Transcript: Demex discusses non-custodial exchange and bNEO on its money market

Demex Growth Lead Sam joined the Neo Live AMA series to discuss the non-custodial trading platform, money market module, and adding support for bNEO. Participants in the AMA shared rewards from a prize pool of 20,000 SWTH tokens.

Demex is a fully non-custodial exchange that launched in Dec. 2020 offering spot, margin, and derivatives trading. The Demex team recently integrated bNEO lending and borrowing into Nitron, it’s multi-chain permissionless money market. Nitron launched in Nov. 2022 and allows users to lend digital assets and earn interest if the asset is borrowed.

In the AMA, Sam discussed the origins of the Demex exchange, its features, what separates Demex from other competitors, how the team aims to simplify DeFi processes and onboard new users, blockchain network partnerships, and the exchange’s 2023 roadmap.

The full transcript is below:

Riley (Neo Telegram admin): Sam is the Growth Lead for Demex. She handles the marketing, growth, community building, and strategy for Demex. Sam has been in the crypto space since Jan. 2020 and has taken a deep dive into the DeFi ecosystem. She is passionate about delivering high-quality products that enable users to take the power of their finances into their own hands.

Hi Sam, thank you for joining us today. Would you please introduce yourself and share a quick overview of Demex?

Sam (Demex Growth Lead): Hi, Neo community. Thank you to the Neo team for inviting us to this AMA session. It’s a pleasure to be here. I’m Sam, the Growth Lead for Demex, as Riley kindly mentioned.

So, a little bit about the project Demex, for those of you who are unfamiliar. Demex is a dApp built on Carbon Network, a layer-2 DeFi protocol specifically designed for trading advanced trading derivatives like margins, perps, etc.

Demex is a cross-chain order book DEX and, recently, a money market. Demex offers permissionless trading for spot, futures, and perp markets!

We recently launched Nitron by Demex, a completely permissionless money market for assets across various blockchains. We also launched Nitron liquidations, a decentralized liquidation platform to liquidate risky positions to earn liquidation bonuses.

The cool thing about Demex is that we are a Cosmos-based DEX, but we are still cross-chain. Currently, we support a plethora of chains like Ethereum, BSC, Neo, Zilliqa, and IBC chains such as Cosmos Hub, EVMOS, Juno, and so on. We are in the process of integrating with other chains like Arbitrum as well.

Q1: Can you share the Demex journey with us? When did Demex first go live? 

Sam: That’s a great question, to begin with! Demex launched on MainNet in 2020 and was the first order book DEX in Cosmos, making us one of the oldest players in that ecosystem!

It’s been an incredible journey. We have been ramping up development and innovations in the last six months!

Initially, we launched spot markets for chains like Neo, Zilliqa, and Ethereum. Since then, we’ve launched futures markets for BTC and ETH, especially during the bear market, which is a highly demanded derivatives market.

This led us to take it another step further and launch perpetual futures markets for BTC and ETH! For those who are unfamiliar with perpetuals, they are futures markets with no expiry, so you have the power to close positions at any time.

We have been working on UI changes along the journey to give our DEX a fresher and new-age look.

We recently launched Nitron, a permissionless money market where users can lend and borrow assets to earn interest. We also built liquidations around Nitron, giving users a platform to liquidate risky positions to earn liquidation bonuses.

So yeah, it’s been a wild ride! There are also a lot of exciting things that our team is building for Q1 2023!

Q2: What are some of the power features Demex has that make it stand out from the competitors?

Sam: Ah yes, power features define one project from another! We try to refine Demex every step of the way for the end user. To begin, we see a lot of users struggling to make the transition from CEXs to DEXs. To overcome this hurdle, we offer several supported non-custody wallets like Keplr, Leap, and Metamask, to name a few.

We also offer flexible network fees on Demex. This enables users from any blockchain to quickly onboard onto Demex, as they can pay this network fee with ETH, USDC, BNB, and Carbon’s native SWTH, alongside other tokens. We will also be adding more network fees so that more users from various chains can swiftly make this transition.

Another one of our power features is permissionless market creations. As a DEX, the emphasis on actual DeFi and decentralization is essential in every aspect.

Demex is built for the user to create any market pair of their choice as long the chain has been integrated. So users don’t have to wait around for the team to develop it; they can do it themselves!

The same goes for our liquidity pools. We have open liquidity pools where anyone can commit liquidity, become a market maker, and earn a portion of the fees. So, even creating liquidity pools are completely permissionless.

Another power feature is the fine-tuning of the order book format. It mirrors that of sophisticated CEXs like Binance. It offers a complete trading view, customizability, trading tools like stop limit orders, stop market orders, and leverage on trading up to 50x.

Q3: Recently, Neo and Nitron money market announced our partnership. Can you enlighten the Neo community more on this? What benefits does it bring to us?

Sam: I am sure many Neo community members have heard the news, mainly because we see a lot of positive responses!

We were delighted to partner with the Neo blockchain. As mentioned before, we just launched the Nitron money market, which is entirely permissionless. So we noticed that there was no money market for any Neo assets, so we thought it was time to bring bNEO to Nitron and provide this money market for the Neo community!

Demex strives to work closely with other ecosystems to find synergies in efforts for the crypto spaces.

The token we jointly chose to launch is bNEO – bNEO short for “burger NEO” or the divisible version of NEO. We launched the lend and borrow pools for bNEO, and the Neo team incentivized both pools with US $2,250 worth of bNEO tokens.

