Best of 2020 - Why LEVERJ is the next big thing in DeFi

We’re revisiting some of the best Crypto Conversation podcast episodes of 2020. In this episode, we talk to Bharath Rao and Swapman from LEVERJ, the world’s first scalable decentralized derivatives exchange​. LEVERJ is a trading platform created to perform like traditional financial exchanges while maintaining the critical function of security. Built on Gluon, a Plasma sidechain, LEVERJ is self-custodial by design, meaning that users always control their private keys and funds. Gluon is the first fully operational Ethereum Layer 2 chain, giving LEVERJ the high-transaction throughput to work as fast as centralized exchanges.  Why you should listen: LEVERJ is a self-custodial decentralized derivatives exchange that provides up to 100x leverage. High speed, decentralized spot trading went live on mainnet in 2019 while futures trading went live in September. The first tradable futures products are ETH-USD and BTC-USD perpetual swaps with many more products in the pipeline. LEVERJ has partnered with Brave New Coin to roll out a pipeline of innovative exchange traded products. Some examples of these are sub-sector specific tradable products such as a DeFi index, a privacy coin index, volatility indices and more. “Most exchanges self-index, which introduces unnecessary risk,” says LEVERJ CEO Bharath Rao. “By partnering with Brave New Coin, we give our users more transparency in the benchmark methodology and instrument design process as well as a greatly expedited product roadmap. It’s our goal to bring the best practices of capital markets into the DeFi space, thus attracting new institutions.” Key takeaway: Interest in DeFi exploded in 2020. To cater to this demand, LEVERJ has built a high-frequency, multi-currency spot and futures trading platform.  The explosion of DeFi in 2020 has seen Ethereum gas prices rise significantly. The huge spike in demand for transaction space on the Ethereum chain has put a strain on the Ethereum and DeFi ecosystems. Centralized cryptocurrency exchanges have faced challenges with security and performance, often falling short of the standards set by traditional financial exchanges.  LEVERJ solves these challenges with the Gluon sidechain, a mathematically rigorous protocol preventing fraud, compromise, and collusion to provide the benefits of blockchain without the limitations. Gluon is an advanced, fully operational Ethereum Layer 2 chain, giving LEVERJ high-transaction, low-latency throughput similar to centralized exchanges.  Other developers can also build decentralized applications using Gluon, including their own decentralized exchanges. Gluon has been in development for over three years and is currently the only Layer 2 solution purpose-built for high-capacity trading, that has instant-finality, strong composability, and conventional APIs for sophisticated traders to feel like they are using a regular centralized exchange without counterparty risk. Supporting links: LEVERJ LEVERJ on Twitter Andy on Twitter  Brave New Coin on Twitter Brave New Coin If you enjoyed the show please subscribe to the Crypto Conversation and give us a 5-star rating and a positive review in whatever podcast app you are using.