential alternative to existed decentralized trading industry.

Positioning: the world’s only anonymous cryptocurrency exchange
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What is the solution ?

We are going to run several initiatives:

OWNER INITIATIVE “TO DO” TARGET “TO GET”
andrey pitch incognito pDEX as a place of free, private, decentralized trading, launch pKyber bring 3 valuable integration (browser, defi, privacy) Dear 3 media coverage (pkyber, selflisting/self ICO/teh next coinbase
lena offer to ERC20 based projects listing on pDEX List in 10+ ERC20 projects
jason growth pXMR <> PRV liquidity pool hit ≈$40k in pXMR <> PRV pools (+85% MoM)
henry launch “self-service listing/fundraising” list 10+ projects with total liquidity $100k+

Who are we?

Growth team

Andrey is here :wave:! I’m an Incognito Rebel, a member of the core team, and I’m working on making the financial world a little bit more private and decentralized.

Product team

  • @baothach - Backend And Smart Contract Engineer
  • @harry - Backend And Smart Contract Engineer
  • @mo QA

What’s your schedule & KPI?

Current monthly trading volume on pDEX is around ≈ $320k/monthly

Our goal is to increase liquidity pools at least on 30% MoM and hit $650 in trading volume (550k on PRV related, 100k non PRV related)

Growth

Date Milestones
Week 1 $70k
Week 2 $150k
Week 3 $300k
Week 4 $500k+

Product

Date Milestones
05/05 Release pdex rewards dashboard
05/14 Release pKyber
05/22 Release new pdex UI
05/29 Improve pdex UI

More detailed explanation of UI improvements, which allow users to simplify trades:

• User don’t need to deposit/withdraw anymore which has cause many issue and make user have bad experience -> This will help user have better experience and trading faster.
• The UI is simplized. We calculate the actual number user need to send to trade -> Improve UI/UX
• Pdex Liqudity reward helps us attract more liquidity -> User will have more pair to trade and get more output when trading

What’s your budget?

Growth

Resource Cost Quantity Monthly Cost Type
Implementer and (BD lead) 2,000 PRV 1 2,000 PRV result-based
Marketing lead 2,000 PRV 1 2,000 PRV result-based
Marketing specialist 1,000 PRV 2 2,000 PRV result-based

Product

Resource Cost Quantity Monthly Cost Type
Fullstack Engineer (Lead) 2,000 PRV 1 2,000 PRV result-based
Backend and Smart Contract 1,000 PRV 2 2,000 PRV result-based
Backend Engineer 1,000 PRV 1 1,000 PRV result-based
Tester 1,000 PRV 1 1,000 PRV result-based

Total expected bonuses: 12,000 PRV

Related discussions


All the best,
Andrey :wave:

18 Likes

That’s a great initiative, but don’t you think pitching incognito as the next binance/coinbase is a little bit exaggerated?? And will bring some sort of fight between binance/coinbase fanboy against incognito community??? We all saw the era where every new project was named as the next ethereum or the ethereum killa, or the ethereum of China and so on​:grin:, and why refer Pdex as next centralized exchange ( binance/coinbase):thinking:. Why not stick with “” THE ERA OF TRUE PRIVATE DECENTRALIZE EXCHANGE"’’

6 Likes

Let’s not pick fight with the the big brothers( binance/ coinbase). They can help us succeed as coinbase did with kyber and I don’t think they will appreciate the fact calling ourselves their next version​:grin::grin:

2 Likes

Hey @ELDAD, Technically we do not say that we are killer of coinbase or binance. On the positioning slide, choose an empty direction where is not other projects yet. The positioning doesn’t say if we better or worse, but it just shows difference.

Regarding saying that we are next binance or coibase I think your comment make sense. I’ll make it more neutral.

5 Likes

I understand, but as you know in cryto with your saying people tend to come up with things that you never meant therefore creating tribalism between projects. Private Decentralized Finance all the way💪

4 Likes

@ELDAD thanks for the feedback on how to craft our messaging and positioning!

i guess the point here is not to be better than other exchanges, because each exchange offers a different set of benefits to users. so if you want large liquidity, for now, go to binance or coinbase. if you want decentralization & trading ethereum assets, go to kyber and uniswap. these are fantastic products.

incognito dex is designed to offer another choice. it is designed from ground up as something entirely different. it focuses on these core benefits for a select/small group of users who want it.