Anyone can visit https://app.dem.exchange/nitron, trade on the bNEO/USDC market, and lend and borrow to earn interest and claim these incentives.

We’re happy to see the Neo community reacted positively to the integration. Nitron provides a platform to earn passive income from your idle assets, especially during the bear market.

It’s been great to see many users getting creative and trying out various DeFi strategies to maximize their yield.

Q4: What other money markets can we expect to see on Nitron?

Sam: That’s a great question. We’re seeing high demand for the money markets right now, as DeFi is providing more returns than trading, seeing that we are in a sideways market.

We’ve already listed several money markets – ETH, BTC, USDC, bNEO, stATOM, stOSMO, ATOM, and OSMO.

For those of you who don’t know, stATOM and stOSMO are the liquid-staked versions of ATOM and OSMO minted on Stride, a liquid-staking provider.

These tokens are the liquid version of the underlying staked token. The underlying token will remain staked and locked in while earning interest, while the “st” version of it can be used actively for trading or DeFi activities.

We’re seeing high demand for liquid-staked assets, which gives users much more yield and flexibility. Soon, we will launch liquid-staked derivatives of ETH and MATIC.

We are also planning to integrate the Arbitrum blockchain soon. So, we will bring more assets from this popular chain to Nitron.

So yes, many assets from all the various chains will be launching on Nitron in 2023.

We are also seeing a lot of comments from the Neo community that they would like to see more Neo assets on Nitron. We can work with the Neo team to make this happen and provide more utility for your assets.

Q5: What’s on the roadmap for Demex?

Sam: There are many things planned on the roadmap for 2023! We will launch a referral program soon, similar to what users see on CEXs like Binance. It’s pretty straightforward, if you refer friends to come and trade on Demex, you will receive a commission on their trading fees.

We are also working on building a Swap UI that enables users to swap the tokens one-for-one at their market price. We want to develop this feature to cater to users unfamiliar with the order book model.

Hopefully, Demex can cater to all sorts of users and become a one-stop destination for trading and DeFi. Demex will have an order book DEX, swap DEX, money market, and liquidity pools. Plus, being cross-chain, Demex can be an all-in-one platform that users need to serve as an all-purpose location for all things crypto.

We’re also working on some modules to provide hyper-concentrated liquidity across all markets on the DEX. A new multi-asset LP token is also in the pipeline!

Lastly, Carbon just recently launched a Cosmos-native decentralized stablecoin, USC, which is being minted on Demex. We are building delta-neutral vaults to provide USC with more utility and real yield capability.

It will be a busy year for us, building more innovative products, doing more listings, and collaborating with other protocols and communities!

Q6: What types of users is the Demex platform geared toward? Is it simple for a novice investor to understand all the data and information the platform provides? Or does it require a minimum of knowledge to understand it?

Sam: Demex is built for everyone. We have put a lot of effort into making the DEX in a very hand-holding manner that is intuitive and easy to use. The UI is user-friendly and straightforward. We try not to complicate things too much. I would not say there is a minimum knowledge, as we have guides to guide you through every feature and how to use it.

Anyone can use Demex without prior trading experience.

As I previously mentioned, with the recent launch of Nitron and our plans to build a Swap DEX, it should cater to all audiences like traders, DeFi farmers, and, ultimately, everyone in the crypto space.

Q7: Do you have an ambassador program available? If yes, how can people join? What are some of the benefits available to ambassadors?

Sam: We do have an ambassador program called the referral program. We are actively looking for ambassadors to endorse Demex.

Anyone interested in becoming a Demex ambassador can reach out to us through our social channels, and we can see how we can establish this partnership.

The benefit for ambassadors is that they will receive a higher commission. But it entirely depends on how many referees you can onboard and their trading volume.

If anyone is interested, please send us a DM on the official Demex Exchange Twitter account, and reach out to us via our Telegram or Discord channels.

Q8: Will Demex support any projects from the Neo ecosystem in the future?

Sam: Absolutely! We have a long-standing relationship with Neo, and it is in our best interests to support projects in the ecosystem!

If any projects are looking for collaboration with us, please reach out to us, and we can explore how we can go about it for mutual benefit to our communities.

Q9: Can you list three of Demex’s killer features that put it ahead of competitors?

Sam: Demex has many killer features, so I’ll try to narrow it down to three.

First, cross-chain functionality allows the platform to connect with every blockchain – putting it on top to compete with all DEXs across all ecosystems.

Second, our dedication to true DeFi and decentralization. Demex is completely permissionless. Users can do everything without having to seek approval from a central entity. Users can create orders, markets, pools, stake, borrow, lend, mint, liquidate, and so much more.

Third, the platform’s smooth and clean UI. Many users can be overwhelmed when diving into DeFi and such advanced blockchain technology. However, on Demex, we make everything easy for the user to access and unlock the true power of DeFi.

Q10: What plans do you have to multiply in terms of users, global market, and partners? What are your strategies for building an extensive and robust community?

Sam: In terms of growth, we are focusing on many things. We are definitely focusing on more listings, incentives, fruitful partnerships, and marketing campaigns for rapid growth. We are constantly in touch with our community, addressing their needs and understanding what they would also like to see on Demex.

In terms of long-term growth, we focus on building new innovative products and features mentioned on our roadmap. Someday, we will launch the Demex token when the market picks up, launch the swap UI, and delta neutral vaults, to name a few.

So yes, that is our strategy for building a solid community for ourselves.

Note: Some edits have been made for formatting and readability.

The full AMA can be found at the link below:
https://t.me/NEO_EN/257672