We've been saying "soon" for weeks. Time to put a date on it.
๐ November 16. Derstar Private Testnet goes live.
Invite-only. Small group. Real feedback.
Here's what you'll actually get your hands on:
๐น BTC and ETH options on Arbitrum โ European, cash-settled, premium in USDC
๐น A full strike board with live implied volatility. Not three strikes and a prayer.
๐น An order book that runs inside the contract itself. No off-chain matcher. No operator deciding your fill.
๐น Weekly and monthly expiries, Fridays 08:00 UTC
๐น Your option lands in your wallet as an ERC-1155 token. It's yours, not a row in our database.
And nobody gets liquidated. Every option is fully collateralized: WBTC or WETH behind every call, USDC behind every put.
What we need from you:
Try to break it. Find the weird edge cases. Tell us what's confusing, slow or ugly. Testnet is where we'd rather hear it than mainnet.
Who gets in first:
1๏ธโฃ WL raffle winners from our partner giveaways
2๏ธโฃ Followers who actually show up in the replies
3๏ธโฃ Market makers who slide into our DMs
13 days. Turn on ๐ so you don't miss the invite drop.
BTC to $95K. One trader got liquidated. The other made $3,374.
You can be right about Bitcoin and still lose everything.
BTC at $80K. You have $1,000 and you think it goes up.
10x long:
โข Liquidated at $72K
โข Pays funding every 8 hours just to stay open
โข One wick and youโre out, even if BTC hits $95K next week
Call option, $85K strike, 30 days:
โข Max loss $1,000, fixed the day you buy
โข No liquidation, no margin call, no funding
โข You stay in the trade until expiry, whatever the wicks do
BTC wicks to $72K, then runs to $95K:
โข 10x long: โ$1,000
โข Call option: +$3,374
This fall the market wiped out longs and shorts in the same day. Hundreds of millions liquidated on round trips.
And options are the cheapest theyโve been since 2021.
Leverage pays you only if youโre right fast. Options pay you if youโre right at all.
In a market built to hunt stops, thatโs the difference.
DeFi options have been the biggest graveyard in crypto for four straight years
Every cycle VCs dump $50M into "the Uniswap of options"
Every cycle LPs get evaporated by toxic order flow while spreads sit at 30%
And the moment volatility actually spikes, on-chain liquidity simply vanishes
The problem was never demand
The problem was trying to shove complex derivatives into crude AMM pools that were never built for non-linear risk
@Derstar_options is taking the only architecture that actually works and putting it 100% on-chain on Arbitrum
No off-chain matching servers
No custodial settlement
They built an on-chain Black-Scholes engine running inside EVM for ~18k gas
Makers quote directly in implied volatility with live auto-repricing
Protocol vaults supply base liquidity from day one so you never stare at an empty book
Closed testnet launches November 16
I secured exactly 15 access passes directly from the team for my network
Grab a spot below
DeFi options already had a first wave. It mostly died. Worth knowing why ๐งต
Gen-1 protocols used AMM pools. You deposited into a pool, the pool quoted option prices off a fixed curve and a slow oracle.
Sounds fine. Here's what actually happened:
The curve didn't know what the market knew. Informed traders could see a strike mispriced against real implied volatility, and they bought it. Over and over. The pool was on the other side of every one of those trades.
LPs got picked off, posted losses, and left. Liquidity went with them.
Perps had exactly this problem too - until order books moved onchain. DEX perps went from 2% of all perps volume in Jan 2024 to 10.2% by Jan 2026. The fix wasn't a better curve. It was letting humans and market makers quote against each other.
So that's what Derstar is: a real order book, price-time priority, matched inside a Stylus contract on Arbitrum. No off-chain matcher. No operator. No curve guessing at prices.
Market makers compete. You take the best offer. The way an exchange is supposed to work.
Nov 16 ๐
"I'd buy BTC at $70k but not at $80k."
Ok. Get paid for the wait.
That's a cash-secured put:
1. You park USDC as collateral
2. You sell someone the right to sell you BTC at $70k
3. They pay you a premium today
4. BTC stays above $70k? You keep the premium and the cash
5. BTC falls below? You buy at $70k, the price you wanted anyway, minus the premium you already pocketed
The honest catch: if BTC goes to $45k, you're still buying at $70k. This is a strategy for a price you actually want, not a free yield machine.
Put it next to a perp: no funding, no liquidation, no margin call at 3am. Your USDC sits in the contract and the worst case is you own BTC at a level you picked.
Covered calls and cash-secured puts โ both live on Derstar testnet, Nov 16.
Derstar Ambassador Program is open. ๐
Private testnet starts Nov 16 and it's invite-only. Ambassadors are how a lot of people will get in.
