The Big Leap Forward of Level Finance

Introducing : Foundation

March 18, 2024

Level's Journey - from Genesis to Expansion

It’s been a long ride since the inception of our protocols, and we are extremely thankful to everyone who’s been with us since the beginning.

Level was deployed at the end of 2022, amidst the challenges of a bear market, out of the vision that decentralized exchanges (DEXes) would eventually surpass centralized exchanges (CEXs) in market dominance.

To reflect this within our architecture, we decided to adopt an oracle-based perpetual DEX model with additional unique risk management features.

Defying all odds, Level quickly rose to prominence as a top contender among perpetual DEXes, with over $24 billion in cumulative trading volume and $33 million in fees generated for our liquidity providers and community.

Building throughout a bear market was no easy feat, and our product was baptized with fire. While growing our product, we overcame all sorts of obstacles, such as oracle latency, multichain expansion, restricted asset trading capabilities, and challenges in price discovery.

Motivated by these experiences, we embarked on an ambitious mission to transform Level into something bigger than a standalone cryptocurrency exchange.

For this reason, we are thrilled to unveil Foundation, an innovative platform for trading cryptocurrency assets, engineered to compete with the efficiency of CEXs, yet to uphold the foundational tenets of decentralization.

Introducing "Foundation" - A New Trading Paradigm

Foundation is designed to be a sustainable solution for trading at scale, allowing liquidity providers to manage risks and accurately reflect market demand and supply precisely.

For this reason, we have adopted an order book model to create a lightning-fast trading engine on par with the best CEXes. This engine can handle thousands of trades per second and effortlessly manage billions in daily trading volume.

While setting our performance bar at par with industry leaders, we are unwavering in our commitment to the ethos of a permissionless platform, prioritizing transparency.

Key features of "Foundation" include:

  • Unified Liquidity Marketplace: A high-powered order book trading engine enabling seamless trading of assets across various blockchains, guaranteeing deep liquidity and minimal slippage.

  • Maximum Transparency: Our Exchange Explorer allows anyone to monitor all trades, matching orders, trading accounts, and reserves in real-time.

  • Permissionless Nature: Empowering projects to use Foundation for their tokens without constraints, nurturing a truly open and dynamic market environment.

  • Composability: Through robust APIs, developers can create unique protocols for market-making and complex trading strategies in a trustless environment, enriching our trading ecosystem.

  • Multiple Asset Classes: We offer a wide array of trading markets, from cryptocurrencies to commodities and forex, using our perpetual synthetic trading engine.

These features combine seamlessly with our trading engine, offering a CEX-like trading experience with all the benefits of operating in a permissionless fashion.

Furthermore, the open and composable nature of "Foundation" makes it future-proof regarding future developments and updates.

Road to “Foundation”

Our roadmap for "Foundation" is spread across four phases:

  1. “Ignition” - Q4 2023 (Accomplished): We developed our prototype in September 2023 and went through several cycles to refine the product. Our alpha testnet version, launched in December 2023, was introduced to the community for a month-long trial.

  2. “Orbit Preparation”- Q1 2024 (Now): Coinciding with the publication of this article, we are excited to announce the release of our beta testnet version, which is accessible at testnet.foundation.network.

This phase emphasizes the integration of key functionalities such as:

  • Perpetual trading

  • Spot trading

  • Exchange Explorer

Simultaneously, we are rigorously testing our infrastructure and performance capabilities. Alongside these developments, we're introducing an Engagement Points System within our staking program, designed to incentivize participation from Validators, Insurance Fund Contributors, and Clearing Members.

  1. “Liftoff” - Q2 2024: During this phase, we'll roll out our mainnet, introducing our full trading functionalities for a superior trading experience. This phase also marks a leap towards openness, with permissionless token listings and open API access for developers. Coupled with a specific incentive campaign, this phase will be instrumental in attracting a diverse community of traders and builders, amplifying our ecosystem's growth and innovation

  2. “Deep Space Journey” - 2025: During our 'Deep Space Journey' our focus will be on evolving our protocol into an independent and sovereign blockchain. This crucial development will mark our commitment to trustlessness and decentralization, ensuring the longevity and independence of our platform longevity and independence beyond its team and founders.

This phase will be a significant step towards a future where "Foundation" stands as a self-sustaining and fully decentralized entity.

The Future of Level

Foundation has been developed entirely by the Level team and was initially conceived as Level V2.

In the short term, our main goal will be to facilitate a seamless shift from Level to Foundation. Level exchange will be integrated into Foundation.

Throughout this process, we recognize the efforts and unwavering support of our Level community.

In recognition of this, we are committed to ensuring that our long-standing community members will be at the forefront of experiencing and benefiting from the new opportunities that Foundation will offer them.

In pursuit of this goal, we have prepared a detailed DAO proposal outlining our integration plan here. This proposal is now open for community voting.

We look forward to continuing this journey together as we move towards the launch of Foundation, making a testament to the power of community-driven development in DeFi.