Axo Testnet Launches on Cardano

On October 19th 2023, the highly anticipated AXO Testnet launched on Cardano. Previously known as Maladex, the project started building in 2021 and rebranded to AXO on September 28th 2022. This article delves further into the AXO Protocol and its testnet launch.

What is Axo?

Axo, a next-generation trading platform on the Cardano blockchain, introduces programmable swaps and aims to pave the way for the future of Decentralized Finance. Developed by a team of researchers, quantitative financial developers, and Haskell enthusiasts, AXO is on a mission to redefine financial markets and create an efficient marketplace for liquidity and capital utilization. It strives to address existing market inefficiencies, including impermanent loss and low throughput, which are commonly observed in AMM-style DEXs, thanks to its unique protocol design.

AXO aims to empower investors by offering a diverse array of tradable assets and trading strategies, including indexes, derivatives, and mirrored assets in the future. Furthermore, it serves as a solid foundation for the development of specialized financial platforms that can be constructed on top of its infrastructure layer, fostering innovation and specialization in the financial realm. With its forward-thinking vision, AXO stands at the forefront of reshaping the financial landscape within the Cardano blockchain ecosystem.

What is a Programmable Swap?

Every trade decision on Axo automatically generates a unique high-assurance smart contract, known as a programmable swap. For optimized efficiency, programmable swaps reference existing on-chain scripts, rather than being embedded in their code, which reduces their size and deployment cost.

One may ask, how is a programmable swap different from a regular smart contract? — Common smart contracts require users to give up custody over their digital assets, programmable swaps do not. Funds remain under your control until the trade execution or cancellation.

Programmable swaps support many different order types on the Axo protocol for example: market order, limit order, dynamic liquidity provision, weighted DCA ( Dollar Cost Averaging), and even enables platform users to utilize arbitrage bots. This is made possible by the Order Matching Engine the off-chain component responsible for matching programmable swaps with each other according to their specification. Users of the Axo Protocol will be able to customize their own programmable swaps by creating trading algorithms and strategies.

Programmable swaps offer security and assurance to those utilizing the Axo Trading Platform. In programmable swaps, orders can only be canceled from the wallet that created the transaction, and orders can only be executed if there is on-chain proof that it is the best available price and within defined limits of execution, such as slippage.

Axo Testnet

Those wanting to check out the Axo Testnet can do so by clicking here, before connecting your wallet make sure to change the network mode to pre-pod network to interact with the Testnet, and then request testnet tokens on the “Faucet” page.

Users can utilize testnet tokens to test various features such as placing limit and market orders with various strategies such as DCA, Stop-Loss Limit, Take-Profit Limit, and more. The UI is switchable between a simplified view and a Pro mode which provides more details.

On the strategies page, users of the trading platform will be able to create strategies, manage their own strategies, or choose from other popular or profitable strategies submitted by others.

On the Algorithms page, it is possible to make trading algorithms to create trading strategies from various templates such as market making, indexes, technical, and advanced algorithms.

Axo is a next generation decentralized trading platform on the Cardano blockchain that is pioneering the transition to a fair and efficient financial system for everyone. You can view the Axo whitepaper here.