[OPEN GRANT APPLICATION] GMX <> Rage Trade

SECTION 1: APPLICANT INFORMATION

Applicant Name or Alias: Brian

Project Name: Rage Trade

Project Description: Rage Trade is a prime broker and perpetuals aggregator. Rage Trade aggregates EVM-compatible decentralized perp exchanges. It also streamlines the trading process using account abstraction, creating a CEX-like experience for users.

Team Members and Qualifications:

Rage Trade team members are generally referred to by their roles:

Product Lead

Fin Quant

Fin Dev

Daniel Ndu

Frontend Dev

Proto Dev

Senior Dev

Brian (BD)

Project Links:

Website: Rage.Trade

Twitter: @rage_trade

Discord: Rage Trade (Community)

Contact Information:

Email: brian@rage.trade

SECTION 2: GRANT INFORMATION

Requested Grant Size: 150,000 ARB

Grant Breakdown: 100,000 ARB designated for trading rebates, 50,000 for trading competitions.

Funding Address: 0xee2A909e3382cdF45a0d391202Aff3fb11956Ad1

Funding Address Characteristics: Safe multisig.

SECTION 3: GRANT OBJECTIVES AND EXECUTION

Objectives:

  • Increase trading volume on Rage Trade (and thus GMX) by offering trading rebates.
  • Incentivize users via trading rebates to offer an enhanced, CEX-like trading experience via account abstraction.
  • Attract users via trading competitions, similar to ones effectively leveraged by other successful exchanges.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs):

To measure the success of achieving the grant objectives, we will focus on the following KPIs:

  • Daily Volume: Increase volume routed to GMX via Rage Trade.
  • Daily Traders: Increase average number of daily traders sending orders to GMX.
  • Open Interest: Increase open interest on GMX.
  • Help close any imbalances between long and short positions using discounted trading incentives.

How will receiving a grant enable you to foster growth or innovation within the GMX ecosystem?:

Rage Trade has a long history of fostering innovation within the GMX ecosystem. First with our v1 GMX/GLP vaults and now with our v2 perps aggregator.

Our v2 perps aggregator will aggregate all instances of GMX v1 and v2 across both Arbitrum and Avalanche while implementing account abstraction features such as our Gas Tank and signless transactions to offer users a more CEX-like experience.

Justification for the size of the grant:

Rage Trade previously added $15M of TVL to GMX and would now like incentives to bring orderflow to GMX LPs. These incentives will also go towards closing any imbalances between long and short positions.

In addition, decentralized exchanges still lag centralized exchanges significantly in terms of user experience. Rage Trade v2 presents a trading experience substantially closer to that of centralized alternatives via account abstraction.

The size of this grant will allow us to draw in a large swath of users who would previously only consider centralized exchanges due to their previously superior user experience. Given that the launch of our v2 is imminent, this grant will aid us in hitting the ground running and routing significant volume through GMX.

Execution Strategy:

To implement our proposal, we’ll adopt a structured approach for effective outcomes:

  1. Data Reporting and Transparency: Implementing Dune dashboards or subgraphs for real-time metric tracking to maintain transparency and accountability.
  2. Incentive Allocation: Using ARB tokens initially for trading rebates to encourage trading on Rage Trade and volume on GMX.
  3. Fee Offset & Trading Competitions: Allocating remaining tokens for trading incentives, including competitions and fee offsets.
  4. Regular Updates and Reporting: Continuously monitoring and adjusting based on platform performance, trader engagement, and community feedback.
  5. Review and Analysis: Conducting a thorough post-implementation review to identify improvements and insights for the Arbitrum ecosystem’s growth.

Grant Timeline:

This proposal’s 4-month implementation is divided into monthly phases:

  1. Month 1: Initiate trading rebates and trading fee offsets, set up Dune dashboards or subgraphs for metric tracking, and announce the initiative.
  2. Month 2: Launch trading competitions, monitor trading activities, and provide the first monthly community update.
  3. Month 3: Review and adjust based on the first two months’ data, and issue the second monthly update.
  4. Month 4: Continue incentivization and finalize the monthly update leading to a comprehensive quarterly report.
  5. Post-4-Months: Release a detailed report evaluating the proposal’s positive impact on GMX, with future action considerations.

