Trading competition results

2020-11-04 — 4 min read

50,000 RUNE in prizes awarded to the top BEPSwap traders.

Overview

The BEPSwap trading competition which was held between 10th September 2020 and 8th October 2020 has now concluded.

23,382 swaps by 494 unique addresses totaling 36,837,892 RUNE or USD $18 million were completed during the competition period!

The top 5 traders by volume share in a 25,000 RUNE prize pool with the remaining sharing an additional 25k RUNE (approx 51 RUNE each).

The competition helped to stress test the network and generate valuable data-driven insights.

Competition Background:

The trading competition was announced in September and had three key objectives:

Generate valuable test data — more data leads to insights & validation
Place more load on the network, testing it’s performance under stress and demonstrating resilience of the TSS implementation.
Create economic activity & drive fee revenue to the network to incentivise LPs to stake more capital, and node operators to increase their bond.

The competition was open to any trader during the competition period and had the following prizes:

1st Place: 10000 RUNE
2nd Place: 7000 RUNE
3rd Place: 4000 RUNE
4th Place: 3000 RUNE
5th Place: 1000 RUNE
Remaining: 25000 RUNE (shared)

Results:

The results were extracted from THORChain and compiled with the help of community member TRX1 ⚡. High level summary as follows:

Total transactions: 23,382
Total volume: 36,837,892 RUNE
Total USD Value: $18,162,947
Avg TX per Address: 47.3
Single swap ratio: 80%

Details by pool show BNB’s dominance accounting for 91% of all swaps on the network generating most of the fees.

#1 Trader

Interestingly, a single arbitrageur took out the #1 prize accounting for a staggering 60% of all swaps on the network with over 13,000 transactions and 22mm in RUNE worth approx USD $10.7mm.

The arbitrageur remains the #1 trader on the network and is generating considerable profit balancing pools to correct market prices. An analysis of the top arbitrageurs indicates ‘QMJ’ has made over half a million USD profit over the past 3 months; out-performing all others on the network.

QMJ Arbitraguer has made over $500k USD in estimated profits.

Arbitrage Profitability

Arbitrage on THORChain is extremely profitable currently as there aren’t many participants competing. Once there is more participation then competition will ensure profits are re-distributed to pools. Two other arbitrageurs have amassed over $100k in profits in just a short time.

Arbitrage on THORChain is not particularly complex. The team would encourage anyone with the skills to go ahead and build an arbitrage bot. The general principle is to look for delta between pools and other markets and trade that delta. Tools such as https://www.runebalance.com/#/pools can help traders spot opportunities.

QMJ has very little competition and maximises profit by splitting trades to pay as low fees as possible. While fees are still being generated for LP’s, this opens the doors to other arbitrageurs who are happy to compete by out bidding on fees.

For more information, guides and support on arbitrage, join the THORChain developer community channel on telegram. https://t.me/thorchain_dev

Important note — The team have no awareness as to the identity of the QMJ arbitrageur, is not in contact with the operator, nor is the team involved in the operation of the arbitrage bot whatsoever.

Conclusion & Prize Claim

At the beginning of the competition THORChain had 16 active nodes, 9 pools, $5mm in network capital and $250k in daily volume. Today there are 36 active nodes, 43 pools, $20mm in capital and $3mm in daily volume. THORChain continues to absorb liquidity from Binance Chain exceeding all expectations.

The competition was beneficial for stress testing the network and has provided valuable insight for all those building on THORChain not just the team. Many thanks to all those who participated!

Prizes will be automatically awarded to all addresses by the 15th of November. Unfortunately the team cannot change the destination address for the prize.