Gemini Review 2024: What To Know About The Pros, Cons, & Features
Learn more about the features and benefits of Gemini, including fees, pros, cons, and features in Milk Road’s Gemini review.
Learn more about the features and benefits of Gemini, including fees, pros, cons, and features in Milk Road’s Gemini review.
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Jumper Exchange is an all-in-one DeFi platform for swapping and bridging tokens across several different blockchains.
Stryke (formerly known as Dopex) is a decentralized options exchange focusing on calls and puts across Arbitrum and Polygon. As a result of its clever derivatives products, the protocol markets itself to traders with a healthy risk tolerance. In addition to a wide range of options vaults, Stryke offers advanced speculation instruments, including concentrated liquidity options and synthetic yield-bearing tokens. As a crypto-native one-sentence summary, Stryke was created by degens for degens.
Supported Assets | Flagship Products | Supported Chains | Restricted Jurisdictions | Security Features |
WBTC WETH stETH ARB SYK xSYK GMX CRV CVX MATIC BOOP | Weekly and monthly option vaults Concentrated liquidity options | Arbitrum Polygon | The US | Audits by Solidified and Sourcehat |
Stryke is a decentralized options exchange that offers a variety of crypto options and yield-bearing products.
Users can buy and sell monthly or weekly calls and puts for a variety of assets, including BTC, ETH, ARB and others. The protocol also recently introduced the “Concentrated Liquidity Automated Market Maker” (CLAMM) product, which combines the enhanced yields of Uniswap v3-style concentrated liquidity pools with crypto options.
We’ve covered options trading in the past here on Milk Road, but let’s do a quick recap, as Stryke requires a good grasp of options theory.
Options are a type of derivative contract. This means that options derive their value from some underlying asset. In traditional finance, this underlying asset is usually a stock, while in crypto, it’s usually a cryptocurrency such as BTC or ETH.
Options give buyers the right, but not the obligation, to buy or sell an underlying asset at a predetermined price (strike price) before or at a certain date (expiration date). There are two types of options: “calls” grant the right to buy the asset at a particular price in the future, while “puts” grant the right to sell the asset at a particular price in the future.
For example, let’s say I buy a call option for ETH. This allows me to buy ETH at a certain locked-in price in the future, regardless of what the actual price of ETH is at that time.
In this example, let’s say I buy a call option to purchase ETH for $2,000 two months from now. The $2,000 is known as the “strike price,” while the exact date two months from now is known as the “expiration date” of the option. I also pay a fee, known as the “option premium,” to buy the right (but not the obligation!) to purchase ETH for $2,000 on a specific date two months from now. Puts work in reverse, allowing me to sell an asset like ETH for a fixed price at some future time, regardless of the market rate.
The option buyer pays a premium for reserving the right to purchase or sell the asset for a fixed price at some future time. This option premium, in turn, gets paid to the option seller for the service of selling or writing the option.
In essence, options are a two-sided bet, with buyers betting that the future price of the asset will compensate for the option premium they paid and sellers collecting the option premium upfront and betting that the option won’t need to be exercised.
Options expire either “in the money” or “out of the money,” determining whether the option is profitable to exercise for the buyer.
In short, buyers hope that, at expiration, options are “in the money,” and they can exercise them and either buy or sell an asset for a better price than the market rate, while sellers hope that options are “out of the money” and they get to collect the option premium from the buyer without having to lose out on the opportunity cost of the asset.
Stryke is a decentralized exchange for trading cryptocurrency options.
Decentralized crypto options work a bit differently from traditional options and even crypto options on centralized exchanges (like Binance). Traditional options use an “orderbook” trading model, where individual traders take both sides of the options bet — meaning someone buys an option with a defined party on the other side selling that option to them.
In decentralized options, on the other hand, users who want to sell options deposit assets into a pool, earning an aggregated yield from the premiums this pool collects. Option buyers, in turn, purchase options that are underwritten by the assets in this pool and pay their option premiums into the pool as a whole.
