About 6 months ago, we put out a complete guide introducing Vertex to all of you. An Arbitrum native exchange that's hyper-efficient, scalable, and super fast. When we introduced Vertex to you, everything sounded great on paper but nothing had been released. As we know in crypto, many teams over-promise and under-deliver.

Vertex is the exception.

In the short span of 6 months, they have simply been smashing it on all fronts. They’ve delivered on all promises, created the CEX-like trading experience on-chain, and are now slowly creeping up to challenge the likes of GMX.

Some stats

Vertex officially launched its platform to the public on April 26 after a very successful testnet campaign. In just over a month, they have had some remarkable achievements.

They have attracted 1,169 unique traders on the platform and average around 100 daily active users on the platform. The platform has done a total of $1.18B in volume which means a daily average volume of around $31M. For comparison, GMX, a protocol which has been around for a long time, has stagnated around the $400M average daily volume mark. If Vertex continues on the same trajectory, it won't be long before they reach similar levels.

Even if you compare these numbers to a smaller exchange like Vela which did around $90M average daily volume after heavy incentivization, vertex is one-third of the way there in just over a month without much incentivization. Impressive to say the least.

Out of the cumulative $1.18B volume, $917M has come from perp markets and the remainder has come from spot trading. The BTC perp market is the most popular market dominating 42.9% of the all volume on the platform while the ETH perp market comes in at a close second with 34.2%.

The total value locked on the platform currently sits at $3.9M with the platform seeing a sharp rise in USDC inflows over the past few weeks.

In short, the stats show a product that has seen tremendous organic growth. Growth which purely stems from natural demand to use their product. 

Speaking of which, let’s move on to discuss some of the products.

Products

As we mentioned in our complete guide, Vertex is a vertically integrated exchange (hence the name Vertex). What this means is that it’s not simply a perp exchange like the other ones on the market, there are multiple products that all work together to create a superior on-chain trading experience when compared to its counterparts.

So let’s quickly run through some of the products.

There are 3 core products on offer:

·         Spot Market

·         Perpetual Market

·         Money Market

Vertex combines all 3 into one vertically integrated exchange.

It is powered by their hybrid AMM/CLOB model which we discussed in detail in our complete guide. Combining the two allows for an exchange with optimal liquidity and efficient pricing. In addition, all accounts are cross-margined by default so margin requirements across multiple positions are automatically adjusted for higher capital efficiency.

This hybrid model is also what allows for them to have a low latency orderbook on top of an on-chain risk engine. 

To add to this, Vertex has a money market integrated directly into the DEX so that users can borrow spot assets using their portfolio margin. Check this tweet below to get a better idea of how one-clicked leveraged spot looping is possible through Vertex.

1/ 📈Leveraged Spot Trading

How is it different from perpetuals products & why should you care?

Learn more about how Vertex automatically handles borrowing, lending & depositing using leveraged spot.

Time for turbo-looping, anon.

🧵

— Vertex 🏔 (@vertex_protocol) May 26, 2023

All 3 of these products have been delivered at launch and working perfectly well. No major hiccups have been identified and the users seem to love the product signified by their high user retention in daily active users.

It’s also important to note that all of these products have launched in the middle of the bear market where interest, sentiment, and overall liquidity in the ecosystem are close to all-time lows. Despite this, Vertex has shown nothing but strength with both volume and USD flows increasing. They have also managed to consistently attract new traders to the platform with each passing day. 

When things turn around, who knows what heights Vertex could reach?

What’s coming up?

In terms of new products, there have yet to be any announcements from the team. The team prefers to ship products and then let the releases speak for themselves, so if you keep an eye on their socials you will know what they have coming soon. What we do know is that when they deliver their products, they are nothing short of exceptional.

Something to keep an eye on though is the VRTX token. It is expected to be coming very soon. Users may potentially get rewarded for their activity on the platform. The tokenomics are well-designed for value to accrue to holders and the reward distribution mechanisms ensure that liquidity stays on the platform without giving away too much revenue.

The growth potential for Vertex is immense so the token release is something to keep tabs on. Most people may sleep on it, but you shouldn’t. 

Concluding Thoughts

Now you know where Vertex is at and how much they’ve achieved in such a short amount of time. If their early success is anything to go off, then it’s safe to say the future looks bright. Stay up to date with everything Vertex does by following their socials, and keep an eye on the blocmates Twitter as we continue to update you on what happens with Vertex. Their story is just getting started.