The most important aspect of any DeFi ecosystem is the ambitious founders who build the applications and infrastructure to ensure that a thriving ecosystem can not only grow, but succeed at the scale necessary to win on the global stage.

The advantages the Radix platform provides to builders are not enough on their own. It requires individuals and teams with drive and passion. It requires the support of those who see the market opportunities presented by DeFi and Web3 and help them make a focused play for building the products that will define the next era of user-facing applications.

To this end, a new set of initiatives were launched for the Radix ecosystem. This was headlined by a commitment of $10m in XRD to those teams that decide to step up to the plate and build.

A core initiative in this program is the Radix Foundry. This program specifically calls out those applications that are pivotal to mainstream adoption of Web3.

The Radix Foundry is pleased to announce that the first two Foundry grants have been issued to Surge and Trove, concentrating on decentralized perpetuals and professional NFT trading. 

What makes these two areas so exciting? Let’s dive in.

Perpetuals - The DeFi Gold Rush

Throughout the bear market, there was one bright spot on the DeFi landscape: perpetuals. 

Decentralized perpetual markets such as Drift, GMX, DyDx, Jupiter and many others have shown impressive growth throughout the bear market. This was driven by a combination of the leverage they can offer, their capital efficiency vs spot DEXs and the attractive yet relatively stable yields that they offer to LP providers. 

A relatively small amount of TVL in a well functioning decentralized perps market can generate multiple times that TVL in trading volume. However, the decentralized perps market is only a small percentage of the total potential market for perpetuals in crypto. Of the ~$4 trillion traded in crypto monthly, $3tn is derivatives. But only 2.3% of the derivatives volume is on decentralized venues, as compared to 22% for spot. 

This leaves a huge space for at least a 10x growth. However, many of these existing decentralized perpetuals markets are handicapped by the platforms they are built on, especially when it comes to scalability, security, and usability. As a result, Radix provides the perfect, fertile soil in which the next generation of perps can emerge. One that would enable a decentralized perp platform to pierce out of today’s crypto hardcore bubble and enter the mainstream.

Within DeFi ecosystems, these dApps have often spawned their own ecosystems of dApps that compose with it. A perps DEX on Radix would be a cornerstone dApp, allowing other developers to use the features, function and yield to create new primitives in lending, social trading, and structured options. 

Perps, by their nature, do not require the underlying assets that are being traded on the Perp DEX to be on the network in question. This allows a much greater range of products to be quickly traded within a target ecosystem, and removes the barriers to listing and building traded volume around target asset types. All that is necessary is a reliable Oracle feed and sufficient demand for trading in that asset on the Perp DEX platform.

Perpetuals - Introducing Surge

Surge is a new perpetuals DEX launching on the Radix network, founded by an experienced DeFi builder team with a strong background in mathematics, derivatives trading, and quantitative finance.

Surge takes the lessons learned by trailblazing perpetual platforms such as Drift, GMX, DyDx, and Jupiter to create a strong new contender for crypto’s decentralized perpetuals throne.

Leveraging the power of the full Radix stack, Surge is designed to deliver an unparalleled pro-trading experience with leveraged trading so seamless you will forget you are even using a blockchain.

Surge is the first recipient of a Radix Foundry grant, and will launch their decentralized perpetual dApp on Radix later this year. Congratulations to the Surge team - to learn more dive into the Surge community and register to be notified when it goes live.

NFT Pro Trading - Making NFTs Liquid

Although tokenization began with the launch of Ethereum, it wasn’t until 2017 that NFTs really began to gain attention (mostly by completely congesting the Ethereum blockchain). The cause of this hype was CryptoKitties, launched in November 2017. However, back in 2017 trading volumes were modest, with less than 100 NFTs traded weekly.

By 2018, the first NFT platforms were being founded, the first of which was OpenSea. OpenSea provided the first decentralized platform for users to trade NFTs, including art, collectibles, and virtual real estate. OpenSea demonstrated the growing demand for NFT marketplaces, and more competitors entered the market, such as Rarible, SuperRare, and Foundation.

NFTs truly entered the mainstream in 2020 and 2021, with high-profile sales and celebrity hype bringing them into the public eye.

By 2021 NFT volume started to really take off, with the first quarter of 2021 seeing $1.2 billion in traded volume, and the second seeing $1.3 billion. By the third quarter, trading volume had increased by over 700% compared to Q2, reaching $10.7 billion. High-profile sales, such as Beeple’s “Everydays: The First 5000 Days” for $69 million, drove increasing interest and investment.

While digital art remained a significant focus, NFTs began diversifying into various sectors, including gaming, music, and virtual real estate. Projects like Decentraland and The Sandbox allowed users to buy and develop virtual land, creating new opportunities for investment and creativity.

By the end of 2021, the NFT marketplace saw a new contender enter the space, Blur. Unlike other platforms, Blur aimed to offer a seamless, fast, and efficient trading experience with advanced tools and features. The platform quickly attracted attention for its no-fee structure, user-friendly interface, and features like floor sweeping and portfolio analytics, which catered to high-volume traders.

Within a short period of time, Blur surpassed OpenSea in trading volume. By February 2024, Blur held a commanding 64.8% share of the NFT market, with a trading volume of $1.32 billion for that month alone. This rapid growth highlighted the platform's appeal to professional traders looking for advanced trading capabilities and lower costs.

Professional trader tools, such as Blur, are also a core component for bringing an increasing number of real world assets and more complex financial instruments to public ledgers. Corporate bonds, real estate, complex options contracts and many other types of Non Fungible financial instruments require effective, liquid and professionally focused markets to provide liquidity to these tokenized instruments.

NFT Pro Trading - Introducing Trove

Trove entered into the Radix NFT trading market in the last quarter of 2023 with a lightweight set of features that allows anyone to list NFTs and offer them for sale, either via a private swap offer, or via an open offer system that allows anyone to snap up their favorite NFTs on Radix.

The focus on user-experience and flexibility made Trove a firm favorite within the newly formed NFT communities on Radix. Once launched, Trove quickly surpassed 1m XRD in traded volume. Iconic NFT collections such as Abandoned Scorpions have continued to prove their status and new arrivals since Babylon, such as Radical Robos, XRD Domains and ICE404 have all raised the bar for creativity and utility.

While the intention for Trove was initially to serve as a low-level utility for peer to peer trading, the team has always envisioned that this was just the first DeFi brick in the process of building a much grander foundation for trading on Radix. 

The pro upgrade to Trove aims to establish the premier Radix NFT trading experience tailored for professional traders. The platform will focus on real-time data aggregation, visualized analytics, and enhancing liquidity for collections. Key features include floor price charting tools, making complex trades easy to do in a single transaction, a customizable single-tab trading interface, collection bidding, and ultra-low fees. All of this is built in an asset-oriented way with a focus on decentralization using an open listing model. Going one step further, Trove aims to support the broader development of next-gen NFT projects by integrating novel standards emerging in the ecosystem such as 404-esque tokens, dynamic traits and nestables as recently demonstrated by the team’s Soulstore concept.

Trove is the second recipient of Radix Foundry support, to launch their NFT Pro-Trading platform on Radix later this year. Congratulations to the Trove Team - to learn more follow Trove on X, or start using their platform today.

Apply to the Radix Foundry Program

As part of the recently announced 250m XRD Radix ecosystem fund, the Radix Foundry is still open for applications. To learn more about how to apply, as well as other grants and funding opportunities for builders on Radix, visit the Radix Grants page here.