TL;DR:

1. Whales Market is a comprehensive cryptocurrency trading platform supporting OTC trading, pre-release markets, rune markets, and points markets.
2. The platform’s tokenomics, staking mechanisms, and revenue streams ensure ecosystem sustainability and profitability.
3. Tokenomics promotes liquidity and trading activity, staking options provide users with additional earning opportunities, and revenue streams redistribute platform income to participants.
4. Whales Market addresses the challenges faced by P2P traders in the cryptocurrency market, offering them a safer and more convenient trading environment.

An Overview of the OTC Trading Platform Whales Market

Introduction

Due to the lack of liquidity for certain digital assets in the market, such as reward points, airdrop allocations, and whitelist projects, their transactions typically occur in over-the-counter (OTC) markets. This method has long been regarded as the primary means of OTC trading in the crypto sector. Despite the convenience of these methods, they also pose significant trust issues. Both parties in the transaction must rely on specific users holding the designated assets and delivering these assets post-transaction. However, this trading method has inherent risks of potential fraud, where sellers might fail to fulfill their promises of OTC digital assets.

Therefore, there is a need for a trustless third party in the digital asset trading process to facilitate secure transactions, provide security, and prevent fraudulent activities. This is precisely the objective of Whales Market. By leveraging the immutability of blockchain technology and smart contracts, Whales Market has created a decentralized platform that enables both parties to conduct secure and reliable transactions in a trustless environment. This new market model aims to address the trust and security issues prevalent in OTC trading.

What is Whales Market?

Whales Market is a decentralized over-the-counter (OTC) trading decentralized exchange (DEX) that allows users to exchange assets directly across multiple blockchains, achieving complete trustlessness and security assurance. Users can perform token OTC trades on the platform, as well as trade airdrop shares, runes, and points. In the future, the platform will also introduce NFT whitelist trading functionality. The platform has already passed an audit by PeckShield.

Whales Market integrates OTC trading into a unified platform, enabling buyers and sellers to conduct on-chain transactions with mutual consent. Funds remain locked in smart contracts and are only released to the parties upon successful settlement of the transaction. This method not only simplifies the trading process but also significantly reduces the risk of financial loss due to fraudulent activities.

Main Features of the Whales Market

Whales Market currently offers four main features: Pre-Market trading, OTC Market, Runes Market, and Points Market. The Runes Market is not yet live, and the official plan includes the future launch of NFT and whitelist trading markets.

Pre-Market Trading

Pre-airdrop peer-to-peer (P2P) token transactions before the Token Generation Event (TGE) have always been a common practice, typically conducted through forums, private messages, and a few centralized platforms. However, these methods often lack security measures, exposing traders to fraud risks as scammers may fail to deliver the promised tokens.

Whales Markets has revolutionized this process through smart contracts, facilitating on-chain transactions mutually agreed upon by both buyers and sellers. This innovation not only simplifies transactions but also significantly reduces the risk of financial loss due to fraud.

Once the project’s airdrop is officially released, sellers can ensure the delivery of the promised tokens due to the presence of collateral. If the seller fails to complete the transaction by the deadline, their collateral will be forfeited to the buyer as compensation.

There are two ways to purchase tokens in pre-market trading:

1. Create your own offer order

2. Subscribe to someone else’s offer order.

Below is an example of the purchasing process, with the selling process being similar:

The simplest way to buy tokens is to find a sale contract order listed by another user and deposit funds. The deposited funds will be sent and stored in the smart contract escrow, only transferring to the seller once the seller places the order.

Source: whales market

There are two methods for purchasing tokens:

1. Partial Purchase: Multiple selling users can combine orders to fulfill a quote.
2. Complete Purchase: A single user completes the entire quote.

Both buyers and sellers must wait until the project’s Token Generation Event (TGE) to settle or cancel orders. Once the foundation releases the tokens, a 24-hour countdown for settlement between buyers and sellers will begin. If the seller fails to settle on time, they will forfeit their collateral funds. If the seller is overdue, the buyer can cancel the order, and the funds will be transferred to the buyer.

Source: whales.market Documentation

OTC Trading (OTC Market)

Currently, Whales Market only offers over-the-counter (OTC) trading for tokens from projects within the Solana ecosystem. To ensure user safety, Whales Market has compiled a list of tokens available for OTC trading. These tokens are selected based on a minimum liquidity pool of $300,000 on decentralized exchanges. Users can also trade tokens not included in this list, but the platform will display a warning sign, prompting users to verify the minting address before proceeding with the trade.

To protect the privacy of trade creators’ quotes, Whales Market has introduced a new feature. This feature allows them to share a quote access link with individuals they wish to trade with. As a result, private quotes will not appear on the public market and can only be accessed via the unique quote link provided by the creator.

Source: whales market

Runes Market

The introduction of the Runes protocol marks a significant milestone for the Bitcoin ecosystem. It will enable enhanced functionalities and expand the utility of the Bitcoin blockchain.

