- The goal of the onchain real-world asset trading firm is to develop into a marketplace where users may transact in anything from pork belly futures to gold.
On Thursday, the public mainnet of Ostium Labs, a new blockchain-based perpetuals trading platform, was launched. Ostium is focusing on traditional market currencies and global macro markets, in contrast to other onchain trading platforms.
Put differently, it’s a non-digital asset trading onchain platform.
The platform, which takes its name after a well-known port city in ancient Rome, will allow one-click trading on conventional assets using a cryptocurrency wallet. Ostium allows anyone to start trading with just a few dollars, in contrast to cumbersome or restrictive web2 platforms that prevent smaller traders from participating due to their enormous contract sizes.
Instead of going via these really restricted, more conventional types of underlying asset marketplaces or these kinds of synthetic markets that have all kinds of market structure concerns, you could trade any asset that you wanted to express a market perspective on for $10.
While enrolled at Harvard, Kiernan-Linn and her co-founder Marco Ribeiro had the initial idea to use blockchain technology to create a permissionless trading environment. Both countries sought to sell goods like wheat and lithium when the conflict between Russia and Ukraine broke out, but they had few options.
When trading the underlying market, the contract sizes on sites such as the CME are substantial. You are limited in how much leverage or size you can use, and we found this to be really challenging.
Users can seek the addition of markets for assets such as silver or the Hang Seng Index on Ostium, which has a centralized listing process. Users can trade price-tracking synthetic versions of these assets for long or short positions.
In addition to collaborating with outside companies to compile OTC and market maker data, the team developed their blockchain oracle to provide traders with real-time data. Additionally, it uses Gelato, an Ethereum-based infrastructure provider, to run keepers for the platform—bots that carry out smart contract chores automatically.
The firm, which has investors including LocalGlobe, basic Catalyst, Susquehanna, and Alliance DAO, is based on the basic idea that trading assets is a means of expressing opinions about current and upcoming events, such as the start of a conflict or the results of elections.
There is a strong need for a real-world asset trading network like this, according to Kiernan-Linn, despite the testnet having a small user base—the majority of users discovered the platform by chance. For instance, Ostium witnessed a 550% increase in their FX and commodities perpetuals volumes the week after China’s announcement of a new quantitative easing strategy. An increasing number of cryptocurrency traders, she observed anecdotally, were talking about traditional assets.
The idea is that anyone can share their opinion about the future using a certain tactic. Assuming Trump wins and there is a greater than 75% chance that Powell will cut rates four times in the upcoming quarter, I would like to take a maximum position in a variety of risky assets. That seems like a bullish US policy to me.
Disclaimer : This article was created for informational purposes only and should not be taken as investment advice. An asset’s past performance does not predict its future returns. Before making an investment, please conduct your own research, as digital assets like cryptocurrencies are highly risky and volatile financial instruments.
