Equilibrium Closed Beta: A Detailed Analysis
With 10,000+ applications, 23 teams, and an excellent campaign, the Equilibrium Closed Beta was a success! Congratulations to all the teams and individuals who won in their categories. We’re pleased with the phenomenal reception our Closed Beta received. The teams competed to grab the 1,300,000 $EQ prize + 100,000–200,000 $EQ of guaranteed rewards for the top 10 active team members!
From the onset, reception and participation in Closed Beta were superb. Let’s go over some of the key highlights:
User Activity
User activity highlights the average time spent on the Equilibrium app and the quality of time (i.e., active participation). Closed Beta participants would spend an average of ~41 minutes trading or carrying out other activities on the Equilibrium app. We recorded an increase in app usage as the Closed Beta campaign grew into participants, with a peak average user time of 61 minutes. Participants were spending, on select days, over an hour exploring Equilibrium services!
Judging by user feedback, the biggest hurdle they had was understanding how to navigate the wallet and Equilibrium account structure where we have a wallet and then trading (borrowing) and insurance (bailsman) sub-accounts. We’ll be leveraging this feedback to simplify our UI and UX further.
User Activity Frequency
Let’s now look at the relative breakdown of what users did in the Equilibrium app:
DEX and borrowing dominated since it was the easiest way to actually maximize your portfolio. EQD stablecoin issuing activity on the chart above does not include leveraged trades which are counted in borrowing, but it’s good to see that this activity was also present in the system, which indicates that users were exploring the EQD stablecoin and its generation mechanics.
Daily Active Users
As expected, the Daily Active User (DAU) trend peaked on Day 1 at approximately 1000 active users before declining steadily, reaching an average of ~300 DAU.
EQD and trading stats:
The remarkable performance was a cumulative effort of all Closed Beta participants. Healthy competition amongst participating teams also contributed to the impressive Closed Beta performance. Trading volumes of top users in select groups were above $1,000,000, with many users recording trading volumes in the 5-figure range.
Here’s the distribution of EQD mints and burns by day number of beta. We’ve seen a lot of activity and are happy with the volumes. Most of the volume was generated during trading on the DEX. Mints correspond to leverage long, while burns correspond to wind-downs of leveraged positions.
Cumulative EQD mint numbers:
EQD is the main quote currency on Equilibrium DEX, so it’s interesting to compare these figures to the trading activity.
Most Active Trading Assets
The most active pairs in terms of trading were BTC, ETH, DOT, and GLMR assets; more than 56% of all DEX trading volume (>50M out of 85M overall) was made using these assets. Here’s the chart of cumulative volume: BTC dominated, partially thanks to the most liquid orderbook we kept there, while GLMR and ETH did similarly well, DOT followed closely.
Cumulative Trading Volume Daily Breakdown
Overall the cumulative trading volume by day be summarized:
There was some activity growth in the middle of beta, some users were testing some bots, others were heavily trading, Our Market Makers (MMs) were busy providing liquidity.
Limit/Market Orders Daily Breakdown
Let’s also look at the breakdown of the limit/market order usage on the DEX by day: Green is market orders, while blue is limit orders. We observed a steady decline in market order usage. Preference for limit orders suggests trends we’ll likely record in the refined Equilibrium app when we go live. Most participants are concerned about their asset price and want more control over the buying and selling price; thus, liquidity levels within Equilibrium will be crucial to satisfy user demand.
Apart from the above, there were some interesting accounts and inquisitive minds who tried to reverse engineer our dummy liquidity market maker bot and even made some squeezes on some of the trading pairs as can be seen by huge candlestick whips on corresponding charts. We’ll be analyzing such an amusing yet interesting use case in greater detail in our upcoming materials, stay tuned!
Now let’s explore the staking and pool stats:
Pool stats
Here’s the breakdown of user activity in various Equilibrium pools available during beta:
Even though Lending and Insurance pools showed moderate APR, users were actively engaging with them compared to collateral pools, collateral pool dominates as the most active part of the platform was indeed the DEX and margin (borrow) accounts.
Overall System Asset Usage
Let’s look at the overall asset usage across the system (we show only the top 10 here on the chart not to make it too crowded). Even though users received only DOT, ETH, USDT and USDC tokens, they were actively engaged in BTC, BNB, and GLMR markets. The spike in USDC on October 4 is actually us playing with lending and borrowing to see the money market’s response in interest rates (more on that in later articles). Spikes in INTR and ASTR activities are most likely due to some squeezes from our teams engaged with the DEX.
What’s next after the Equilibrium Beta?
Participation during Closed Beta began with a high and gradually continued as users became familiar with the platform and used our application comfortably. We recorded peak performance as participants grew into the campaign. The last day of Closed Beta had the lowest statistics, as most participants were winding down their operation after a successful campaign.
Closed Beta participation gave us crucial insights into the overall Equilibrium app status. User activity showed that users appreciated the UI/UX and were receptive toward Closed Beta services.
Equilibrium will consider feedback from Closed Beta participants and the community on ways to improve our application in readiness for the launch.
About Equilibrium
Equilibrium is a one-stop DeFi platform on Polkadot that allows for high leverage in trading and borrowing digital assets. It combines a full-fledged money market with an orderbook-based DEX. EQ is the native utility token that is used for communal governance of Equilibrium. xDOT is a liquid and tradeable wrapped DOT that unlocks liquidity of DOT locked in parachain auctions and delivers multiple crowdloan bonuses on Polkadot.
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