This is the model that Stryke uses. Below, we take a look at some of the flagship products and features the exchange supports. It’s also worth noting that Stryke is currently undergoing a major overhaul. After initially launching as the first decentralized options exchange on Arbitrum a few years ago, Stryke is progressively rolling out a v2 that includes features like the CLAMM and major improvements across other products.
Let’s dig in.
One of Stryke’s most unique products is the “Concentrated Liquidity Automated Market Maker” (CLAMM.) This one takes a bit of explaining, so hold on tight to your milk and cookies.
Beginning with Uniswap v3, the world of DeFi was introduced to concentrated liquidity. On decentralized exchanges like Uniswap, users can provide liquidity by depositing various crypto tokens. This allows others to trade assets using the deposited liquidity while the depositors (known as liquidity providers) earn yield on their deposited tokens.
Concentrated liquidity is an innovation that allows users to provide liquidity within a certain price range. This “concentrates” their liquidity and allows for higher yields as long as the price of the asset stays within this predefined range.
The CLAMM brings concentrated liquidity to options trading. Here’s how it works.
Buyers deposit liquidity for an asset, such as ETH, buying up “ticks” that represent slices of concentrated liquidity. In the image above, you can see that the red tick represents prices between about $1,775 and $1,780. If you deposit liquidity into this tick, you will earn yield whenever the price of ETH is within this narrow range.
Each tick has a different yield rate depending on market conditions, and you can purchase multiple ticks (adjacent or nonadjacent) to ensure that you are continuously earning yield as the market price moves up and down.
So, you’re able to deposit concentrated liquidity within a narrow price range and earn enhanced yields as long as the price of the underlying asset is within this range. Where do options come in?
It turns out that you can buy and sell these ticks, and their payoffs act just like options. As the price of an asset fluctuates, you earn more or less depending on how you set up your liquidity-providing strategy, just like how your option payout varies depending on market prices.
Stryke has recently expanded by partnering with Pancake Swap and SushiSwap to have their CLAMM options available on those platforms.
That’s as much as we’ll be able to get through here without filling up 10 whole pages with explanations, but you can learn more about how the CLAMM works through Stryke’s official CLAMM guides.
As far as supported assets go, all CLAMM markets are denominated in the stablecoin USDC and one of three crypto assets: WBTC, ETH, and ARB.
SYK is Stryke’s token. It has a max supply of 100 million, with about half of that currently circulating. Though the token contract is based on the Arbitrum One chain, SYK is planned as a cross-chain token, facilitating migrations and liquidity across various chains.
Holders can lock their SYK tokens into vested escrow contracts and receive xSYK on a 1:1 basis. To incentivize long-term investors, users will need to vest their xSYK tokens for at least seven days. But, even at that point, you will only receive 50% of your SYK tokens back if you try to convert your xSYK. To receive your full investment back, you will need to hold those xSYK tokens for at least six months.
But there are reasons to hold onto those tokens. Holding xSYK tokens allows for participation in the governance and voting of the Stryke platform. Additionally, locking up SYK generates rewards in the form of SYK and xSYK tokens. Yields come from trading fees.
As a decentralized protocol, Stryke relies on community channels like Discord, Telegram, and WhatsApp to provide assistance and answer questions.
I contacted the team by opening a ticket through Discord, and it took a while for me to receive an answer, so your best bet may be to message them across multiple channels to make sure you receive assistance.
Decentralized derivatives exchanges have gained significant traction during the bull market. Below, we take a look at several of the popular alternatives to Stryke and compare how they stack up.
dYdX is the most popular decentralized derivatives platform by trading volume. While Stryke focuses on options, dYdX’s main offering is perpetual futures — a type of derivative that does not have an expiration date and is commonly used for leveraged price speculation.
