Host: Quang Truong (Weakhand) & Guest: Tuan – Core Developer (Dopex)
Location: Weakhand
Introducing the guest: Tuan is currently living in the UK and working as a consultant for Dopex thanks to his previous experience working in Options in the traditional market.
Introduction to Dopex and the ecosystem
Introducing Options and Dopex
Defi was born to try to solve some of the problems of traditional financial markets in a more disruptive way. Initially, Defi only copied the transaction model of the traditional financial market, Order Book, but it did not work effectively on Blockchain. Then Uniswap was born and solved this problem with its AMM DEX model.
In the traditional market, after Spot Trading, there have been many other products such as the futures market or futures market. Blockchain also solves many of those problems with Perp.
After Perp was created, the Options market began to emerge with a target customer base, usually investment funds and experts. With Options, instead of spending a large amount of money to trade, funds only need to spend a smaller amount of capital but still bring the same profit.
Dopex focuses on developing Options to solve outstanding problems for Defi, but compared to the level of thoroughness like Uniswap, Dopex has not done that.
Dopex development team
Most of the people in Dopex’s development team are Ethereum Whales like TzTok-Chad or TEtranodE. They were very famous during the Defi boom before.
It can be said that the individuals in Dopex’s team have a very long development history as they participated in Ethereum development early on and have many relationships with many different projects.
Because the project’s development team already has a lot of money, they will focus on solving Options’ problems instead of making money.
Question and answer section
Question 1: Why did Dopex decide to develop its project on the Arbitrum ecosystem instead of another EVM or Layer2 Blockchain?
Initially, Dopex planned to develop on Ethereum Mainnet, however, because of many problems with Ethereum at that time, I encountered very high transaction fees. Dopex then researched other networks but also encountered many disadvantages such as BNB Chain has many scams, Polygon is often clogged, Fantom also does not fit some criteria and finally Arbitrum does fit the criteria. originally set by the team. This can be said to be one of the smartest decisions of the Dopex team when choosing Arbitrum at that time.
Question 2: At the beginning of network development, Optimism required KYC projects, but Arbitrum did not. So is this the reason Dopex chose Arbitrum?
Not really, because Arbitrum initially launched the product before Optimism, so Dopex chose this as the place to develop the product.
Partly because Optimism’s development team is also quite closely linked to a project working in the same field as us, Synthetic, so Dopex does not want to directly compete with this project.
Question 3: In 2023, does Dopex consider multi-chain to be the main development direction?
Actually, Dopex currently does not set a multi-chain goal as the main development direction, the project will continue to focus on main development on Arbitrum.
The reason why the Dopex team developed further at Polygon is because the project invited a lot of people and also because the Matic Reward was high (about 400%), so it was also a good opportunity for Dopex to easily promote. product.
Question 4: Currently there are many different solutions related to Options and liquidity fragmentation, so how is Dopex solving these problems?
Dopex is focusing on taking liquidity from large funds, because the time it takes them to deposit money into vaults is often very long. However, Tuan has also talked a lot with large funds and their biggest problem is that the process for cash flow to circulate in the funds often takes quite a long time.
Dopex is also trying to build better products that make the returns that liquidity providers receive sustainable.
Question 5: At the end of 2022, Dopex introduced dpxUSD to the community, this is a stablecoin backed by 75% USDC. However, the Dopex team seems to want to change development direction from dpxUSD to dpxETH, so why does the project want to change development direction?
Regarding the operating mechanism, the way to mint dpxUSD, dpxETH or any other type of dpx asset is similar. However, the reason the Dopex team does not want to use dpxUSD anymore is because stablecoins related to the dollar are currently quite sensitive after the collapse of LUNA-UST, or recently the SEC banned BUSD. Currently, if Dopex releases stabecoin, it is not a problem, but there will still be risks in the future to the Protocol.
By using ETH, it is already decentralized, so when minting dpxETH there will not be any legal risks in the future. And as the market develops, it is still possible to mint many other types of dpx assets.
