LN Markets - April 7th, 2020 - Issue #1
⚡First metrics, challenges, a new surprise feature, and much more.
Welcome to the first issue of LN Markets’ newsletter!
In this newsletter, we will cover Bitcoin market trends, Lightning Network developments and updates about LN Markets.
If you enjoy this content, feel free to spread the word!
🔥 First metrics
We launched LN Markets on Bitcoin Mainnet on March 11th (that’s right, the day before the epic March 12th..). Overall, we have been overwhelmed by your enthusiasm and support, so first of all thank you all!
Among the many feedbacks that went straight to our heart, we particularly appreciated this one from Alex Bosworth, Lightning infrastructure lead at Lightning Labs & CEO of yalls:
Here are a few statistics on LN Markets’ node usage since the launch:
Total capacity = 2.46 BTC
Connected nodes = 41
Incoming & Outgoing transactions volume = 172,458,464 sats
Best partner node: Bitfinex (bfx-lnd0), 80 million sats transferred through a 10 million sats channel
A few metrics on market activity - please note that the maximum margin available for trading per wallet is currently set at 1 million sats:
200 weekly active users
1,500 trades
Total volume = 280,000 USD
In the current wild market conditions, let’s have a look at LN Markets’ participants trading style:
59% long orders / 41% short orders
Average leverage = 26
Max P&L = 3,542,478 sats
Finally, 20% of LN Markets’ connections are made using Joule, the rest with other Lightning wallets.
⚒️ Challenges
As noted in RADAR ION’s 2019 State of the Lightning Network report, the biggest threat to Lightning Network adoption is complex user experience, according to LN company founders.
Hence, we tried to make LN Markets’ on boarding and trading seamless:
We are doubling down on this road since we are currently implementing lnurl-auth for LN Markets. This way, users with a Lightning wallet compatible with lnurl-auth will be able to log in directly, without having to pay an invoice.
Nonetheless, LN Markets’ launch did not go without its fair share of technical glitches. We thank you all for your support and patience as we tried to be as reactive as possible, especially on our Telegram.
The most frequent issue we encountered was around routing payments through channels with sufficient liquidity. We had to process several payments manually. We will explore solutions such as loop to manage inbound and outbound liquidity more easily.
🆕 New features
Here is a list of the most requested features by LN Markets’ users:
UX:
Add a Leaderboard
Dark mode
More intuitive mobile mode
Multiple withdrawals
Trading:
Stop loss orders
API
Add margin to an existing position
We are prioritising these features and some of them will be implemented in the coming weeks: please let us know which ones you are most excited about on Twitter or Telegram.
Also, we are working on a quite innovative feature: a liquidation killer.
This optional liquidation killer would make your trade immune to liquidation for 24 hours. Indeed, having the right position is not always sufficient to get a winning trade: markets can be very choppy and your position could be liquidated before taking advantage of the market move.
We are developing this liquidation killer to give you more room: during a certain period of time, 24 hours or so, your position cannot be liquidated and stays alive whatever the level of the index. At the end of this period, if the market is above the liquidation level, your position continues to run, if the market is below, the position is liquidated.
This option will be activated ticking a checkbox and the payment of the premium will be made at the same time than the margin. Simple.
🔮 Reading
Why Derivatives on the Lightning Network Could Be a Big Deal, by Kyle Torpey for LongHash.
Thank you all for the support, let’s keep building together!