About win-trader
What win-trader is, what it is built on, what stage it is at, and what it deliberately cannot do.
win-trader is a perpetual futures exchange built on Stellar, using Soroban smart contracts. It lists three markets, prices every position from a published oracle round, holds each one against a single liquidity pool rather than against another trader, and settles all of it on chain. It runs on Stellar testnet.
What a perpetual futures exchange is
A perpetual future is a derivative contract that tracks the price of an asset and never expires. A trader posts collateral, takes a side, chooses a multiple of that collateral to be exposed at, and holds the contract until it is closed or closed for them. Funding, a continuous payment from the crowded side of a market to the thinner one, is what pulls the two sides back towards balance.
What this one is built on
win-trader is a set of Soroban contracts on Stellar. The contracts hold the collateral, own the positions and enforce the rules. Around them stand oracle publishers, on their own deployment, that publish the prices the contracts settle against; a keeper that liquidates positions, fires triggers and settles queued vault requests; an indexer that reads the chain into a database; and this web application. See How settlement works.
The pool is the counterparty
There is no order book on this exchange. One liquidity pool, the Vault, takes the other side of every position. It collects trader losses, borrow fees and part of the funding, and it pays out when traders win. That is why a position of any size opens instantly at the oracle price, and it is also why size is capped: the pool takes on only as much risk as it can back.
What it charges
Nothing to open a position. A closing fee, taken only out of profit, so a losing trade pays none. Borrow, on the pool capital a position ties up. Funding, between the two sides of a market. Those four rows are the whole fee schedule; see Profit, loss and fees.
What it deliberately cannot do
- Hold a key. Every open, close, deposit and withdrawal is a Stellar transaction signed in the trader's own wallet, including the ones Copy Trading prepares. An account created from an email or a Google login is a Stellar account whose key still belongs to the person who logged on.
- Set a price. Marks come from oracle publishers, and the exchange is exactly as honest as its feed. See Oracle prices.
- Move money. No route on this host can open a position, close one, or transfer funds. See Authentication.
- Give advice. Nothing here is a recommendation to trade. See the risk disclosure.
- Be the record. The contracts are. This app draws a picture of what they hold, taken a moment ago.
Where it is today
This deployment runs on Stellar testnet. The USDC on it is test money handed out by the Faucet, and the competition prizes are real. Mainnet, with real USDC and the same three fees, is what comes next.
Why it looks like this
The application is drawn as a desktop of the late nineties: programs with icons, windows that overlap, a taskbar along the foot. That is a deliberate choice rather than a skin over something else. A trading terminal is a set of tools that have to be open at once and rearranged constantly, and the desktop is the interface that idea was invented for.
Where to find it
win-trader is on Discord, X and Telegram, and the links are on Where to find us. Release notes and round results are posted there rather than here.