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Perpetual futures, explained

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51–60 of 83 posts

Re: Perpetual futures, explained

#51
post #2

It's striking how much the crypto world depends on trust in other parties. The whole point of crypto was supposed to be that it was "trustless". But it's not set up that way. All these crypto derivatives are not set up as contracts on a blockchain, with assets locked up until the derivatives settle. They're book entries with some weakly regulated exchange in Outer Nowhere.

It was the case up until recently. But today Hyperliquid does it on chain and very popular.

Re: Perpetual futures, explained

#52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being on a blockchain and being decentralized are two different things. The HyperCore client isn't even open source.

That's just patently false. > Importantly, HyperCore does not rely on the crutch of off-chain order books. A core design principle is full decentralization with one consistent order of transactions achieved through HyperBFT consensus.

The basis of decentralized software is open-source. Otherwise a centralized authority can just push an update to, for instance, blacklist addresses.

https://github.com/hyperliquid-dex/node

"For lowest latency, run the node in Tokyo, Japan."

Decentralization means to run all of the closed-source nodes in the same AWS datacenter!

Re: Perpetual futures, explained

#53
post #2

It's striking how much the crypto world depends on trust in other parties. The whole point of crypto was supposed to be that it was "trustless". But it's not set up that way. All these crypto derivatives are not set up as contracts on a blockchain, with assets locked up until the derivatives settle. They're book entries with some weakly regulated exchange in Outer Nowhere.

It was the case up until recently. But today Hyperliquid does it on chain and very popular.

Hyperliquid being on chain in the traditional sense is fiction. You have a closed source piece of software run by closely controlled "validators" with additionally centralised components.

Re: Perpetual futures, explained

#54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just patently false. > Importantly, HyperCore does not rely on the crutch of off-chain order books. A core design principle is full decentralization with one consistent order of transactions achieved through HyperBFT consensus.

The basis of decentralized software is open-source. Otherwise a centralized authority can just push an update to, for instance, blacklist addresses. https://github.com/hyperliquid-dex/node "For lowest latency, run the node in Tokyo, Japan." Decentralization means to run all of the closed-source nodes in the same AWS datacenter!

And in fact they did just this when their vaults started bleeding money on an unfavourable position (JellyJelly). They handed out a closed source binary and the validators ran it immediately, closing out the market at an arbitrary price.

Re: Perpetual futures, explained

#55
post #29

I don't think many people on HN realize how globally systemically important public blockchains are on track to become, especially Ethereum. The understandable hatred of the casino and many scams has blinded most of HN as to the true potential of the technology and its associated new public institutions. That's what a decentralized public blockchain is, a new kind of public institution. One small example of this is th…

> the most state-of-the-art perpetual futures market in the world is an Ethereum Layer 2 named Lighter

Is this not just a state of the art innovation in the Ponzi scheme and online casino space?

Re: Perpetual futures, explained

#56
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hyperliquid and similar exchanges aren't decentralized. That is their long term goal but they are very far from achieving it. The few actual decentralized exchanges are too slow and expensive.

I mean, as soon as synchronisation is required in any system, block chain, distributed SAAS, even Peer to Peer sharing, decentralisation fails hard That's one of the sticking points I have with the /idea/ of the technology

Ethereum and similar chains run arbitrary computation on-chain. You can make a futures exchange on Ethereum (or Solana, etc). However, the fees for doing so are very large, and confirmation times are very long, like any other on-chain transaction.

Re: Perpetual futures, explained

#57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being on a blockchain and being decentralized are two different things. The HyperCore client isn't even open source.

That's just patently false. > Importantly, HyperCore does not rely on the crutch of off-chain order books. A core design principle is full decentralization with one consistent order of transactions achieved through HyperBFT consensus.

as an operator you don't even get the real validator / node binary directly, nor can you control which version to run.

all you can do is run their visor, and they push out whatever proprietary blob they produce and restart "your" nodes at their command.

Re: Perpetual futures, explained

#58
post #2

It's striking how much the crypto world depends on trust in other parties. The whole point of crypto was supposed to be that it was "trustless". But it's not set up that way. All these crypto derivatives are not set up as contracts on a blockchain, with assets locked up until the derivatives settle. They're book entries with some weakly regulated exchange in Outer Nowhere.

[deleted]

Re: Perpetual futures, explained

#59
post #2

It's striking how much the crypto world depends on trust in other parties. The whole point of crypto was supposed to be that it was "trustless". But it's not set up that way. All these crypto derivatives are not set up as contracts on a blockchain, with assets locked up until the derivatives settle. They're book entries with some weakly regulated exchange in Outer Nowhere.

You can trade perpetual futures, onchain, mostly decentralised, in self-custodial manner [1] e.g. on GMX

https://gmx.io/

Some more modern decentralised exchanges (DEXes) dealing with leveraged trades and try to minimise centralisation also include YieldBases:

https://yieldbasis.com/markets

There are other exchanges that are much more centralised, like Hyperliquid, and it is incorrect to call these decentralised. But there are truly decentralised alternatives as well.

GMX is not as popular, let's say Binance, because onchain user experience has been very hard. You don't want to sign every order from your crypto wallet. Transaction cost ("gas fee") used to be too high for trading. This is finally changing with the latest Ethereum improvement proposals, dealing with so called account abstraction.

[1] Because futures always settle on an external price, the price feed must come from some oracle. In the case of GMX, there are keepers (multiple of them) who are responsible to bring the correct price to Arbitrum chain and trigger the settlement. But it's not a single party.

Re: Perpetual futures, explained

#60
post #33

Why would I want a perp on BTC when I can just buy the coin? The example quoted the price of the perp as (close to) the same as the price of BTC, so if I'm not getting leverage why not just buy the coin and avoid counterparty risk?

You want to buy bitcoin to be a bitcoin investor. But if you want to actively trade, both buy and sell, futures offer much more capital efficient solution. With leverage, you can make larger trades with less money.
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