Fund Streaming:

We agree to receive the grant funds linearly over the proposed period, with the understanding that the multisig authority has the discretion to adjust the streaming as necessary.

SECTION 4: PROTOCOL DETAILS

What date did you build on GMX?

Rage Trade v1 went live in late 2022, with v2 slated for the week of November 27th, 2023.

Protocol Performance:

Rage Trade has built a dynamic user base with 70,000 unique traders, demonstrating the platform’s appeal. Additionally, 26,000 Liquidity Providers (LPs) reinforce its reliability in the Arbitrum ecosystem. Rage Trade v1 has generated $735M in Total Trading Volume against TVL, underscoring its market success and user engagement. Its vaults, especially the 80-20 Tricrypto Vault, peaked at $19.87 million TVL, with a 44% return over 10 months, outperforming GLP holdings. This performance cements Rage Trade’s significant role and potential for further growth in the Arbitrum community.

Rage Trade looks forward to continuing to build upon and add value to GMX.

Protocol Roadmap:

Our near-term focus remains on a successful v2 launch of our perps aggregator product. With our past success, proven ability to build valuable and successful products, and the help of an ARB grant, we intend to hit the ground running and further cement our role as a successful team of builders.

Audit History:

Rage v1 Core Contracts

Quantstamp Audit Report: https://certificate.quantstamp.com/full/rage-trade-core.pdf

80-20 Vaults

PeckShield Audit Report: peckshield-vaults-audit-report.pdf - Google Drive

Delta Neutral Vaults

Rage Trade has secured a $5m smart contract exploit insurance policy which has been completely paid for by Rage Trade and will be live on day 1. Our first audit has been completed by Sherlock, who has additionally provided us with the smart contract insurance.

Sherlock Audit Report: Rage_Trade_Audit_Report.pdf - Google Drive

Insurance Coverage: 2022.12.06 - Draft - Rage Trade Coverage Overview - Google Docs

Our second audit has been completed by yAcademy which includes the hedging of current weights of GLP and trader open interest on GMX.

yAcademy Audit Report: RageTrade-yAcademy-Report.pdf - Google Drive

For Rage v2

Smart contract audits by PeckShield: PeckShield-Audit-Report-RageAA-v1.0rc.pdf - Google Drive

Frontend codebase penetration testing by Safer.

SECTION 5: DATA AND REPORTING

Is your team prepared to create Dune Spells and/or Dashboards for your incentive program?

Yes. As mentioned previously, we intend to implement Dune dashboards to track the success of our incentive program.

Does your team agree to provide bi-weekly program updates on the GMX Forum thread?

Yes. We are proponents of transparency and intend to use our aforementioned dashboards to provide the community with regular updates regarding the success of our program.

Does your team acknowledge that failure to comply with any of the above requests can result in the halting of the program’s funding stream?

Yes, we understand.

Thank you for taking the time to consider our proposal. We look forward to continuing to contribute to the success of GMX.

1 Like

Hey @BrianRageTrade, thanks for applying for GMX grants the committee will soon review your application.

1 Like

Hi @BrianRageTrade, thank you for your proposal.

Wanted a little more clarity on what you were looking to do for the trading competitions? And whether if you’ll be identifying for sybils or wash trading?

What KPIs will you be showcasing for the Data Reporting and Transparency?

With Rage being an aggregator for an array of Perp DEXes, will traders routed through GMX V1/V2 receive trading rebates or it is for all traders?

1 Like

Thanks Shogun, I can address these points!

Re: Trading Competition

We are thinking to incentivize certain behavior, things like (1) PnL Compeitions, (2) High Leverage based compeitions, (3) Specific assets and apecific actions (for example, correcting long-short skew)

Re Sybil / Wash Trading

While we do plan to bring fees towards 0, to avoid wash trading we will still have a max amount emitted per epoch so any potential bots would be at odds with organic traders that may come in. This gives us the flexibility to adjust epoch amounts as we observe behavior week on week.

Re KPIs

For KPIs, we really measuring how many traders/volume we can onboard to trade on GMX v2 through Rage’s aggregator. We will measure: trading volume, number of traders, whether trader is an existing perp user or not etc. We can showcase this info through Dune.