The mechanism of rDPX is quite complicated, but in the future as this market develops, allowing dpxETH to be minted from a portion of rDPX will maintain liquidity for this token. Because rDPX is so important to Dopex, the team will build the products carefully and plan to testnet mint dpxETH later this month.
Question 6: Dopex also had a term called OpFi, expressing a strategic vision towards building highly applicable Options products. So what strategies will Dopex use to realize the term OpFi?
Options are currently mainly used by professional investors, but in the Crypto market, most people still do not understand what the concept of Options is. This is the problem that the team wants to solve, so Dopex will create products related to Options that users do not need to understand but can still use easily.
One of the first products we made was to help users trade on GMX without liquidating assets. The core is still Options, but when used, users benefit from it. . That is also Dopex’s general strategy when designing products that are very friendly to users who do not understand Options.
Question 7: As Tuan said, the number of Options users in Defi is quite small, so is Dopex going too early with its product?
I think not, because when I closely follow Ethereum’s past, everything can be said to be quite bad to the point that I couldn’t use it until Uniswap v2 and the time from development to Uniswap v2 also took up to 2 years. So everything was successful, most people found it great, but the time to develop it took a long time and I see Options at present is the same.
Question 8: I wonder what Dopex’s view is on the Options market in Vietnam in particular and Southeast Asia in general?
Dopex highly appreciates his agility in learning from people in the Vietnamese Crypto market and this is also the first time Tuan has been able to talk to people like he is now.
In the Southeast Asian market or Asia in general, Dopex also has a very bullish view.
Tuan also has advice for people who, in addition to learning about trading or general research, should also learn about coding, because Ethereum’s code is very easy to understand and concise compared to other languages. Learning to code also helps avoid investing in scam projects.
Question 9: What is Dopex’s development orientation in 2023?
There are a few things I can talk about, but there are also a few projects that are quite market sensitive. In 2023, Dopex’s most important goal will be to try to complete the rDPX v2 version, and there will also be some new tests on using Options applied to things similar to Casino.
Questions from the audience
Question 1: In the Options market, there are many complicated terms. I wonder if Dopex has any marketing program to popularize knowledge for newcomers?
Dopex has very clear and complete Education versions in the project’s Discord, although currently there is no Vietnamese language.
Question 2: Options providers in the traditional market will go through many different rounds of censorship, so how does Dopex gain users’ trust?
I think this will not be a barrier but an advantage of the Protocols, because the user’s assets when deposited will be in the contract (ie no one keeps the user’s money). Because after the collapse of FTX, Defi has proven its value compared to the traditional market.
Question 3: I don’t know if Dopex plans to develop other products or is it oriented to educate users in the future?
Dopex has developed OpFi to direct people to new Options with the purpose of helping users first become familiar with Options and then gradually help them understand better in the long term.
Question 4: I wonder if the Dopex team is supporting or developing any other projects in the Arbitrum ecosystem?
Jones DAO is one of the projects that works a lot with Dopex, and also has quite close relationships with GMX, Plutus, etc.
JPEG’d does not work directly with Dopex, but there are some members who work on both projects.
Question 5: What is Dopex’s current vision for implementing the veToken model?
Dopex will prioritize product development first, tokenomics will be a supporting part for product development. VeToken owners will have many advantages in the future when they can receive transaction fees, votes,…
In addition, it is also possible to influence construction on Dopex thanks to its ownership of voting power on Dopex.
Question 6: How is liquidity provision on Dopex different from other AMM DEX?
Providing liquidity on Dopex is also quite simple as you only need to deposit assets such as USDC or ETH instead of LP tokens like AMM platforms.
Question 7: Another Options platform that is also quite large at the moment is Opyn, so does Dopex have any other differences or advantages compared to Opyn?
Opyn’s development method is quite formal and a bit academic-oriented and difficult to reach users. Dopex will quickly reach users and be ready to change for users.
