Part 2 - Trading of NEAR/USD compared to other assets listed on gTrade

Top 10 Other Pairs Available:

gTrade has assets from crypto, forex and commodities available to trade. The top asset for both trading volume since Feb 12 is ETH/USD, and the highest number of trades was done on BTC/USD, so it's clear that crypto is the favoured asset class. However the top 10 also includes some forex pairs, the most popular by volume are GBP/USD and EUR/USD.

NEAR/USD vs All Others:

When we compare the NEAR/USD pair to all other pairs available - the results are clear - NEAR/USD represents a tiny portion of the gTrade's total trading volume and number of trades, in fact less than 1% for both metrics. However most of these pairs, such as ETH/USD and BTC/USD, have been active on the platform for longer than NEAR/USD and as such it is not fair to compare them.

Near/USD vs New Pairs:

A better comparison is to other crypto pairs which were added recently. In a Twitter post from Feb 12, Gains Network announced that $ICP, $EOS, $CHZ, $AVAX, $ATOM, $NEAR and $QNT have been added to the platform. The 'Cumulative Trades' and 'Cumulative Trading Volume' area charts below track the number and volume of trades respectively following the launch of these crypto pairs. At Feb 22, NEAR/USD sits 5th among these pairs in trading volume, and 4th in terms of number of trades. Within this group there are L1 tokens which have a higher profile than NEAR such as AVAX and ATOM. And yet NEAR/USD is still showing consistent growth along side them - this is promising for the future growth of the pair on gTrade platform.

Introduction & Methodology

What is Gains Network

Gains Network (gTrade) is a perpetuals platform offering trading of crypto, forex, stocks and commodities on the Arbitrum and Polygon blockchains.

Data Sources:

Used the [chain].core.fact_event_logs tables for both Arbitrum and Polygon. All charts and commentary include data from both chains.

Majority of the data used was decoded from the ‘data’ and ‘topics’ within each log for closed trades, via the 'trading callbacks' contract events.

For simplicity, and due to most volume occurring on these contracts, only the most recent version (v6) of the trading callbacks contract was used, for each chain this represents:

• Arbitrum: GNSTradingCallbacksV6_3 0x6C612C804c84e3D20E3109c8efD06cD2d8b28F46

• Polygon: Callbacks 0xb454d8A8C98035C65Bb73FE2a11567b9B044E0fa

Full contract list can be found here: https://gains-network.gitbook.io/docs-home/what-is-gains-network/contract-addresses

Pairs were identified by decoding the ‘data’ logs and cross checking to Gains’ Pair List in their docs: https://gains-network.gitbook.io/docs-home/gtrade-leveraged-trading/pair-list

Definitions:

All trades made using DAI collateral, for the purpose of this dashboard 1 DAI = $1 USD.

P&L of a trade relates to the collateral used in the trade minus the USD (DAI) returned when the trade is closed.

Trading Volume is the collateral used in the trade * leverage used.

Individual trades are calculated as the distinct count of the trade id.

Sentiment of the market is bullish on NEAR token, with over 80% of trade volume being long. Not only are traders expecting the NEAR token to go up in price, they are also leveraging their bets - gTrade is seeing an average leverage of over 50% on the near token - most of which relating to long positions. After 10 days of trading we have seen over $1.7m trading volume and over 120 trades.

So traders are bullish, but they do not have the skills to match this enthusiasm. 89% of trades on the NEAR/USD pair are leading to a total loss of collateral - that’s almost 9 out of 10 trades ending in liquidation, on average each trade to date has resulted in a ~$240 loss, with the largest single trade loss being $5k as shown in the 'Trades by P&L (Long & Short)' bar chart. So it’s no surprise that in the ‘Cumulative P&L - Near/USD’ chart we see the group of traders consistently losing money, at Feb 22 the cumulative loss sitting at ~$10k.

During this period the NEAR token has been trending upwards, in a range between $2.10 and $2.70. In summary, the market is right to have been bullish over this period but traders need to work on their execution, and maybe slide the leverage bar a bit further to the left!

Part 1 - Market Sentiment based on long and short positions around the NEAR token.

Conclusion

The market has met the launch of NEAR/USD with exuberance and gambled away thousands in the process.

Despite traders' losses, we can clearly see both the volume and number of trades continuing to increase for the NEAR/USD pair.

As the popularity of on-chain trading increases, expect these metrics to continue rising for NEAR/USD.