Vega Protocol unveils decentralized perpetuals on Layer 1 blockchain

Trading-focused blockchain Vega Protocol today rolled out perpetual futures markets, a type of futures product with no expiration dates, on the network.

These perpetuals on Vega come in addition existing offerings provided since Vega’s mainnet release in March 2023, including cash-settled futures markets. 

They will be permissionless, meaning community members will propose and vote to decide specific assets for which perpetual futures will be created. With this development, Vega is wading into a crowded field that includes dYdX, GMX, Gains, Synthetix, Perpetual Protocol and several others.

Vega wants to differentiate its perpetual offering by granting the community the power to leverage on-chain governance for the introduction of permissionless markets.

Furthermore, the project's community-led governance will have the option to approve any ERC-20 token for settlements via its governance mechanism, diverging from the norm of limiting settlements to USDC or equivalent stablecoins.

“This release is a huge step forward for Vega and next generation DeFi. It brings perpetual futures, the most popular crypto-settled derivatives product — and one of the community’s most requested features — to Vega’s open and permissionless network," said Barney Mannerings, co-founder of Vega Protocol VEGA -3.55% .

The Vega blockchain

Since its alpha mainnet launch in March, Vega has seen over $850 million in trading volume from its futures markets alone, according to data provided by the team.

The project released its whitepaper in 2018, detailing a performance-optimized blockchain with a Tendermint proof-of-stake consensus mechanism. Vega was designed to meet the intense requirements of crypto derivatives trading, offering low latency and high scalability, and features a decentralized limit order book (dCLOB) on its blockchain infrastructure.

In 2019, Vega secured a $5 million seed funding round led by Pantera Capital and raised an additional $43 million through a community token sale on CoinList in 2021.

Vega Protocol is secured by validators who participate by staking the Vega token. This token currently trades at a price of $1.2 with a market capitalization of $70 million, according to The Block's price data.