  1. privacy-protecting. i believe we’re one of the very few that is designed to protect user privacy from day 1. we also achieved significant traction already.

  2. trustless, non-custodial. eth/erc20 assets are already non-custodial. portal will be launched soon which will make bitcoin and other assets non-custodial too.

  3. permissionless, zero listing fees. anyone can create their own markets, add their favorite pair, and kickstart a new liquidity pool. so this opens the doors to new projects who have difficulty with paying hefty listing fees to exchanges.

  4. liquidity rewards. this is a unique feature on its own to reward network participants beyond the mining use case. all users who support the network growth should be rewarded, whether it’s mining, liquidity providing, or code contribution.

  5. zero trading fees. incognito dex is experimenting with zero trading fees this month. this is another example of the level of freedom an open-source project like incognito can exercise. unlike other crypto exchanges which are for-profit companies and most often backed by VCs who push for massive returns/exits, incognito is entirely self-funded and the project is open-source. it is under no pressure to make a profit. it can implement these user-first features like zero trading fees with the user benefits in mind without rent-seeking. to us, this is unique, because other exchanges can’t do this.

and many more experiments that we can’t wait to try out in the next few months!

10 Likes

@duy I see, but I wasn’t saying that the crafting message means incognito better than others, but most people will interpret it in this way without even trying to get deeper

1 Like

This needs clearer communication.

This is not a vc funded project, but removing trading fees has a impact on liquidity providers and competing against partners like kyber … not smart

The ux still leaves a lot to be desired and liquidity is low on most pairs, no arbitrage opportunities between usdt and usdc or dai for example.

Pdex can’t be the next coinbase and doing icos seems like a stretch with low use and liquidity.

I also wonder how the pkyber integration will connect to pdex?

Why use pdex when the most liquidity is on kyber … and kyber is getting cross chain assets soon.

This plan seems confusing in light of where the market is going and is stealing away from the reason I think this works: private trading, which is still not optimized.

This needs to be explained better. It honestly feels like a bunch of buzzwords, trends slapped together with little thinking about how they all fit together.

Plus node owners are annoyed because you just took away part their income by eliminating trading fees, when node earnings are uneven as it is.

Please do a better job of explaining this.

3 Likes

The node owners take the network fee which is cut while trading. However, there is a problem for the liquidity providers here. How will they earn the money? From the arbitrage? Currently, the liquidity providers can some money only if they invest in rewarded pairs like PRV-XMR, PRV-USDT. What about the others? @duy

2 Likes

so good to hear from you @abduraman!

you’re absolutely right that node owners don’t earn trading fees – they earn transaction fees. trading fees is a specific pdex fee, which is different from the general network transaction fees.

so zero trading fees won’t affect node owners’ earnings. in fact, i think node owners will likely earn more transaction fees now because zero trading fees will encourage more transactions and therefore more transaction fees.

re: liquidity providers. we’re still working out the mechanism. but here is a quick recap of it.

  • for now, liquidity providers are pretty happy with earning liquidity rewards. if you haven’t had a chance to check it out, take a look at @andrey’s post here.

  • i’m working out a mechanism for liquidity providers to vote on the trading fees of the pool they’re in. so if you’re a liquidity provider for a specific market/pool, you own a share of that market. with that share, you can vote on the trading fees. so starting out it could be 0.00% but it could be increased or decreased up to the pool shareholders. i’ll try to draft it up and share it in a few days.

hope you’re doing well!

7 Likes

Hi @duy: we’re raising questions about the current transaction fee model and long term blockchain health here:

The Incognito Network: Ponzi or Economically Sustainable Blockchain?

TL;DR: fees are way too low for more adoption to make much of a difference.

Please chime in. Thanks.

2 Likes

@davoice321 i’d love to chime in but i don’t think i can add much value to that conversation. i don’t understand tokeneconomics – there are too many tokeneconomics “overnight experts” nowadays. i never understand short-term traders/investors – everything i invest in, i don’t expect ROI at least 5 years from the investment date.

personally, i think the tokeneconomics discussion around prv at this point is premature optimization. but – to be clear – my opinion is just one among many on the core dev team and definitely just one among many in the community.

i’m 200% focused on products & users. by users… i mean… actual people who use incognito products, not those who speculate on prv. so far, we’re pretty happy with the traction. and we’ll keep working on it.

