Drift Protocol — Alpha Mainnet Trading Stats & Open Launch
Drift launched its NFT-gated alpha mainnet a month ago, where Drift Alpha Tickets were airdropped to roughly 2,200 community members and devnet power users.
In the month since alpha launch, Drift has:
- open-sourced its codebase and SDK;
- launched a bug and liquidator bounty;
- launched multiple new markets (BTC and ETH); and
- gradually raised alpha deposit caps from $1k per wallet to $100k per wallet.
To date, Drift’s alpha has generated $100M+ in trading volume, despite deposit limits and a capped user base.
The team has also been relentlessly shipping updates based on immediate user feedback (and ~1,000 Canny feedback posts). We’ve improved the deposit USDC flow, made funding rate payments more intuitive and optimised TradingView chart on the platform.
NFT-Gated Alpha Launch Overview
The reason that Drift did an NFT-gated launch was so that we could tranche the initial protocol growth over time, while keeping the system in a closed, controlled arena to ensure security of funds.
Our first alpha launch was with a $1k deposit limit. At 2 weeks after launch, we increased the deposit limit to $10k. At 3 weeks after launch, after seeing strong performance and stability across the platform, we increased the deposit limit to $100k.
In alpha mode, we’ve tested out our liquidation performance and dynamic vAMM capacities. We’ve also grown and are satisfied, with confidence, that our platform will be able to manage volatile market conditions and keep market slippage low based on the demand for trading and open interest growth over time.
Alpha Key Statistics
Here are some statistics around the first month of live trading!
- Cumulative volume traded: ~$100M in volume
- Average daily volume: $3.33M
- Total liquidations: 230 partial liquidations and 2 full liquidations
- Number of tickets sent out: 2,200
- Total traders who connected, deposited and made a trade: 1,000 (~45% of tickets sent)
Alpha Platform Growth
Throughout the month, the number of active traders has steadily grown.
Daily trade count also reached an ATH of ~12,000 on the last day of November.
SOL volume also remained steady, averaging ~$3M a day.
Wen Open Mainnet?
We’ve seen unprecedented demand to trade on our platform, and we are keen to finally let users trade without needing to hold the Drift Alpha Ticket. If you’re a Drift Alpha Ticket holder — fear not, the utility of the tickets won’t just expire here.
What we are extremely excited to announce though is —
Drift will be launching its Open Mainnet in 24 hours — on the 2nd of December, 3PM UTC!
On 2nd of December, the NFT requirement will be removed and anybody can connect a wallet to Drift and start trading.
Mark your calendars!
