DeFi

Particle (PTC): Boosting Leveraged Trading With Advanced Protocols

Intermediate
DeFi
Explainers
Altcoins
Jul 15, 2024

Particle offers a novel approach to liquidity and access to leveraged trading in decentralized finance (DeFi). The Particle Leverage AMM (LAMM) mechanism enables leveraged trading without borrowing assets or paying interest fees. This article will shed light on the intricacies of Particle’s innovative protocols, road map and impact on the future of DeFi.

Key Takeaways:

  • Particle introduces a unique Leverage AMM (LAMM) mechanism, enabling permissionless leveraged trading for any ERC-20 token without borrowing assets or paying interest fees.

  • Founded by MIT dropout Wukong and backed by prominent investors, Particle aims to decentralize leveraged trading, enhance capital efficiency and reduce dependency on price oracles.

  • With a strategic tokenomics plan and a road map focused on advancing DeFi integration, Particle seeks to shake up the cryptocurrency derivatives market and maximize returns for liquidity providers.

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What Is Particle?

Particle is a DeFi protocol designed for permissionless leveraged trading and interest rate swaps. By enabling direct borrowing from AMMs such as Uniswap v3, it enhances capital efficiency and security without relying on price oracles.

History of Particle

Particle was founded by Wukong, an engineer and MIT dropout with experience building products for Web 2.0 giants like Google DeepMind, Facebook and Microsoft. The protocol is inspired by the centralized AMM mechanism of Uniswap v3 and aims to create a leveraged trading platform that allows permissionless liquidity pools for any token, similar to the way Uniswap enables trading for any token. The project is backed by BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes and several other major investors.

What Does Particle Aim to Achieve?

Particle was built to tackle several challenges in the cryptocurrency derivatives market.

  • Centralized control: Traditionally, leveraged trading has been controlled by centralized exchanges (CEXs) that decide which tokens can be traded with leverage. This limits traders to popular tokens, while creating barriers for less common tokens. Particle’s protocols decentralize leveraged trading by allowing anyone to create liquidity pools for any token pair, removing the need to wait for exchange approvals and reducing trading friction and risk.

  • Dependence upon liquidation engines and external liquidity: Current protocols rely heavily on liquidation engines that require timely triggers, accurate price oracles and ample market liquidity. This dependency poses vulnerabilities, especially for infrequently traded assets. Particle introduces a mechanism whereby liquidity can be borrowed from a predefined range, maintaining liquidity autonomously and reducing reliance on external liquidation engines, thus mitigating risks associated with illiquid assets.

  • Risks associated with price oracles: Price oracles used in trading protocols are critical for determining asset prices, but can also be vulnerable to manipulation and attacks. Particle minimizes reliance on these oracles, enhancing trading security by reducing potential attack vectors associated with oracle-based price determination.

  • Lack of leverage and interest rate swaps: Most decentralized exchanges (DEXs) lack features such as leveraged trading and interest rate swaps, which are common on CEXs. Particle introduces two innovative protocols: LAMM (Leverage Automated Market Maker) enables any ERC-20 token to be traded with leverage, and LIRS (Liquidity Interest Rate Swap) allows users to swap interest rates between different liquidity pools, enhancing flexibility and profitability.

  • Low capital efficiency and composability: Traditional DEXs often lock users' assets in liquidity pools, limiting capital efficiency and interaction with other protocols. Particle allows users to restake their liquidity tokens across various platforms, such as lending, farming or NFTs, maximizing rewards and benefits while improving overall capital efficiency and composability within the DeFi ecosystem.

How Does Particle Work?

Particle’s trading protocol offers a unique approach to leveraged trading without the need for borrowing assets or paying interest fees. Its Leverage Automated Market Maker (LAMM) mechanism facilitates this process.

  • LAMM mechanism: Particle's LAMM allows traders to borrow directly from liquidity pools, such as those in Uniswap v3, to establish leveraged positions. This eliminates the need for a separate lending protocol, as the LAMM provides the necessary leverage.

  • Price boundaries: The LAMM sets price boundaries for the liquidity pool tokens, ensuring that liquidity is concentrated within this range. If the price falls below the lower limit, Particle automatically liquidates the assets into one of two tokens, based on a preset formula.

  • Clearing mechanism: Unlike traditional derivatives that rely on price oracles and external liquidity, Particle's clearing mechanism ensures that the borrowed assets will always exist under any price conditions. This maintains liquidity, and reduces the risks associated with long-tail assets.

  • Interest and fees: Particle records the accumulated swap fees during borrowing and repayment, ensuring that the interest paid by borrowers isn’t lower than the swap fees earned from the original funding pool. This generates higher interest fees for liquidity providers (LPs) without increasing impermanent losses.

  • Liquidity and collateral: Traders can long or short tokens with leverage based on the available liquidity. They must provide collateral and a premium to open leverage positions, which covers potential losses and interest accrual.

