Avantis Testnet V1 — Trader Guide
Explore 100x leverage across crypto / forex, advanced isolated margining and our trading terminal in a risk-free way
Note: Avantis is not currently optimized for mobile. We highly encourage everyone to try the desktop app, live in testnet beta on Base.
If you’re a testnet beta user, welcome to Avantis. Our goal with Testnet V1 to accustom traders to our margin trading terminal, fee structure and position actions in a risk-free way, given traders can trade with paper money and zero market or smart-contract risks. Depending on your level of experience with perpetuals and trading terminals, this guide may feel very familiar, or very daunting. However, for the purpose of this guide, we will assume that you have zero knowledge of trading perpetual futures. Let’s begin !
Step 1: Head over to our Testnet
First things first: If you’ve received email confirmation that your wallet has been whitelisted, head over to avantisfi.com/trade and connect your blockchain wallet to start using the testnet.
Note: If you’re not yet whitelisted, don’t fret! Signup on our website in order to receive an onboarding email for our testnet, or wait for our public testnet rollout (slated for end of November’ 23)
Step 2: Connect to Base Goerli
Avantis is built on Base, an Ethereum rollup powered by the OP stack. If you already have a blockchain wallet (an EOA like Metamask or Coinbase wallet), our app while auto-switch the network to Base Goerli. If you’re whitelisted, you’ll see the Avantis trade and faucet tabs.
Step 3: Get some test ETH and USDC from the Faucet tab
Go to the faucet tab, and get test ETH and USDC for Base Goerli. You will pay gas fees in ETH, and USDC will be used as your trading collateral
Step 4: Explore the Trading Page
Take some time to familiarize yourself with our trading page. Depending on your level of experience trading perpetuals or using leverage, feel free to skip certain sections explained below
- Trading Inputs Section
This is the section on the left, with inputs for selecting your market view (long , short), type of order (market or limit), entering your collateral (denominated in USDC), selecting your leverage, and reviewing your position size and fees. We’ll further break this down for you:
A) Markets: Currently, there are five markets on Avantis. ETH-USD, BTC-USD, GBP-USD, USD-JPY and EUR-USD. In the future, we plan to add several more markets for altcoins, commodities and other special indices.
B) Market view: Long means you expect the market price of an asset to go up. Short means you expect the market price of an asset to go down.
C) Order Type: There’s two types of orders in Avantis. Market orders will immediately be executed at the fair market value of an asset (including price impact from slippage), as obtained from Pyth and Chainlink, two of the most performant DeFi oracle networks. Limit orders are executed at a desired execution price. For longs, this means the order will execute at a certain price below current market price, and for shorts, this means the order will execute at a certain price above current market price.
D) Collateral: The amount of USDC you put up for trading with leverage.
Note: You can never lose more than the amount of collateral you put up. Even though this is test USDC (paper money), please use this testnet as a way to understand how you can trade with leverage responsibly.
E) Leverage Slider: Leverage refers to how much money you’re borrowing, relative to the collateral you’re putting up. As an example, if you’re putting up 100 USDC, and your leverage is 50x, your position size is 50,000 USDC and you’re borrowing 49,900 USDC from liquidity providers
F) Fees and Execution Price: Before placing an order, carefully review the current fee dynamics of a long or short order. The only fee you will need to pay at the time of opening a position is the opening fee. However, given you are borrowing capital to trade an asset, there is also an hourly margin (borrowing) fee, which changes dynamically based on TVL utilization and the long-short ratio. Upon closing a position, a 0.1% closing fee applies to the position size of a trade. For traders opening trades on a non-skewed side (i.e if most of ETH’s open interest is long, then the short side is non-skewed), they will also receive an incentive / rebate called “loss protection”. To understand fees and loss protection better, reach out to our team in discord, or read more here
Place a trade: Once you’re done reviewing fees and the trading inputs section, you are ready to place a trade. Approve the particular asset (e.g ETH-USD) and click on “Practice Order” to see your order go through
II. Charts
Our charts are powered by trading view, which should give traders advanced tools for technical indicators (e.g 90 day moving average) that can inform their trading strategy.
III. Real-Time News
Real-time news feeds from several crypto news and forex sources are available for each crypto and forex pairs. Clicking on them will take you directly to the newsfeed.
IV. Market Stats
Market stats show several important market (pair) specific indicators that are specific to Avantis. The following indicators apply
A) Price / 24 hour change: The very first item you see on the market stats section is the current asset price and the rolling 24 hour % change.
B) Open Interest (OI): Open interest is the market value of all current leveraged trades on Avantis for that particular asset, and we show open interest for longs and shorts separately. A very skewed market (many more longs than shorts, or vice versa) affects the protocol fees, as explained in our docs. The market sentiment bar shows a summary of current open interest (longs vs. shorts)
C) Margin Fees: Margin fees refer to hourly borrowing fees, charged on the position size. These can differ for longs or shorts based on TVL utilization and the open interest skew
V. Positions
Once you place a trade (market or limit order), you can view them in the positions tab. Existing orders will show up in the current positions tab, while limit orders will show up in the limit orders tab. For current positions, you can view your position size (overall initial USDC exposure to an asset), leverage, collateral, open and current price, liquidation price, take profit and stop loss, and net PnL, broken out by closing fee, margin fee and any rebates (via loss protection). Users’ can also modify their positions via the “adjust” button
The limit orders tab will show a similar view, but given a position has not yet been executed, traders can see the execution price, execution distance (i.e how far the price is from execution), and the ability to modify or close their position
VI. Position Management
Avantis gives traders advanced risk management tools and the ability to modify several key aspects of their current positions, such as:
A. Stop Loss / Take Profits: Risk management measures to help traders take profits or cut their losses at a certain USDC or % value
B. Deleveraging: Deleveraging refers to the process of making an existing position less risky by depositing collateral into the position, thereby reducing leverage and improving a position’s health. Traders can add collateral and review the changes in the “Add Collateral” modal
C. Releveraging: Releveraging refers to the process of making an existing position more risky by removing collateral from a position (i.e taking some profit exclusively from collateral), thereby increasing leverage. Traders can remove collateral and review the changes in the “Withdraw Collateral” modal
D. Close Position
Avantis allows traders to partially or fully close positions, further giving more flexibility to traders in adjusting their exposure to a given asset. Partial closes will reduce collateral, position size and leverage by the % amount of the close
Trader Feedback: Calling all onchain traders !
Our team is on a multi-year journey to build the best onchain leveraging trading platform for all kinds of assets. Your feedback in improving Avantis as an onchain trader is highly important. If you believe you have important feedback to share, please reach out to us on our discord. We have several roles in our discord for traders who can provide thoughtful and in-depth feedback. We’re excited to iterate on this feedback and deploy the best possible version of Avantis on Base mainnet, slated for early Q1' 2024. Stay tuned!
Avantis is building the most advanced onchain margin-trading and market-making platform for cryptocurrency, forex and commodity perpetuals. Our mission is to bring high-scale DeFi derivatives to the masses, by empowering anyone to become a market maker and trader for complex instruments like perpetuals and options. Our first product (perpetuals) is currently in testnet. Follow us for more updates on our product and roadmap.