Re Usage of Incentives

These rebates will only apply to GMX on our aggregation.

1 Like

Thanks for the feedback!

We’ve made some slight amendments to the following sections:

Requested Grant Size: 100,000 ARB

Grant Breakdown: 100,000 ARB designated for trading rebates.

Objectives:

  • Increase trading volume on Rage Trade (and thus GMX) by offering trading rebates.
  • Incentivize users via trading rebates to offer an enhanced, CEX-like trading experience via account abstraction.

Grant Timeline:

This proposal’s 3-month implementation is divided into monthly phases:

  1. Month 1: Initiate trading rebates and trading fee offsets, set up Dune dashboards or subgraphs for metric tracking, and announce the initiative.
  2. Month 2: Monitor trading activity and provide the first monthly community update. Make adjustments if needed.
  3. Month 3: Continue incentivization and finalize the monthly update leading to a comprehensive quarterly report.
  4. Post-3-Months: Release a detailed report evaluating the proposal’s positive impact on GMX, with future action considerations.
1 Like

Yep I do think the Sybil / Wash Trading side, might be a tricky actionable to solve.

Look forward to the presentation of the KPIs for traderbase to V2.

Thanks Noodles for addressing these points.

Thanks for the application. I am really excited for this integration and I think it would be a great value add for GMX.

Saying that I would like to see more information and clarity around some points.

  • Will the trading rebates be only given if the trade executes through GMX V2 right? or is it for all rebates which go through your platform?
  • Currently GMX already routing incentives for trading rebates which are up to 75% of the fees, that is the cap, each epoch could end up being less. I am not sure you factored this into your application. This is significant amount of ARB you already receive into your contract as airdrop for routing volumes.
  • Regarding Trading competition is this again exclusive for traders whose trades getting routed through GMX V2 or is it for everyone using your platform?

Lastly I would also like to see some milestones around KPIs/targets in terms of volumes, trades and unique users coming to GMX.
Dec - Target Volume, # of Trades, # of Unique Users
Jan - Target Volume, # of Trades, # of Unique Users
Feb - Target Volume, # of Trades, # of Unique Users

This way we can evaluate how effective the grant has been and how it is progressing over the time period.

  1. Yes, only GMX v2
  2. We will provide rebates similar to GMX v2 (on a first come, first serve basis)
  3. Only GMX v2

It would be hard to give monthly volume targets, but we would like to hit $100m per month + 1-5k weekly actives

Thanks Noodles.

I understand it would be hard to estimate but we would still have to break the 100K Arb into multiple buckets to be distributed to you guys based on milestones.

Each milestone needs a target so we can evaluate how things are going. Saying that the target evaluation can be subjective for any reasons targets are not met. May not be a black and white evaluation.

An example may look like
Milestone 1: Dec 15th: Launch of incentives: 20K
Milestone 2: Jan 1st: Launch of Trading Competitions: 25K
Milestone 3: Jan 15: Additional Incentives: 25K (Target Volumes, Target Users for Dec 15 to Jan 15)
Milestone 4: Feb 15: Additional Incentives: 30K (Target Volumes, Target users for Jan 15 to Feb 15)

Hope this makes sense.

Here are some numbers we cooked up (assuming a 20% week on week growth rate and no major product hiccups):

Jan 1st: Launch of incentives (25K ARB)
Jan 15th: $6M cumulative volume, 250 unique users (25K ARB)
Feb 1st: $14.8M cumulative volume, 500 unique users (25K ARB)
Feb 15th: $27.5m volume, 1000 unique users (25K ARB)
March 1st: $35m volume, 1500 unique users
March 15th: $45m volume, 2000 unique users

Rage Trade Grant Bi-Weekly Update

Date: 27th Dec, 2023

I. Executive Summary:

a) Roadmap Progress: We havent begun incentives
b) Milestone/KPI Achievements: We havent begun incentives
c) Dune Dashboards: No dune dashboard yet

II. Current Progress:

**III. Community Engagement: Havent begun incentives yet **

IV. Partnerships and Collaborations: Havent begun incentives yet

Updated wallet address: 0xd3FB3eD59e5A7674003625241551A6Ffa63d2C50

1 Like