What Is Deriva DAO (DDX)?
Deriva DAO is a decentralized exchange (DEX) for derivatives on Ethereum. It prides itself on offering key performance advantages over other DEXs like a real-time price feed, fast trade resolution, and a competitive fee structure. By being a DAO from the beginning, Deriva DAO’s traders and token holders directly control and govern the platform.
Deriva DAO aims to fill the void at the intersection of trading and blockchain by addressing the problems faced by other centralized and decentralized exchanges. Deriva solves the weak security and potential regulatory issues faced by CEXs by building as a DAO, thereby removing censorship concerns and a single point of failure. It also offers a performant and capital-efficient user experience with an order book model that addresses the liquidity and UX issues of decentralized exchanges. With its off-chain price feeds, matching engine, and liquidation operators, Deriva DAO promises to match the speed and efficiency of centralized exchanges.
Who Are the Founders of Deriva DAO?
Deriva DAO was founded by Aditya Palepu, a Duke alumnus and former algorithmic trader with experience in software engineering. He is supported by a team of nine, including co-founder Frederic Fortier, a San Francisco-based software engineer with over a decade of experience building distributed systems.
Deriva DAO is also supported by an impressive array of investors after closing several rounds for a total of $2.7 million. On the investor list are names such as Polychain Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Electric Capital, Dragonfly Capital Partners, CMS Holdings, Three Arrows Capital, Calvin Liu (the strategy lead of Compound), and crypto researcher Phil Daian.
What Makes Deriva DAO Unique?
Deriva DAO aims to stand out from the DEX crowd by utilizing a unique architecture. Unlike other exchanges, Deriva DAO handles trading and other exchange-related transactions not on a public blockchain but its DerivaDEX operator network. The DAO manages two tranches of staked insurance funds from its insurance mining program and organic insurance funds from its exchange fees on this L2 in order to backstop traders against auto-deleveraging.
This custom layer-two solution allows Deriva to compete with CEXs on speed and cost. High-frequency trading is only possible if sub-second transaction finality is guaranteed, which Deriva achieves through its custom L2. Moreover, users do not have to bother with high Ethereum gas fees in this case.
Using this architecture, Deriva focuses on enabling the core functionality of a centralized exchange in a non-custodial manner. All funds are custodied and secured by the Ethereum network. In contrast to other L2 solutions like zk-rollups or optimistic rollups, the centralized order sequencer has no discretion over the order flow on Deriva (like they would on a CEX) and users don’t suffer from long wait times for on-chain transactions (in case of optimistic rollups).
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How Many Deriva DAO (DDX) Coins Are There in Circulation?
The total supply of DDX is 100 million. 50% is emitted as part of the genesis supply, and 50% will be emitted over ten years as part of the liquidity mining supply. DDX has the following token allocation:
- 34,005,404 DDX from the genesis supply are allocated to the team and DerivaDAO foundation. 21,263,737 are unlocked upon network launch.
- 15,334,596 DDX from the genesis supply are allocated to investors on a one-year linear schedule.
- 660,000 DDX from the genesis supply are allocated to advisors.460,000 DDX on a two-year linear schedule, 200,000 on schedules of three months or less.
- 2,500,000 DDX from the liquidity mining supply will be emitted linearly over one year as part of the insurance mining program
- The remaining 47,500,000 DDX will be emitted over ten years
How Is the Deriva DAO Network Secured?
Deriva DAO’s smart contracts have been audited by Quantstamp and found to be of high quality. The protocol is secured by Ethereum, one of the most popular blockchains for DAOs and secured by a proof-of-work consensus mechanism that requires miners to mine new Ether. A set of decentralized nodes validates transactions and secures the Ethereum blockchain.
Its custom L2 solution is a purpose-built sidechain of operators executing code within trusted execution environments. This guarantees that code within this environment cannot be tempered with, and executions in this environment can be proven. On its sidechain, Deriva utilizes Raft and a checkpoint consensus mechanism. In Raft, operators ensure that orders and other exchange transactions are valid by relaying a hash of the entire state of the exchange to Ethereum.
Where Can You Buy Deriva DAO (DDX)?
DDX is available on Coinbase Exchange, Uniswap (V2), Sushiswap, Hoo and CoinEx.