On the other hand, dYdX does not offer advanced derivatives features like concentrated liquidity options and advanced synthetic assets that can be chained together for enhanced yield the way Stryke does.
Supported Assets | Supported Chains | Standout Features | |
dYdX | WBTC WETH SOL AVAX LINK ATOM OP ADA + more | dYdX Chain | The decentralized perpetual futures exchange with the most liquidity dYdX v4 is built on a proprietary blockchain that makes trading more efficient |
Stryke | WBTC WETH stETH ARB SYK xSYK GMX CRV CVX MATIC BOOP | Arbitrum Polygon | Advanced options yield strategies through special vaults and concentrated liquidity Synthetic assets for advanced yield farming |
GMX is another popular decentralized derivatives platform. Though it mainly focuses on perpetual futures, GMX also provides a number of yield-bearing tokens, similar to Stryke , that users can leverage to earn yield.
Like Stryke , GMX is available on L2 chains like Arbitrum. Where Stryke has markets for Polygon, however, GMX has Avalanche markets.
Supported Assets | Supported Chains | Standout Features | |
GMX | WBTC WETH SOL LINK XRP UNI DOGE + more | Arbitrum Avalanche | Leverage up to 50x on base assets Rewards for holders and stakers of the GMX token that come from protocol fees |
Stryke | WBTC WETH stETH ARB SYK xSYK GMX CRV CVX MATIC BOOP | Arbitrum Polygon | Advanced options yield strategies through special vaults and concentrated liquidity Synthetic assets for advanced yield farming |
Due to the ever-changing nature of crypto, we cannot accurately say how safe and secure a product is now or will be in the future. We have examined a variety of factors to determine how safe we believe Stryke is, but please always use caution and thoroughly investigate the platform for yourself before using it.
One of the most important factors when it comes to assessing the security of a decentralized protocol is whether they have completed audits of their codebase. Stryke has received several audits that find no major issues with the protocol, so this is a good sign for the overall safety of the protocol.
The anonymity of the team behind the exchange may raise some questions, however Stryke has been live since 2017, and the team has since proven that they are invested in the long-term success of the protocol.
Stryke is built by an anonymous team that mostly communicates through their crypto-Twitter handles.
The most prominent figurehead of Stryke is known as “TzTok-Chad” on Twitter, where they tweet about all things Stryke, like the protocol developments and the product roadmap.
Yes, Stryke has undergone several audits by notable companies including Solidified and Sourcehat. Recent audits include one by yAudit for their CLAMM offering.
Stryke is an innovative options exchange that supports several flagship products and provides yield in inventive ways. For traders with a risk appetite, Stryke allows speculation across various options, products and synthetic tokens.
The anon status of founders, while common in crypto, may give some potential investors pause, and the protocol keeps a pretty tight grip on new features, with no avenue for the community to get involved in governance currently.
Still, Stryke promises enough yield-bearing debauchery for even the most seasoned degen.
Stryke is a decentralized options exchange that allows advanced traders to make bets on crypto options and synthetic assets.
Users can buy or sell call and put options and provide concentrated liquidity for options. Stryke is live on the Arbitrum and Polygon networks and supports major assets like BTC, ETH, ARB, and GMX.
Yes, you can make money trading crypto options, but keep in mind that options are considered very risky, and they require some time to fully grasp.
Crypto options allow traders to make bets on asset price movements by buying and selling calls and puts, which are the rights to buy or sell assets for a fixed price at some future date. Options are inherently speculative as they deal with future price movements, so traders should be very cautious when getting involved in these types of markets.
SYK is the primary token of the Stryke ecosystem. It’s used to incentivize liquidity providers, and it can be locked up to receive xSYK, a governance token that unlocks voting rights so holders can help decide the future of the protocol.
