MCDEX is a decentralized exchange (DEX) for futures built on the Ethereum layer-two scaling solution Arbitrum and Binance Smart Chain.
What Is MCDEX (MCB)?
According to the MCDEX team, it is designed to prioritize censorship resistance, security, and self-custody. Trading is permissionless, meaning anyone can trade, provide liquidity, or create new markets at will. Instead of using a traditional order book model, MCDEX uses an automated market maker to provide liquidity for traders. This allows MCDEX to solve the liquidity problem by allowing anyone to provide liquidity and make a reasonable profit doing so. The protocol’s declared goal is to allow anyone to create perpetual markets and trade in them, which is why there are several market participants on MCDEX: AMMs, operators, liquidity providers, traders, keepers and delegators.
Who Are the Founders of MCDEX?
MCDEX was launched by Liu Jie, who used to be a developer at Chinese tech giant Baidu. He developed a distributed system and created a distributed database called Doris and a mining software called Minerbabe, a management tool for GPU mining. He launched MCDEX in 2019 and a V2 version in 2020, which was plagued by liquidity issues. The current V3 version is the latest iteration and backed by several renowned investors like Delphi Digital, Alameda Research, and Multicoin Capital. In addition to raising $6M from institutional investors in 2021, MCDEX also raised $1M from its community.
What Makes MCDEX Unique?
The V3 version of the MCDEX perpetual futures product launched on BSC and Arbitrum and allows users to enjoy excellent liquidity while paying minuscule fees. Users can trade up to 500ETH or 40BTC without any slippage with up to 25X leverage on Arbitrum. Moreover, they enjoy all features of centralized exchanges, such as stop-loss and limit orders. Trading is only possible through automated market makers.
Another unique feature is the permissionless creation of markets. The role of creating markets and setting the initial parameters, such as the margin rate and AMM risk parameters is fulfilled by operators. Operators also need to pay for or provide oracle services. By creating markets, they can profit from trades by charging management fees.
Another role is that of liquidity providers, who can provide liquidity to the AMMs. Liquidity providers benefit from trading fees at a fixed ratio, profits from spread and slippage, funding payments paid by traders, and liquidation penalties. The AMM design of MCDEX minimizes the risk liquidity providers take on in several ways:
LPs can receive funding payments.
The spread between the best ask and the best bid payment can be increased.
The AMM may change prices to incentivize traders to take a contrarian position.
The final roles in the ecosystem are keepers, who can take over accounts with insufficient margin and liquidate accounts that fall below the margin. Delegators can operate accounts but cannot withdraw from them. The goal of delegators is to separate hot and cold wallets and realize the custody of trading strategies.
How Many MCDEX (MCB) Coins Are There in Circulation?
The total supply of MCB is 10 million. The current circulating supply of MCB is 2.2 million. 10% of the total supply has been vested to the team, advisors, and investors according to the following split:
Dev Team: 484K
Advisors: 75K
Angel investor: 109K
Private token sale: 332K, Price 2.5USD/MCB
Daily MCB issuance depends on the protocol’s trading volume:
Daily Trading Volume: <= $8.7M - Daily MCB may be issued: 1,300, MCB for investors: 0
Daily Trading Volume: <= $10M - Daily MCB may be issued: 1,500, MCB for investors: 150
Daily Trading Volume: <= $40M - Daily MCB may be issued: 6,000, MCB for investors: 3,525
Daily Trading Volume: >= $46M - Daily MCB may be issued: 6,900, MCB for investors: 4,200
How Is the MCDEX Network Secured?
MCDEX has an ongoing bug bounty with Immunefi of up to $100,000. The protocol is DAO-governed and was audited by Quantstamp and Certik. After several months of testing, the MCDEX V3 was finally launched on Arbitrum and BSC. MCDEX is an ERC-20 token on Ethereum.
ERC-20 is a token standard most new tokens follow when publishing on the Ethereum blockchain. Ethereum is one of the most popular blockchains for DAOs and is 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.
Arbitrum is a popular layer-two solution that works with optimistic rollups. These rollups take the bulk of the computational workload off the Ethereum mainnet, at the expense of vastly increased withdrawal times.