Optionality without Oracles: Breaking DeFi’s Status Quo

Optionality trading is one of the most lucrative segments in all of DeFi, and for good reason. Through hedging their portfolios through instruments like derivatives, users are able to hedge price risks and gain exposure to assets without necessarily owning them outright. But in DeFi, optionality protocols have traditionally relied on oracles (among other flagrant trust assumptions) to communicate information between the blockchain and the real world: leaving users vulnerable to hacker attacks.

Oracles: The Scourge of DeFi

Blockchain data platform Chainanalysis has estimated that in 2022, DeFi protocols lost $403.2 million in oracle manipulation attacks. Yet, the cycle continues.

Here are just a few of the protocols that have been affected by oracle manipulation attacks this year alone:

• June 2023: Sturdy Finance endures an $800,000 loss due to a faulty price oracle
• April 2023: OVIX protocol loses $2 million in an oracle exploit
• March 2023: Tender.fi exploited for $1.59 million through a price oracle glitch
• February 2023: BonqDao suffers $120 million loss after an oracle hack

Dan Elitzer, co-founder of venture firm Nascent, has pointed out that oracles represent a centralized point of failure that must be minimized or removed in order to ensure a more secure DeFi ecosystem for all users. More often than not, oracles are being incorporated into the design of protocols despite the vulnerability risk they pose. This is particularly true in DeFi, where most teams are heavy in developers and light in finance professionals with the experience to provide secure, on-chain alternatives to reliance on oracles.

With this vision of maximum security in mind, DeOrderBook has stepped into the ring to unveil its oracle-free, truly trustless platform that aims to offer users peace of mind, real yield and maximum capital flexibility in one complete package.

Optionality without Oracles: Now Reality

DeOrderBook provides a seamless and secure trading environment, where users can trade options and benefit from the yields generated. This is all done without oracles, avoiding the plethora of security and vulnerability risks they embody.

Breaking new ground, DeOrderBook revolutionizes the options market with an innovative approach that moves beyond the traditional Black-Scholes model of theoretical pricing. Instead, DeOrderBook is built on the same foundational mechanics as traditional options, but with a twist. The protocol leverages game theory to create a robust mechanism that requires no external inputs, like oracles, or settlement agents. By eliminating counterparty and credit risks and adhering to a fully non-custodial policy, DeOrderBook not only enhances security exponentially, but also embodies the 'code is law' ethos of DeFi, all while accurately emulating the dynamics of traditional options markets.

Users start on DeOrderBook by using their assets such as $WBTC or $USDC to mint HODL tokens, which can then be used to place a limit order, or DeOrder.Users choose from preselected expiry dates and strike prices to place a DeOrder, which then earns users yield in the form of the platform’s native governance utility token$DOB as the order matures.

Real Yield: No Ponzinomics

In DeFi, real yield is an important metric that assesses the sustainability of yield earned by users when locking up their assets in yield-bearing pools. Ponzi-style DeFi farms advertising wildly unsustainable yield mechanisms are now widely shunned by the DeFi community in favour of protocols that empower users to earn through a virtuous cycle of attracting outside liquidity.

On DeOrderBook, real yield is generated directly from the activity of trading and market performance: free from artificial inflation and dependence on a constant influx of new users. Users can even generate greater yields by locking the $DOB earned from placing orders back onto the platform, enabling them to profit from a fee-sharing scheme that’s designed to reward users for their loyalty to the protocol.

Maximum Capital Flexibility: Never Miss a Good Trade

Even recently low volatility in the crypto markets sets seasoned DeFi users on high alert: there’s always another surprise just around the corner. Users need to be able to move their assets quickly and easily in order to protect their portfolios while growing them consistently.

With the principle of ensuring maximum capital flexibility for users in mind, DeOrderBook allows users to unwind their limit orders early at any time before expiry: as long as they have the requisite collateral and the matching required tokens.

Silver Gerege NFT Program: Get In Early!

In a move to reward users who share DeOrderBook’s core beliefs in decentralization and oracle-free trading, DeOrderBook has launched aSilver Gerege NFT program to provide power users with greater levels of rewards upon the protocol’s mainnet launch.

This NFT program was inspired by the ancient Mongolian Empire, where traders favored by the Khan were issued a Gerege: tablets that granted them free passage around the Empire and the right to trade freely.

Borrowing from this rich history, DeOrderBook has just launched an NFT minting applet allowing users to mint 10,000 unique degen warriors styled with unique generative art. For now only whitelisted users are allowed to mint based on their level of involvement in the previous phases of the protocol’s Soft Launch, but users new to DeOrderBook are encouraged to learn more about how to join the current phase in the next section. The team will be whitelisting further users as well as providing additional layers of rewards for early adopters!

The Silver Gerege NFTs involve unique pricing mechanics with a 25% price increase every 500 mints, subject to change by the community. In addition, to celebrate the launch the team is offering a 1 year guaranteed buyback (100% of minting price for the first 30 days and 90% afterwards) for the first 500 NFTs minted, granting users a risk-free trial of the benefits of holding the NFT. Each Silver Gerege NFT contains unique on-chain properties like ‘Level’, which will be used by the upcoming core app to maximize fee-sharing rewards i.e. from 50% to 50.3% + 0.3% per additional Level all the way up to 80% fee-sharing for the most involved users.

New users can join the beta in this phase of DeOrderBook’s soft launch plan to get acquainted with the protocol. Should users wish to receive the maximal level of rewards available upon the protocol’s mainnet launch, they will have to qualify as a member of the Order of Testers by carrying out the following steps.

Verifying a qualifying wallet on the DeOrderBook Discord, containing at least 0.005 $WBTC will assign the user a special Discord role designating them as “Order of Testers: Initiate”.

To obtain “Order of Testers: Officer” level to obtain NFT whitelist access and launch rewards, users must:

• Get a place on the Leaderboard, through actively trading on DeOrderBook on the Goerli testnet
• Participating in one of the team’s invite-only user interviews
• Boosting the DeOrderBook Discord server
• Share an invite link to the DeOrderBook server (50 invitees at a minimum!)
• Contributing to the community through discussions, outreach and entertaining content (who doesn’t love a good meme!)

Get in Touch with DeOrderBook

Follow DeOrderBook on Twitter and join the Discord to get the latest updates from the team, who look forward to unveiling what is sure to be DeFi’s most needed and most unique innovation.