NiceTrade: Social Trading Platform with Secure Trading Terminal

dexter

Image header:

front

Project title:

NiceTrade Social Trading Platform with Secure Trading Terminal

Summary:

NiceTrade is a powerful trading terminal with multi-account, social trading, competitions, and more.

Category:

Applications

Goals:

Our goal is to improve Stellar Distributed Exchange's liquidity by offering a new trading terminal with powerful features. At the same time we make trading Stellar assets more productive and fun through social trading.

Timeline:

NiceTrade is already live and functional. We're constantly improving and have made multiple improvements since entering the SCF. Scroll down to see!

Short term goals (focus on improving the exchange)
03/15 (done) - Migrated hosting to a beefier provider. Our old Stellar core/Horizon node had trouble keeping up when network is heavily utilized. Added create&fund (in single transaction). Bug fixes.
04/01 (done) - Revamp the user interface. Implement new asset ranking system to track the average liquidity of assets. Currently ranking is based on volume in terms of XLM value. We would like assets that have proven their liquidity to be ranked higher.
05/01 - Implement custom market selection and asset pair swapping. Implement canonical forms for all markets.

Long-term: We're working on social trading features and competitions to generate more interest around Stellar's DEX and improve its liquidity. With any SCF funding we'll upgrade our hardware and be able to host more trading competitions.

Description:

NiceTrade is a unique new trading terminal with fun social trading features. It provides a secure multi-account wallet/exchange that makes it easy for you to trade with multiple Stellar accounts (e.g. Keybase, Ledger, wallets, bots) and switch between them with a single mouse click. Share your trading results with friends and win XLM prizes by joining our free trading competition. Our mission is to increase adoption and liquidity on Stellar's Distributed Exchange.

Switch between accounts with a click:
menu

Easily transfer assets between accounts while avoiding typos:

Powerful exchange interface with automated asset discovery and listing:
listing

Track your trading results over time with account valuation:
value

Customize your trading view with market filters and favorites:

Delegated signing with Cosmic Link
sign

NiceTrade also offers other unique features like SEP-10 auth and trade aggregation. Via delegation, you can even trade using your Keybase account (see link below).

Links:

https://nicetrade.co
Medium
Trade using Keybase Wallet with NiceTrade
nicetrade Keybase channel

umbrel

What are your thoughts on long-term project monetization? Every other stellar exchange interface had to sell out to established company, because original developers weren't able to make it profitable

dexter

umbrel Great question. But I think it applies to pretty much all Stellar projects not just exchanges. Exchanges at least seem to have enough residual value that people are willing to buy them. But nicetrade will not be just another exchange. Exchange is the foundation level of functionality that is generally useful for a platform app. We're actually building towards high level functionalities like social trading and there are multiple ways to pivot.

Even at the exchange level, there are several possibilities which are not obvious in a bear market. Anchoring is the obvious answer, but we're probably not going there without partnering with a financial entity. Other ideas are whitelabel services for token issuers to create their own custom portals. As we get more users, we could also do bidding based text advertisements.

But in general we run very lean, and we could do a lot with few resources for a long time. Hopefully you could tell by how much functionality has already been built into nicetrade. An average SCF prize would give nicetrade at least a year worth of run way to keep building stuff. We could always pivot if needed.

John

Please pay close attention to the design and implementation of the page elements, It is painful.
but interaction by stellar network and tools looks good

Justin

By getting the 100th DEX interface , are we not killing all the infinite possibility offered by stellar. This is Market Myopia , all the ressources of the ecosystem on the same business model , and all these DEX interface are not increasing the Market volume. They becoming Ghost interface

dexter

Justin Currently there are 3-ish active Stellar exchanges. Not sure where the number 100 came from. Also not sure if you've used any of the other exchanges. I have- StellarTerm, Interstellar.exchange, Stellarport, and StellarX. I am intimately familiar with the pros and cons of each. I guess I'm a different breed of Stellar user and have many Stellar accounts to keep track of and trade with. I like my account history clean and keep track of my trading results. So the exchange capabilities of nicetrade caters to a different type of user base that will grow as Stellar matures. nicetrade has a lot of differentiating features and it will have a lot more.

I agree volume and SDEX are pivotal differentiators for Stellar. The only thing that increases market volume for sure are market makers who provide liquidity. The next best thing are retail traders who seed the orderbooks. Having more Stellar exchanges that cater to their individual preferences could only help. The exchange is such a fundamental aspect of Stellar that having more competition can't hurt and would only drive more innovation.

