we forget how far we've come.
met a trader the other day. active on MEXC. never heard of Extended, Hyperliquid, or any perp DEX.
he asked what i do. i told him. the conversation that followed reminded me why we’re building Extended:
- but trading on-chain must be slow? no, it's 5ms latency, on par with CEXs.
- fees must be high? 2.5 bps taker - even lower than some CEX VIP tiers.
- it's not orderbook and liquidity must be bad? orderbook with tier-1 liquidity.
that same evening he tried Extended and started his DeFi journey.
we take the existing DeFi tech for granted. we live in a crypto-twitter bubble but non crypto native people are shocked with what we’ve achieved so far. we've already built something genuinely better than CEX. the technology is ready. the product is ready. the gap is awareness.
now let's go fill that gap.
In light of recent security incidents and the increasingly hostile environment, we have activated a dedicated treasury contract to further strengthen the system’s resilience. This contract is solely responsible for holding the entirety of the protocol’s treasury (TVL) and incorporates a circuit breaker mechanism governing fund outflows.
Specifically, if the total value locked (TVL) decreases by more than 3% within any rolling 24-hour period, the treasury contract will automatically halt all USDC outflows. In such an event, settlements are paused until the team reviews the underlying transactions and explicitly approves any increase in withdrawal limits via a multisignature process. The multisig signers are distributed across multiple geographies.
In rare circumstances, this may introduce delays to withdrawals. However, we believe this is a reasonable trade-off to ensure the safety of funds.
The perpetuals and vault contracts, which handle trading and business logic, no longer custody funds. All asset movements are routed exclusively through the treasury contract.
As a result, even in the event of a full system compromise, including bridges, oracle providers, or operator infrastructure, the maximum potential impact is limited to 3% of the TVL.
Extended end of Q1 update
[TLDR]
- Multi-asset collateral launching soon
- TradFi expansion accelerating (>25 markets live, partnership coming, focused on distribution via TradFi brokers)
- Becoming more institutional-ready (pricing methodology, trading workflows)
- Building decentralised, high-throughput sequencing
[Product]
The team has completed development of multi-asset collateral margin. It is now in the testing phase on testnet and undergoing smart contract audits. We expect to launch at the end of April or early May, with support for wBTC, ETH, USDT and potentially EURC as collateral, subject to underlying liquidity.
In Q1, we also doubled down on our TradFi offering, expanding to 25+ equities, indices, FX markets and commodities with competitive liquidity. We are currently finalising an agreement with a major TradFi broker, which will both broaden our offering and help bring in flow.
The other priority for the team is making Extended more institutional-friendly across both product and trading:
- Improving the definition and transparency of fair reference pricing for TradFi markets, with a consistent and clear methodology: spot-based references for equities and FX, and futures-derived pricing for commodities and energy
- Introducing and better communicating institutional-grade features such as MPC wallet workflows, API key-only trading, and our sub-account architecture
In addition:
- With multi-asset collateral, we have built native spot markets (required to process liquidations of non-USDC balances). These will be released shortly after the cross-asset rollout.
- The team is progressing towards decentralising sequencing via an application-specific chain built on a high-throughput implementation of full BFT consensus (targeting ~50ms block times and hundreds of thousands of transactions per second).
This architecture introduces an app-chain layered on top of our existing zk-enabled stack, enabling decentralised matching and related services while preserving existing security guarantees. More details and timelines will be shared soon. Importantly, this design enables Extended tokenomics and revenue accrual to the token.
[Growth and community]
Our strategy remains consistent:
- Stay open to feedback
- Continuously iterate on the product
- Encourage organic usage
- Do not do paid marketing or paid deals
- Focus on long-term sustainability and value creation
Over the past quarter, we have gained stronger conviction that demand for perpetuals is increasing among traditional players, driven by 24/7 trading, higher leverage and deeper liquidity. As a result, we are doubling down on business development with TradFi brokers (fintechs and trading platforms). This is a long-term effort, but we believe it will be a key driver of sustainable growth.
We also have several important integrations with trading terminals coming up, both retail and institutional.
[Team]
Over the past quarter, we hired 3 new team members and are now a team of 14. As we move towards decentralising sequencing, we expect to grow to 18-20 people in the coming months.
[Market and exchange metrics]
Nothing unexpected: January saw all-time highs across key metrics, followed by a broader market slowdown in February and March. All Extended metrics are public: https://t.co/ApTdGaTEOM
From our perspective, short-term market conditions are less important than long-term trends. What matters is that the market we are building in continues to grow and there is room for new players. We strongly believe this is the case:
- price discovery for TradFi assets is likely to increasingly shift towards perpetuals. More on this here: https://t.co/PyefvylBIJ
- DeFi continues to gain share versus CeFi
- Regulatory clarity is improving across both the US and Europe
Three key takeaways from today’s data:
1. Physical market vs Trump tweets = a Schrödinger market.
Pickering nailed it:
“Why is oil so high? Because the war will drag on.”
At the same time:
“Why is it so low when 20% of global supply is blocked via Hormuz?”
The market doesn’t know which reality to price.
Every diplomatic signal from Trump creates short-term dips → use them to accumulate gold and URA.
2. The mid-April “oil cliff” doesn’t get solved by diplomacy.
Once SPR releases, IEA reserves, and Russian sanction waivers run out mid-April — the US has almost no tools left to suppress prices without actually reopening Hormuz.
If Kharg Island gets hit, Roche flags risks to:
• Saudi East-West Pipeline
• Bab el-Mandeb
That’s another 4–5mb/d potentially offline.