The Gemini Credit Card: Turn Every Purchase Into $BTC
Crypto-Back Magic Imagine effortlessly growing your Bitcoin portfolio every time you fill up at the gas station, grab a coffee, or buy groceries – without even thinking about it. Well, the Gemini Credit Card1 makes that a reality. Earn up to 4% crypto back on select purchases | Source: gemini.com/credit-card Gemini’s Credit Card turns your…
Metal X is a selection of decentralized financial, crypto-based services running on the XPR Network. Built by Metallicus, the company behind the network itself, Metal Pay, and WebAuth Wallet, Metal X integrates seamlessly with the WebAuth Wallet and offers a number of financial services. This includes token swaps, trades, crypto loans, participation in pools and farms, as well as access to a fiat on-ramp. And since Metal X runs on the XPR Network, transactions are instant and gas-free.
Metal X suffers from low liquidity on some trading pairs and has a somewhat limited selection of farms from which to choose. However, their foundations are strong, and they could potentially grow into a major financial center for the blockchain space.
Fees | Supported Cryptocurrencies | Availability | Services |
0.1% Trading and swap fees; Zero network fees | Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Stellar, Doge, Ripple, native XPR currencies | Available everywhere | Swaps Liquidity Pools Farms OTC trades Loans |
Metal X is a decentralized crypto trading hub that offers a number of financial features. These features include token swaps, trades, joining pools and farms, token staking, and loans. Running on the XPR blockchain, Metal X offers near-instantaneous transactions and no additional fees for many of their services.
Unlike some other platforms, Metal X carefully curates the tokens they list, ensuring that their users are not exposed to scam tokens and other fly-by-night projects.
Metal X offers its own stablecoin token, Metal Dollar (XMD), which is backed with a vault of other non-algorithmic tokens such as USDT and USDC. Players can swap between XMD and USDT, USDC, and PYUSD at any time.
Metal X is a feature-rich ecosystem with almost all of the financial services you will need for crypto trading. It supports a number of cryptos all in one wallet, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dogecoin, and more. Users can use any and all of these tokens on the Metal X platform.
Metal X includes an advanced trading platform supporting limit orders, stop loss settings, and more. This interface should be familiar to anyone who has participated in advanced trading on any other exchange.
Metal X also supports direct swaps between XPR, USDC, XMT, METAL, BTC, and ETH. This can be quickly and easily done with the web interface or directly in the WebAuth Wallet.
Users can add liquidity to pools for all of the supported tokens on Metal X, earning a percentage of the trading fees for that token pair. Earning percentages vary, with some pools offering better returns than others.
Metal X uses Metal Pay for their fiat on-ramp. This supports debit and credit cards and allows for instant deposits on the XPR network. Purchases through Metal Pay are executed using the Metal X order books, tying the ecosystem closely together.
Users can take out loans on the lending portion of Metal X, and they can also add funds to the lending pool, earning interest along the way. Interest is paid in LOAN tokens, which users can swap on Metal X or stake for additional earnings. The lending portion of Metal X is a separate app and will require an additional login to access.
For those who prefer trading directly with other people, Metal X also offers an OTC page, allowing two users to make a trade directly with a visual interface showing the tokens and NFTs that will be transferred by each side. This service is reserved for high-value clients on some platforms, so it’s nice to see this available for everyone on Metal X.
Another interesting feature from Metal X is the option to create streaming payments, transfers to another wallet that occur on a regular basis. This could be used for loan repayments, installment plans, paying for regular services, etc. This isn’t an option that I have seen anywhere else.
There are no network fees on the XPR network. This means you never have to worry about high gas fees during times of heavy network traffic or having a gas fee eat a significant portion of earnings from a trade.
Fees on Metal X vary based on what you’re doing. Basic trades charge 0.1% of the transaction in fees. However, those with large trading volumes or a significant amount of XPR token staked can pay even less.
Loan fees are based on the interest rate at the time. There are no fees associated with adding liquidity or making OTC trades with other users.
And, since Metal X runs on the XPR network, there are no fees charged by the network itself. Transfers, for example, are completely free of charge. And while some transactions will have their own processing fees, there will never be an additional network fee on top of that.
