How Social Trading Paves the Way for a Decentralized Future

The future of cryptocurrency, be it centralized or decentralized, is being rewritten as we speak — but there is only one way to go as the world gets increasingly interconnected in every way possible, where value is placed on building and fostering global metacommunities from healthcare, education, technology — and not forgetting finance with both traditional and digital assets.

We go social.

Social trading —trading by leveraging social networks and interactions between traders in a community — may not be on everyone's radar at the moment, but it is unsurprising to note that some centralized exchanges have already caught on. Stock exchanges like eToro and Zulutrade and even cryptocurrency exchanges have turned to social trading, because who better to teach, guide and convince traders to trade, than traders themselves?

The most prevalent form of social trading comes with copy trading,
where less experienced traders  observe and replicate the behavior, signals and strategies of more experienced traders.
Experienced traders are typically also rewarded with more trading perks for amassing a following.

In a nutshell, here's how social trading works:

•              A trader new to trading registers on the social trading platform and builds up their portfolio and trades by tagging their account to a more
seasoned "Principal" trader's account, matched by several factors
including performance profile goals or risk preferences

•              A Principal Trader interacts with their followers on the platform
with comments, messages and discussions, leading to an overall chain-effect of better, more robust trades within groups

•              The social trading platform, and both the accounts and assets of
traders, are then subject to a centralized operator's control, before traders
get access to financial markets

Social trading is beneficial to not just more experienced traders who are usually rewarded for the number of new traders following them.
New traders too enjoy an easier start to trading on a new platform. On top of that, having a shared and communal trading experience drives traders to further enrich their trading activities on the platform. We're looking at an increase in trading volume, types of orders or strategies tested and even stepping into new financial products quickly — all without having to waste time and capital on unnecessary trial and error.

The Natural Evolution to Web 3.0 Social Trading

But while investing together is better, social trading has largely
been restricted in the Web 2.0 space under centralized trading models. In the cryptocurrency world, this means that no matter how you trade, your trading account, private keys, and assets are still subject to the control and
limitations of centralized exchanges. That's a big deal, because what happens if traders are:

•              Unable to access withdrawals and deposits on their account?

•              Unable to sign up for social trading on a CEX as their access is
geographically restricted?

•              Unsure about how their trading data and history will be accessed and safeguarded on the platform?

•              Met with additional, unnecessary trading costs as a result of multi-layered intermediaries?

That's where decentralized social trading comes in — considering the
above challenges, this new model of social trading will be the most efficient
way to expand and revitalize communities of traders without the supervision of intermediaries.

ApeX Pro is a non-custodial derivatives trading platform conceptualized around the tenets of social trading in the Web 3.0 world. Built on the decentralized and permissionless ApeX Protocol and integrated with Layer
2 scalability engine StarkEx, ApeX Pro is actually providing higher trading
performance and speed that traders on centralized exchanges usually enjoy, with the security and transparency of a fully decentralized network.

Together, ApeX Pro's journey to a new era of social trades begins
with an order book integration, where traders get access to cross-margined derivatives trades with boosted multi-chain support, lower fees, and instant order settlements. On the other hand, the platform's underlying protocol preserves a trader's privacy and security on all fronts — safety of their funds, their tracking track records and affiliations, and even their confidential data.

Ultimately, ApeX Pro is accelerating the growth of a metacommunity of traders that fully own their trades and are incentivized to keep its social driving force going. The system runs seamlessly with the help of three different token types:

(1) APEX: ApeX Protocol's native governance token, giving the community control over the governance and protocol parameters. A maximum supply of 1 billion APEX tokens is available. Of this amount, 23% is allocated to the core team and early investors with a one-year cliff starting from the token generation event followed by a two-year linear vesting period. The remaining 77% goes to the wider ApeX DAO and will largely be used for participation rewards, ecosystem building, and liquidity bootstrapping.

(2) BANA: A trade-to-earn reward token on ApeX Pro distributed among all traders based on their participation and performance. An allocation of 50,000,000 $APEX from the ApeX Protocol treasury, locked up for a period of a minimum of 12 months, will be used to mint BANA. After the lock-up period ends, the remaining BANA can be converted pro-rata back to APEX.

(3) ApeSoul, a Soulbound Token: Currently still in the works, ApeX Pro's
rendition of this non-transferable NFT coined by E. Glen Weyl, Puja Ohlhaver and Vitalik Buterin in May 2022, will encapsulate and securely establish a trader's trading history, performance and reputation for social trading in a trusted environment. This will be linked to a trader's profile (DID — Digital Identity) visible on the platform.

Forecasting Ahead

Social trading on ApeX Pro is expected to expand into areas that can lead to the tokenization of data income and help realize influence.

ApeX Pro's offerings will eventually all culminate in the creation of
a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) as ApeX Pro takes the first step in building a future where trades made together in the Web 3.0 world are better.

What's Next

•              Delve into ApeX Pro's infrastructure and roadmap here

•              Stay tuned to ApeX Pro's official channels for the latest deals and
updates:
Website | Twitter | Discord | Medium