Whales Market adopts an innovative cross-chain hybrid approach to facilitate the trading of Runes across different blockchains. This method leverages the Unspent Transaction Output (UTXO) mechanism on the Bitcoin blockchain, dividing the total supply of Runes into smaller fractions, enabling users to trade the exact amount of tokens they need.

Using this approach, Whales Market has established two distinct markets: the Pre-Runes Markets and the Runes Cross-chain DEX. (Initially, only collateral based on Solana is supported.)

Pre-Runes Markets

In this market, users can trade Runes before they are officially listed. Order creation and matching occur on the Solana network, while settlement is completed on Bitcoin (for Rune tokens) and Solana (for collateral). This approach facilitates a seamless trading experience, enhancing flexible fund utilization for all participants.

Runes Cross-chain DEX

Whales Market adopts a cross-chain strategy, allowing users to trade Rune tokens using assets from different blockchains. This innovative approach utilizes the UTXO mechanism of the Bitcoin blockchain for precise division of Runes, enabling users to trade exact token amounts.

Source: whales market

Points Market

A notable feature of Whales Market is its introduction of a points trading function. Nowadays, an increasing number of projects are launching points systems, where users can earn these points with potential airdrop possibilities through on-chain interactions.

Currently, Whales Market supports points trading from social product Friend.Tech on the Base chain, the LRT product Eigenlayer, and the DEX platform Hyperliquid. Additionally, it includes dozens of other projects such as MarginFi, Kamino, Blur, Blast, and Grass. However, the points available for trading are currently limited to the first three projects.

Similar to over-the-counter (OTC) markets, the points market supports secure peer-to-peer trading. Whales Market utilizes smart contracts to facilitate on-chain transactions that are mutually agreed upon by both buyers and sellers. Once a foundation issues tokens, a 24-hour settlement countdown will begin. After the token release, Whales Market will automatically convert the points into the corresponding tokens according to the foundation’s announcement.

Source: whales.market

Token Economics

Distribution Method

The total supply of WHALES is 100,000,000 tokens. The distribution is as follows:

• 65% for incentives, released linearly over 4 years
• 9.5% allocated to the team, with a 9-month lock-up period followed by a 36-month linear release
• 7.5% for the Token Generation Event (TGE)
• 7% for private sale
• 5% for airdrops
• 5% for marketing
• 1% for security

Source: whales market documentation

Fee Structure

• Revenue Sharing: 60% of the collected fees will be redistributed to WHALES stakers
• Development Costs: 20% will be used to cover ongoing development expenses
• Buyback and Burn: 10% will be allocated for token buybacks and burns, creating a deflationary mechanism
• LOOT Revenue Sharing: 10% will be shared with LOOT stakers and xLOOT holders. (LOOT is the native token of the Telegram bot LootBot. The initial liquidity for Whales Market is provided by the LootBot treasury, and both projects are managed by the same team.)

Staking

Whales Market generates revenue by charging fees from the over-the-counter (OTC) market, of which 60% is distributed to WHALES stakers. When users stake WHALES, they receive xWHALES rewards, allowing them to earn a portion of the revenue and serve as collateral across all OTC markets. There is no lock-up period for WHALES staking, and users can unstake at any time. As of May 9, 2024, Whales Market’s staking Annual Percentage Yield (APY) is 36.5%, with a total of 12,488,147 tokens staked.

The staking mechanism operates as follows:

1. The staking contract comprises a pool with WHALES and xWHALES tokens.
2. Participants stake WHALES tokens and receive xWHALES tokens as rewards.
3. Stakers holding xWHALES tokens earn an increasing amount of WHALES rewards over time.

Data Performance

According to Dune Analytics, since Whales Market launched, its Total Value Locked (TVL) has reached $110 million. The platform has attracted a total of 30,481 users, with an aggregate custodial amount of 69,327,365, of which Solana accounts for 79.7%.

Source: Dune Analytics - Whales Market on Solana

Source: Dune Analytics - Whales Market on Solana

As of May 9, 2024, Whales Market’s total revenue has reached $18.28 million, with 80% allocated for repurchasing WHALES tokens. The distribution plan specifies that 60% will be used for staking, 10% for burning, and another 10% for incentivizing LOOT stakers. This translates to approximately $1.462 million for repurchase, equivalent to about 10,157 SOL tokens based on the SOL price of $140 on that day.

Source: Dune Analytics - Whales Market on Solana

Conclusion

Whales Market is a comprehensive cryptocurrency over-the-counter (OTC) trading platform that provides solutions for liquidity shortages and decentralized cryptocurrency market trading. It supports various markets, including OTC markets, pre-release markets, rune markets, and points markets. Overall, Whales Market addresses a significant trading pain point, offering more opportunities and convenience for peer-to-peer (P2P) traders, thereby establishing an important position in the cryptocurrency market.