Metal provides a nice, centralized location for most of your crypto financial needs. It lacks a fiat off-ramp and has a relatively small selection of tokens available for trading. But, with a one-stop shop that includes swaps, advanced trading, liquidity farming, OTC trades, loans, and streaming payments, it’s hard not to be excited by the potential.
Getting my wallet set up and authorized on both my phone and through the browser seemed to involve quite a few steps. It wasn’t complicated, but I felt like I was clicking through a lot of screens to get it done. And since the Metal X ecosystem consists of a number of interconnected but separate apps, I sometimes found myself having to log in multiple times when switching between the different features.
But otherwise, the interface is easy to understand, with explanatory text pop-ups for many items. Everything ran smoothly on both desktop and mobile, with no noticeable lag.
Trading on the Metal X platform requires using XMD or Metal Dollars. This is the stable token for Metal X, backed by a collection of non-algorithmic stablecoins, including USDC, USDT, PAX, and others. Luckily, users can easily swap from any crypto on the platform for Metal Dollars.
Low liquidity is, unfortunately, a concern for Metal X, with some trading pairs holding less than $100 worth of value. But for someone willing to take the risk and provide that liquidity through farms, pools, and loans, there are opportunities to earn passive income while also contributing to the Metal X ecosystem.
Being a decentralized service, Metal X won’t have a full suite of customer service options. They do offer email support, with a quick turnaround, in my experience. In addition, they have an extensive selection of FAQs and docs to help users with questions and understanding the Metal X ecosystem. They also host a Discord server where you can look for help and answers to your questions.
Metal X is not the only financial app in the blockchain world. But they do offer a number of features all in one convenient location. Let’s match them up against a couple of the more popular crypto financial services and see how they compare.
Uniswap is one of the oldest, and perhaps the best-known, decentralized exchanges in the crypto space. And while Uniswap and Metal X share many similarities, there are a couple of major differences.
Supported tokens | KYC? | Centralized? | Fees | Services | |
Metal X | Bitcoin Ethereum Litecoin Stellar | Yes | No | 0.1% trading and swap fees; Zero network fees | Swaps Liquidity Pools Farms OTC trades Loans |
Uniswap | Any tokens on supported networks – Ethereum, Polygon, Optimism, Base, Avalanche, BNB, Celo | No | No | 0.01% to 1%, with most swaps at 0.3% + network fees | Swaps Liquidity Pools |
The main difference between these two options is how you interact with the blockchain. For Metal X, you have to first bridge your tokens onto the XPR network. And while this is a little annoying, it also makes it easy to trade across multiple currencies in one location for no extra fees or hassle. With Uniswap, if you wanted to make a trade for Ethereum and then trade for BNB tokens, you would have to switch networks and pay network fees for every trade as well.
On the other hand, Uniswap doesn’t require any identity verification – yet there are rumors that Uniswap may require a KYC process in the near future as well.
In their favor, Uniswap does allow for the trading of any tokens on their supported chains, making it much more versatile for those who trade in a large variety of tokens.
While Metal X is decentralized, and Nexo is a centralized, custodial-based company, these two crypto-based apps are similar in that they let you keep tokens from multiple blockchains all in one place, allowing for quick and easy swaps, sells, trades, and loans on the platform.
Supported tokens | KYC | Availability | Fees | Services | |
Metal X | Bitcoin Ethereum Litecoin Stellar Ripple Dogecoin | Yes | Available everywhere | 0.1% trading and swap fees; Zero network fees | Swaps Liquidity Pools Farms OTC trades Loans |
Nexo | Bitcoin Ethereum BNB 500+ tokens | Yes | limited in United States | 0.2% trading fees; no fees for crypto deposits or fiat purchases; network fees for withdrawals, though users can get free withdrawals by holding NEXO tokens | Buy and sell crypto Fiat on and off-ramps Loans Staking |
Nexo is a centralized exchange that supports a similar selection of tokens and services as Metal X. You will need KYC for either. Nexo has a bit of an advantage in that it offers a fiat off-ramp and also supports a much wider range of tokens. However, not all of their services are available in the United States. Also, Nexo is a custodial service, meaning that they hold your tokens for you. Metal X is decentralized, so your tokens always remain in your personal wallet until you’re ready to use them.
