From Taiwan! Sustainable contract protocol Perpetual Protocol secures $1.8 million in funding

According to The Block, the Taiwan team behind Perpetual Protocol has reportedly secured a $1.8 million investment led by Multicoin Capital, with additional investments from Three Arrows Capital, CMS Holding, and Alameda Research. The decentralized perpetual contract platform is set to launch in September, but will not be open to users with IP addresses from the United States and Taiwan.

What is Perpetual Protocol?

It is purportedly a decentralized protocol that focuses solely on perpetual contracts. Co-founder Yanwen Feng described it as a combination of decentralized exchange Uniswap and perpetual contract exchange BitMEX.

One notable aspect of Perpetual Protocol is the virtual automated market maker vAMM. Feng explained, "The 'virtual' in vAMM means that there are actually no assets in the vAMM itself. The real assets are stored in a smart contract vault, which manages all collateral based on vAMM."

How is it different from other platforms?

How does Perpetual Protocol differ from other platforms offering perpetual contract leveraged trading such as dYdX and MCDEX? Feng mentioned that these platforms either use order book matching or an automated market maker (AMM) design, or a combination of both.

Perpetual Protocol's vAMM model reportedly reduces slippage. Feng pointed out the high slippage issue with Uniswap and stated, "Traders on constant product market maker models like Uniswap, where x*y=k, will suffer higher slippage than centralized exchanges because the constant k is constrained by the injected liquidity. Perpetual Protocol's vAMM can provide low slippage to traders through algorithmic settings."

Reports suggest that Perpetual Protocol will initially offer perpetual contract trading for BTC, ETH, and LINK. Additionally, on their official website, they have mentioned that they will have contracts on various synthetic assets, including gold, crude oil, etc., with leverage of up to 20x.

Do they issue tokens?

Perpetual Protocol has a native token called PERP, and the platform's insurance fund is backed by token holders. PERP holders can stake this token, which will be used to cover unforeseen losses on the platform, serving as the purpose of the insurance fund. So, what do stakers get in return? Stakers will receive a portion of trading fee revenue and staking rewards every seven days.

Team Originating from Taiwan

Public data on LinkedIn shows that two co-founders from Taiwan have over ten years of entrepreneurial and development experience, with three team members being local developers. Feng added that most key members of Perpetual Protocol are from Taiwan, with foreign colleagues as well.

The platform currently has a testnet (not accessible from Taiwan IP), and the actual user reception will be observed upon the mainnet launch in September. Feng mentioned that the service will not be open to users with IPs from the US and Taiwan, focusing primarily on other overseas markets.