  • Yield and impermanent loss protection: Liquidity providers earn yields without higher impermanent loss as compared to traditional automated market makers. The LAMM protocol uses the liquidity for swaps or leveraged trading, ensuring that LPs can withdraw their funds along with accrued fees and interest.

Features of Particle

Particle Leverage AMM

Particle’s Leverage AMM protocol enables trading any ERC-20 token with leverage. It's built to integrate smoothly into the DeFi ecosystem, letting traders borrow directly from liquidity pools with concentrated liquidity. This approach ensures that liquidity providers can earn higher yields with minimal impermanent loss, unlike traditional AMMs such as Uniswap v3.

Duo Exchange

Duo Exchange is a yield-swapping protocol designed for liquidity providers to boost their airdrop points or yields. It works through a single Vault contract that consolidates liquidity from all LPs and distributes points or yield, based on each LP's choice. This setup offers flexibility and powerful applications, allowing liquidity providers to maximize their returns effectively.

Particle Road Map

Some key milestones and achievements for the Particle Trading Protocol (PTC) project include:

  • Mainnet launch: Particle’s mainnet was launched on the Blast L2 platform. Within just four months of its mainnet launch, Particle achieved significant milestones, including a total value locked (TVL) of $300 million, a trading volume surpassing $3.5 billion and over 200,000 unique users.

  • Funding: Particle completed a strategic fundraising round on Jun 12, 2024, attracting high-profile investors such as Polychain, Nascent and Arthur Hayes. This funding followed an earlier seed funding round completed on Jan 11, 2024.

  • Testnet Launch: Particle’s Alpha testnet was launched in February 2024

  • Token Launch: The PTC token was officially launched on Jul 2, 2024. 

  • Listing of PTC on Exchanges: PTC tokens can be traded on various centralized and decentralized crypto exchanges.

Particle Trade is dedicated to continuous innovation and service enhancement, with a strong emphasis on improving user experience and broadening its range of offerings. The platform's future plans include the integration of a wider array of cryptocurrencies, development of sophisticated trading tools and the introduction of new features designed to meet the dynamic demands of the cryptocurrency community.

PTC Tokenomics

PTC, the native token of Particle, is designed to be used for transactions, governance and for incentivizing participants. The token’s maximum supply is 200,000,000, vested over 24 months with a 6-month cliff for investors and contributors. PTC is being distributed as follows:

  • Community: 55%

  • Investors: 24% 

  • Contributors: 21% 

PTC Price Prediction

BeInCrypto forecasts an average price for the PTC token of $0.061 by 2024, $0.068 by 2025 and $0.082 by 2027. Meanwhile, CryptoPredictions.com expects PTC to reach $0.092 by the end of 2024, further projecting prices of $0.117 by 2025 and $0.140 by 2028. 

These predictions are based on technical analyses and market trends, but given the high volatility of cryptocurrency markets, they’re subject to change. Investors should conduct their own thorough research and consider multiple sources before making investment decisions.

Where to Buy PTC

Looking to trade Particle tokens? Bybit now offers the PTC/USDT Spot trading pair. To get started, you’ll first need to create a Bybit account, then fund it with cryptocurrency and navigate to the PTC/USDT Spot trading page.

To celebrate this listing, Bybit is holding three exclusive events where you can earn a share of the 850,000 PTC prize pool. 

In the first event, Deposit to Earn, the first 10,000 new users who complete the following two steps through Jul 16, 2024, 9AM UTC will receive 55 PTC each:

  1. Sign up for a Bybit account and complete Identity Verification.

  2. Accumulate a deposit volume of at least 400 PTC, or deposit at least 100 USDT and use your Bybit account to trade 100 USDT worth of PTC via your first trade.

The second event, Trade to Earn, is also being held through Jul 16, 2024, 9AM UTC. Simply trade at least 500 USDT on Bybit’s Spot market during this period to grab a share of the 150,000 PTC prize pool.

The more you trade, the larger your share of the prize pool. Rewards will be capped at 5,000 PTC per user.

The third event, PTC x Referral Boost, is being held through Jul 16, 2024, 11:59PM UTC. Invite your friends to sign up for a Bybit account with your referral code, and to complete both steps above for new users in the first event. You’ll receive 19 PTC for every successful referral, with rewards for up to five (5) successful referees. 

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Is PTC A Good Investment?

Overall, Particle's innovative approach to leveraged trading and interest rate swaps, coupled with its seamless integration with the broader DeFi ecosystem, make it an intriguing project to watch in the DeFi space. However, as with any cryptocurrency investment, it makes sense to carry out thorough research and risk assessment before making any investment decisions.

Closing Thoughts

Particle's LAMM-based approach to leveraged trading offers a unique solution that aims to provide a more efficient and risk-managed trading experience for both traders and liquidity providers. With its innovative protocols and robust road map, Particle is set to redefine decentralized finance by enabling permissionless leveraged trading and interest rate swaps, backed by strategic tokenomics and a community-driven governance model.

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