Ballast is an initiative that provides DeFi infrastructure on Sui, a highly scalable L1 solution that is yet to be launched. Its on-chain DeFi suite offers users an experience that is competitive with centralized exchanges. Established in November 2022, Ballast is one of the first products that provides a complete trading suite solution on Sui.
The suite model provides several advantages over a simple automated market maker (AMM), including a better user experience, flexible liquidity, easy access for institutional traders, secure and transparent on-chain verification, the ability to price different types of instruments, and interoperability with trading robots.
By using Ballast’s infrastructure, users can trade a wide range of assets with varying degrees of complexity in the DeFi space. These assets include perpetual and quarterly futures, power perpetuals, floor perpetuals, options, exotic options, everlasting options, options vaults, basis trading, fixed yield, structured products, and RFQ.
KEY FEATURES
AMM & Swap Interface (v1)
AMM is composed of a suite of persistent, non-upgradable smart contracts that together create an automated market maker, a protocol that facilitates peer-to-peer market making and swapping of tokens on the Sui blockchain.
Central Limit Order Book model (v2)
Ballast uses a single asset pool, the liquidity of which is sent for market making to the order book . Thus, traders will always have enough liquidity for comfortable trading, and investors can profit from the sophisticated market-making mechanism developed by the Ballast team.
Spot trading (v2)
The secondversion of the Ballast spot DEX on Sui is the first order book implementation that supports on-chain order matching and Sui wallet connection. Ballast also provides users with an opportunity to make instant token swaps at the market price in a single click. Ballast boasts lower fees compared to AMMs. On Ballast, for example, on the SUI/USDC market takers pay 0.1% where 0.05% goes to makers and another 0.05% – to the treasury fund. As for USDT/USDC, the taker fee is 0.04% and the maker’s rebate is -0.02%.
Perpetuals (v3)
Ballast offers a decentralized way to trade perpetual futures contracts meaning that traders have no need to rely on centralized exchanges and trust their funds to a single entity. Instead, funds are stored on users’ wallets e.g. Suiwallet. Ballast’s perpetuals will support leveraged trading, cash settlements, and multi-collateral features.
Options (v4)
The goal of Ballast in terms of options trading is to provide a decentralized platform for their operation and to ensure a convenient and easy-to-use foundational block for well-versed, expert traders and as well as novel traders. Ballast will support partial collaterization for options.