5 Likes

Actually its not mumbo jumbo neither about speculation.

Like Satoshi did, a cryptocurrency needs a solid economic model from the very beginning, otherwise its not trustable.

@duy I pointed out a long-term vulnerability of the current economic model which will effect investors in 10-40 years.

Premature optimization is a great concept in code, not a good one in economics.

4 Likes

Thanks for your comment.

I don’t think that talking about transaction fees is premature optimization.

This answer about the failure to consider or even think about transaction fees seriously makes me wonder whether the economics at the core protocol level have been well thought out.

Right now, Incognito is having some success because it’s still early in the protocol’s lifetime. Growth is to be expected, so no surprise the protocol is gaining traction.

But, like I said in the other post, the protocol’s success (economically) is due to the low supply and the fact that everyone is still staking.

Once the price of the PRV token reaches a certain point, you’ll see the staking level drop from 86% where it is currently because people are holding the token for price gains, to much lower, perhaps 35% or so, or less because:

-People want to take profit (naturally)
-Transaction fees are so low that it does not make economic sense to secure the network to make crypto due to transactions over the long term.

So, the price of the PRV token will drop, more stakers will leave to take profits and the network is under-secured. It’s a vicious cycle.

There are no:

-Lockup periods for bonds so that the network does not collapse due to speculators taking profits
-Economic incentives to keep stakers in the game for longer time periods to earn on their investment

So, it’s not premature to be worried about the role transaction fees can play in making sure the network remains strong over a 3-5 year period.

So, you want to optimize the cryptoeconomics early to make sure the network lasts over time.

Even Satoshi didn’t know whether Bitcoin would be around after 10 years, but what he did was think about the economics at the beginning by:

  1. Creating transaction fees so that miners could benefit from greater utilization
  2. Forced a shift toward network utilization being the main economic driver by reducing issuance over time
  3. Used scarcity as a means of using human psychology (greed) to lock in the value for the token and ensure that people know that there will always be 21 million Bitcoin.

As for Incognito:

  1. The reducing issuance and fixed supply align with Bitcoin
  2. The tokeneconomics are weak because they don’t discourage or take advantage of spammers and don’t align network use with miner compensation.

Right now the team is winging it from an economic perspective (with the recent 0 trading fees, which raised questions about how liquidity providers would get paid, again in PRV, whose value is based on speculation, rather than in cryptos used in transactions.)

It’s worrying tbf.

Thanks for engaging.

4 Likes

hey @davoice321… appreciated for taking the time to write a long comment. i don’t have much to comment on tokeneconomics. but i wanted to clarify on the product & user side: incognito implements an auction model for transaction fees. so, the higher the user is willing to pay for her transaction, the sooner the transaction will be processed by nodes. hope that’s helpful to you and other members on the tokeneconomics discussion.

3 Likes

Good Morning Duy…Let me give incognito a little prospective, first I am older, but I have plenty of resources and I very much would like to use and trade on incognito… But because smart phones do not work here I am prevented from trading with you as I cannot create an acceptable wallet…I currently use ledger live hardware wallet on my PC and feel comfortable with it, if you were to integrate your system with ledger you would be amazed at just how many more people like me would trade, stake and provide liquidity…

2 Likes

@andrey, congrats! this proposal got 5/5 so i will move this under “funded projects”. please share with the community weekly update.

2 Likes

Hey guys!

Thank you everyone who participate in trading. It helping us to bring Incognito DEX up.

I would like to share with you the latest progress made by growth team on execution of current proposal.

Trading volume since May 1 until today hits ≈$300k. It’s really good start, and we are not going to stop :rocket:

Beside the main trading pairs we started initiatives (in progress)

  • actively talking with ERC20 projects in terms of listing them on DEX
  • preparing self-listing flow for projects
  • working on fundraising initiative on incognito chain by utilizing the DEX.

Planning to share more news within next week.

:exclamation: Important, if you know a project which is looking for listing or fundraising please introduce us!

3 Likes

Please :pray::pray::pray: don’t promote or encourage any anonymous IEO/ICO onto the chain, this will create an high profile of shady stuff thru it. First of why do you even trying to get money anonymously if it’s to really build a product?? We can let people invest in ICOs privately outside of the chain, but not allowing people you don’t even know to raise money anonymously through your chain. This move alone may activate regulators to come after you.