What ambassadors get:
๐๏ธ 15 testnet invites to start
๐ A personal invite code. Everyone who joins with it is linked to you
๐ค A joint launch post: we write it together, publish it on both sides, and your invites go live with it
๐ฐ A share of trading fees from your referrals once mainnet is live
Who we're looking for: people who talk about options, trading and risk, and want to actually use the product. Audience quality > audience size.
Already posted about Derstar? Drop it in community-research on our Discord and get the ๐ Diamond Hands role.
Want in? DM us ๐ฉ
You're holding bitcoin:native. It's going sideways. You're bored.
There's a trade for that, and it's the oldest one in the options book: the covered call.
Here's the whole idea in four lines:
1. You own 1 BTC
2. You sell someone the right to buy it from you at $90k, one month out
3. They pay you a premium today, in USDC
4. If BTC stays under $90k, you keep the coin AND the premium
The catch is honest: if BTC rips to $120k, you still sell at $90k. You capped your upside in exchange for getting paid today.
That's it. No leverage. No liquidation price. Your BTC sits as collateral and the worst case is that you sold your coin at a price you agreed to.
This is what desks have done for decades to earn on inventory. It's one of two strategies live on Derstar testnet from Nov 16.
The other one is tomorrow's post ๐
Kalshi sells NO on "ETH above $3,000 by Dec 1" at 96.1ยข
ETH is at $2,126, so that's ~4% for betting it doesn't do +41% in 3 weeks
Add a $2,700 call on @Derstar_options for $76 and you get a long on top of that NO
If ETH stays under $2,700 you get $56. If it runs into $2,700 - 3,000 the call pays on top, up to ~$3.6k. If it touches $3,000 the bet dies, but the call is already worth more than the whole position
The call expires Nov 27 and the bet runs to Dec 1, so a touch in those 4 days isn't covered
@MadVincent666 Why are you still even thinking about liqudations? You can just buy call option and know your maximum loss before you entered in position
We've been saying "soon" for weeks. Time to put a date on it.
๐ November 16. Derstar Private Testnet goes live.
Invite-only. Small group. Real feedback.
Here's what you'll actually get your hands on:
๐น BTC and ETH options on Arbitrum โ European, cash-settled, premium in USDC
๐น A full strike board with live implied volatility. Not three strikes and a prayer.
๐น An order book that runs inside the contract itself. No off-chain matcher. No operator deciding your fill.
๐น Weekly and monthly expiries, Fridays 08:00 UTC
๐น Your option lands in your wallet as an ERC-1155 token. It's yours, not a row in our database.
And nobody gets liquidated. Every option is fully collateralized: WBTC or WETH behind every call, USDC behind every put.
What we need from you:
Try to break it. Find the weird edge cases. Tell us what's confusing, slow or ugly. Testnet is where we'd rather hear it than mainnet.
Who gets in first:
1๏ธโฃ WL raffle winners from our partner giveaways
2๏ธโฃ Followers who actually show up in the replies
3๏ธโฃ Market makers who slide into our DMs
13 days. Turn on ๐ so you don't miss the invite drop.
8 days left. Let's show you something ๐
This is the strike board you'll be trading BTC and ETH options on from Nov 16.
What you're looking at:
๐ Every strike in one view: calls on one side, puts on the other
โก Live implied volatility, calculated with Black-Scholes and updated in real time
๐ An order book that lives inside the contract โ the bids and asks you see are the ones onchain
๐ง Every strike quoted from day one by the protocol vault, so you're never staring at an empty board
๐ช Click buy, and the option shows up in your wallet as a token
No "request for quote" forms. No "pool" setting the price for you. Just a board, a book and your wallet.
We blurred a couple of things. Some surprises are for testers only ๐คซ
Invites go out next week. If you're not following yet, now's the time.
@lumoraweb3 Testnet will be opened 16 of November. You cam participate in one of your giveaways to get WL pr you can check our discord to get more opportunities to get access
๐ Every project has a story worth exploring.
I've been taking a closer look at Derstar, exploring its platform and understanding the vision behind what it's building.
Still exploring, still learning, and more insights are on the way. ๐
Have you checked @Derstar_options yet?
Weekend time machine โณ
You're back to Wednesday, Oct 28. BTC is chilling. Nobody's heard the word "hack" yet.
You know exactly what happens next.
You get ONE trade. What is it?
โข BTC put - get paid for the dump ๐
โข Buy the dip on Friday - with spot, no leverage
โข Pull everything off CEXes into my wallet
โข Short with 50x and retire ๐๏ธ
Bonus points if you explain your strike in the replies ๐