Metal X uses secondary authorization for most transactions. This can be your mobile WebAuth Wallet, MetaMask, or a device verification system such as Windows Hello.
Metal X is a decentralized service, so aside from making your crypto available for liquidity pools or loans, your tokens will always stay in your wallet and can be bridged out or transferred at any point. You can also withdraw from liquidity pools and loans with a quick transaction.
Metal X, the WebAuth Wallet, Metal Pay, and even the XPR chain are all built by the same company, Metallicus. So there is definitely a requirement to trust that they aren’t being evil. But with a fully revealed C-team, and an advisory board consisting of a former reserve bank leader, a former deputy comptroller, and a former chief compliance officer, it seems clear that Metallicus is serious about making themselves a trusted center for crypto-related financial services.
Metal X is built by Metallicus, the team behind the WebAuth Wallet and the XPR network itself. The founders of Metallicus are Marshall Hayner and Glenn Mariën.
Marshall Hayner is known for his involvement in several crypto-related projects, including Stellar and the creation of the first Facebook Bitcoin wallet. He is also a board member of the Dogecoin Foundation.
Glenn Mariën is a full-stack developer who created Dogechain.info, the first online wallet for Dogecoin.
Originally built as a centralized exchange, Metal X shut down in May of 2021 and was retooled as a decentralized exchange and selection of financial services in 2022.
Metallicus, creator of Metal X, was founded in 2016 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California, United States.
Since Metal X is a decentralized platform, all of the tokens locked into it are held by smart contracts. Every token is accounted for programmatically and managed by the smart contract until withdrawn to a personal wallet. So, there are no ‘reserves’ on Metal X because none are needed.
Though I was a bit put off at first about having to bridge my tokens before I could use Metal X or the WebAuth wallet, I was impressed by the availability of several financial services all in one location and the ease of use of the site. The fact that there are no network fees gave me a chance to experiment with the different services without having to pay gas fees for each transaction.
Liquidity on Metal X is a little low at the moment, leading to interesting opportunities such as being able to earn interest by taking out a loan in Bitcoin! If they aren’t able to bring in enough funds to solve this liquidity issue, they may have trouble attracting additional users.
But, as a new platform, they have already hit the ground running with a slew of features, a professional yet easy-to-use interface and a potential trader’s haven with various earning opportunities and no gas fees.
No, Metal X is a selection of decentralized financial services for crypto users. It supports cryptos from a number of different blockchains in one central location, but the service itself is decentralized.
Metal X is on the XPR network (formerly known as Proton). XPR is built specifically to facilitate financial services, offering gas-free transfers and speedy transaction times.
No. Metal X is built and maintained by Metallicus, the company behind the creation of the XPR network. Metallicus is a private company, though they are fully transparent about their team and advisory board.
XPR Network is a layer one blockchain that was formerly known as Proton Chain. After rebranding in 2020, XPR Network has built itself as a blockchain geared for heavy financial use, supporting zero-fee transfers and up to 4000 transactions per second. They have also worked on making themselves ISO2022 compliant, a requirement for any serious financial business.
The Gemini Credit Card: Turn Every Purchase Into $BTC
Crypto-Back Magic Imagine effortlessly growing your Bitcoin portfolio every time you fill up at the gas station, grab a coffee, or buy groceries – without even thinking about it. Well, the Gemini Credit Card1 makes that a reality. Earn up to 4% crypto back on select purchases | Source: gemini.com/credit-card Gemini’s Credit Card turns your…