3. Uranium is the cleanest structural winner — regardless of outcome.
At $130+ oil, every Asian government accelerates nuclear.
War = structural shock to:
• global economy
• capex decisions
• trade routes
→ URA benefits in any endgame
Even with peace, oil isn’t going back to $70 this year.
The treacherous mechanism that keeps us perpetually dissatisfied
Hedonistic Adaptation is an built-in "reset" mechanism. As soon as you hit a new target (whether it's $100k in profit or moving to Dubai), your brain registers this as the new zero. To your mind, it's no longer an achievement; it’s the baseline for survival.
Why does it do this? It’s evolutionary firmware. If our ancestors remained perpetually satisfied with one successful hunt, they’d relax and starve. The brain intentionally devalues what you already have to keep you running. In crypto, this becomes a living hell: you chase the same euphoria you felt from your first 10x, but now you need millions just to feel "normal." Your dopamine threshold rises, but your joy doesn't.
How to break the cycle:
> Negative Visualization (The Contrast Practice). Once a week, sincerely imagine losing everything: your capital, your health, your access to loved ones. Feel that chill. When you "return" to reality, your current "zero" suddenly feels like an incredible jackpot.
> Ground the numbers. Crypto is a game of pixels. Until you exchange them for real experiences (travel, helping parents, education), your brain doesn't believe they are real. It only sees digits on a screen, which mean nothing to your limbic system.
> Invest in Hardware. Sleep and the gym aren't about aesthetics. They are about the sensitivity of your receptors. A tired, sleep-deprived brain will always default to depression and devaluation, no matter what your PnL looks like.
Your current "zero" is someone else’s unreachable dream. Don’t let biology trick you into forgetting that.
What is the one "free asset" you have today that you’ve stopped noticing?
my rising star
@extendedapp
just printed another ATH for 3 month
> x5 by TVL for 3 month: $40.43M -> 200M
> x5 by 24h volume : $367M -> 1600M
@rf_extended has a strategy to be a TOP-3 perp dex
you have 3-4 month till TGE
my deep dive here
https://t.co/Yw69RI0Cn5
Deep dive on a new hidden gem with an ex-Revolut team behind it
@extendedapp is a perp DEX that goes way beyond speculation:
- cross-asset collateral
- unified margin
- perps
- spot
- lending
all in one UX.
https://t.co/WVxuc5pQGE
State of liquidity and execution on @extendedapp v4
This time, we focused on slippage and total cost of execution for $HYPE on @extendedapp, @HyperliquidX, and @Lighter_xyz .
Methodology
1. Measured slippage for market orders on HYPE across $10k and $100k clip sizes every 30 seconds across the three exchanges from Jan 5, 18:20 UTC to Jan 9, 07:45 UTC (10,253 snapshots).
2. Calculated average hourly slippage, split by buy vs sell and by clip size.
3. Applied 2.5 bps taker fee for Extended and 4.5 bps taker fee (base rate) for Hyperliquid when estimating total cost of execution.
Results for Total Cost of Execution.
1. Lighter is the cheapest for $10k orders on average, being ~1 bp cheaper than Extended, which ranks second.
2. Extended is the cheapest for $100k orders on average, being ~1.5 bps cheaper than Lighter, which ranks second.
3. Even with the lowest possible taker fee on Hyperliquid (1.44 bps), it remains more expensive than both Lighter and Extended for $10k clip sizes and more expensive than Extended for $100k clip sizes.
Results for Slippage.
Extended has the lowest slippage for both $10k and $100k orders, on average being ~1 and ~1.8 bps cheaper than Hyperliquid (second best) for $10k and $100k clips, respectively.
Full dataset:
https://t.co/lhKMqxvvfk
Next time, we will perform an analysis of slippage and total cost of execution based on actual trades rather than order book snapshots.
genuine, non-ragebait, question: what will be the utility of $LIT?
> Lighter is an L2, so there’s no need to stake LIT for consensus, like HYPE on Hypercore
> afaik there are no concrete plans for an EVM sidecar that would use LIT as gas
> I assume there will be Lighter fee discounts for holding LIT, like there is for HYPE, but with no/extremely low fees, how useful is this?
> I assume Lighter fee revenue will be used to buyback LIT, like HYPE, to tie it to the performance of the DEX. However, with no/extremely low fees, how useful is this?
not being able to use LIT for staking and gas is not a problem imo as I don’t think those utilities have had much of an impact on the value of HYPE and maybe even fee discounts too, but the lack of or little revenue buybacks makes LIT meaningfully less valuable than HYPE
either Lighter increase fees — losing one of it’s key USPs — so that a meaningful amount of revenue TWAPs LIT, or they accept that the value of LIT is not directly linked to the success of Lighter as a DEX
even if they go with the former, they won’t be able to divert 99% (or anywhere near that) of revenue to buying (& burning) LIT because they are not a self-funded hilariously rich lean team, they have investors to answer to and money to make
> on top of this, there will be token supply for investors, MMs and CEXs to add sell pressure that HYPE never had
with all of this in mind, why should LIT be valued anywhere near HYPE’s valuation?
I must be missing something obvious so I ask the Lighter maxis (@Sufficient_Lev is the only one I know) to ratio me, as required.
6/ Reason to move early:
If #privacy + flexibility become standard, the early movers will be ahead of the wave
👇 Which excites you more: truly private spend or seamless crypto-card utility?
Be early:
https://t.co/SbIL64nT8E