Goal: $DPI is listed on all major exchanges by June 2021.
This post will outline the current exchange listing strategy and provide community members with insights into the current status of $DPI exchange listing. This is exciting new ground for all of us, so please share feedback and ideas on how to make this better!
Overview: More than 75% of $DPI holders hold less than 10 $DPI. These investors gain tremendous benefits from $DPI. For wallets of this size, gas costs quickly become an insurmountable obstacle. At this point in time small investors simply cannot use L1 infrastructure to efficiently gain exposure to the broader DeFi marketplace across multiple protocols. This dynamic drives much of $DPI’s massive demand.
Currently $DPI is primarily listed on Decentralized Exchanges, this inherently limits the investor pool and prevents many investors without Web 3.0 access from investing. By expanding to centralized exchanges $DPI will be able to radically increase the number of investors, especially across our core demographic of small wallets. This effort is aligned with our long-term strategic vision of becoming a platform that enables non-technical investors to access the same returns as highly technical crypto insiders.
Status: $DPI is listed across multiple decentralized exchanges and smaller fiat on-ramps such as Matcha, Hotbit, Gate, Bilaxy. The next stage of our strategy is the expansion to non-US based fiat on-ramp exchanges such as Bitstamp and Bitmart. Once we are listed on non-US based exchanges, the next step will be to achieve listing on the major US-based exchanges.
As Index Coop moves into the next stage of our growth, it will be useful to lay out a community led plan for achieving 100% exchange listing by Q2 2021. While this is an ambitious goal, Index is also one of the most capable projects currently operating on Ethereum, this is well within our capability. In order to make this happen we need to establish a funding base that will enable Index to cover the many costs associated with exchange listing such as lawyer fees and market making.
We are currently researching and building relationships across exchanges and working through the listing process at each exchange. At a tactical level this process can be broken down into three unique steps.
Initial contact and relationship building
The primary obstacle here is simply figuring out who to talk to at each exchange and getting the necessary introductions
Formal listing application
The primary obstacle here is ensuring that we meet the regulatory requirements at each exchange
Providing seed listing liquidity
While not all exchanges require us to provide seed liquidity this may be a source of friction further down the road
Roadmap:
February 15, 2021
$DPI listed on Bitstamp and Bitmart
April 15, 2021
$DPI is listed on all major non-US based fiat on-ramp exchanges
June, 2021
$DPI is listed globally on all fiat on-ramp exchanges including Coinbase, Kraken, and Binance
I think both your analytics, and my crude attempt to look at the actual trades show that there are lots of small users who are using / holding DPI. So getting away from as costs can only help drive AUV.
Looping is cheep, but needs a cheep fiat on ramp.
Getting a CEX onboard is essential to long term growth (and produces a relationship we can use for future products).
I think your target is ambitious, but who knows what is possible.
I might of missed the discussion about DPI on central exchanges, but I’m pretty bearish. I can’t imagine legal teams will be cool with a token that has underlining components that could change. What’s stopping us from slipping in a wrapped XRP token in there? (not saying we would, but it COULD happen)
quite ambitious indeed. nothing wrong with that, but it might cost us way over $1mil in fees to achieve those goals. it would make sense to approach this the other way around - set a community-led budget for exchange listings and work our way from that.
one idea is to see if exchanges will take fees in $INDEX + $INDEX listing. the rationale is simple - listing DPI should drive meaningful volume (depending on the exchange) and therefore higher fees for the Coop. Paying fees in $INDEX will align incentives and might incentivise the exchange to push DPI.
another idea is to consider this issue in the contest of the CoinShares launch - ETH/BTC/gold might be easier to list on CEXs. should we focus funds on that? or will CoinShares be driving CGCI-LV listings? something to ponder.
I’m totally onboard with paying fees in $INDEX if exchanges are cool with it
@BigSky7 I think US exchanges will be a slog but let’s fucking get at it - the more non-US listings we get, the easier it will be when we set our ideas on the US
Start building relationships with as many as we can, but concentrate money on the low hanging fruit. The more risk adverse exchanges will take longer - or migrate into Fiat on ramps for ETH and stablecoins to L2.
I hope that coinshares have plans for CGCI on CEX. So once that has launched and has some track history they may be more willing to consider $DPI.
@verto0912 brings up a great point regarding the cost of listing and ways that we might work around it. Incentivizing with $Index makes a ton of sense in this context.
@overanalyser agreed that the relationship building is the most important part of the process right now. The low hanging fruit will help us build AUM which is the main goal anyways.
Every step listed in @reganbozman’s proposal will meaningfully move us ahead of other index platforms. As we move closer and closer to $1 Billion AUM over the next year, it will become progressively easier to be listed on the larger exchanges. Which is why the strategy of targeting non-US fiat on-ramp exchanges makes so much sense. Each new exchange listing will be accretive and make the next one easeir.
I would suggest targeting FTX first, they would be the most willing to jump on a product like this. But again, every exchange is going to ask for a legal opinions about the token (we’re talking >$10k a pop / jurisdiction).
Note, exchanges move very slow and have an extreme due diligence process. DGLD was supposed to be added Q4/20 / Q1/21 to Bitstamp (see here) after months of DD review and is still not live yet. Personally, I don’t see any US exchanges listing $DPI. The risk around the product being classified as a security is just too high for them.
The best approach might be to get Alameda Research on board as a market maker, considering they are the top MM’s on most exchanges this would considerably help push non-US listings, but it will still be tough. Alameda will need some sort of kicker besides MM fees (e.g. equity, tokens, etc.).