Finally I already mentioned this in the entry. But nicetrade's final form is not going to be yet another exchange. I don't want to reveal too many details on this but if you're really interested I could talk about it on keybase- dexter0x8

John

dexter The only problem was with the design
To make a good app in design, always compare it to similar top apps on other networks.
https://trade.dydx.exchange/ETH-DAI

dexter

Following through on our short term goal, we have implemented a new scoring mechanism for Stellar assets based on liquidity. As much as we can tell, nicetrade the first exchange to do this. Liquidity scoring offers more protection against manipulation compared to trading volume only. It's easy to fake volume because there is nothing for the malicious actor to lose. Faking liquidity on the other hand involves staking their own XLM into the order books. Now there is a lot more for the malicious actor to lose , especially over a long period of time.

Liquidity is obviously also very important to users who trade on the exchange. With all else being equal, assets that are more historically liquid are safer.

To produce this scoring we sample each asset periodically to measure their liquidity depth against a preset benchmark. Each asset's liquidity score is computed based on a time weighted average of historical liquidity. Therefore to achieve a high score, an asset must have been liquid for some time.

nicetrade tries to make asset listing and ranking as fair as possible through purely automated mechanisms. The new ranking system now ranks by liquidity first and trade volume (in terms of XLM) second.

As a companion to this update, we also improved the user interface for nicetrade. We have built a a sleek new Markets Overview page:
new exchange

We have also re-skinned our exchange and wallet for a more modern feel. Traditionally we have prioritized functionality over looks, but given feedback we have received we are also working towards being more user friendly.
new exchange

Got something you want to see improved? Let me know!

dexter

New NiceTrade Update - We're starting to roll out the second layer of NiceTrade which is primarily focused on social trading. Our goal is to make trading on Stellar more fun and to improve DEX liquidity through interest from individual traders.

Our first social feature is inspired by StockTwits but with a distinctly Stellar twist. Users can express sentiments and share bits of salient info on assets they're trading. Because NiceTrade comes built in with a powerful exchange, there will be many interesting features:

Trade mirroring where users can easily replicate the trades of their favorite gurus.
Transaction parsing to showcase profit or loss from trades.
Tipping for good advice,

We'll also be piloting a social trading competition for XLM holders. The goal is to see who can grow the XLM value of their accounts the most in a month. Anyone is welcome to compete. Simply register an account that has 100XLM and NiceTrade will track the leaderboard. At the end of the month, the top 3 traders with the most profit splits a prize pool.

Please see this page for more details:
https://nicetrade.co/competition/rules

If you're interested to donating to the prize pool please let me know. We could add your logo to the leaderboard as a sponsor.

umbrel

dexter Hey, I like the idea of trading competition, but how are you going to prevent cheating?
I could start with 100 XLM, and then use some unpopular pair to slowly feed another 50k XLM from my another account. I'm not losing anything, but going to take a chunk of your prize pool.

I understand you already limited the number of pairs, but some of them, like LTC / XLM or MOBI / XLM are very illiquid, I think you need to tighten things up further.
On the other hand, can you add USDT by apay.io to the list of eligible assets?

I'm happy to donate some funds into the prize pool. Let me know how to do that.

dexter

umbrel Thanks for the feedback. Yes that's the type of behavior I was trying to prevent by limiting the markets. I'll pare the list some more before enrollment starts. The leaderboard will show the profit/ROI and value chart for each account and accounts with the highest ROI will naturally attract attention. Enrolled accounts will be publicly visible so if this turns into abuse it could be spotted by looking at trade history.

Yes we can add USDT to the list of assets. Regarding donations I'll publish an account before enrollment starts. I'm also available on Keybase as dexter0x8 if you want to get in touch.

dexter

dexter Trading competition is live. To enroll you'll need to authenticate via SEP-10 (login using username/password, secret key, or Cosmic Link). Easiest way is probably to create a wallet. We're piloting this idea to get people interested and acquainted with Stellar's exchange and we'll be making improvements along the way.

https://nicetrade.co/competition/leaderboard

Once you login you can set an avatar and website (if you want to do a little self marketing).

You need a Stellar account with 100XLM balance to enroll. The prize pool currently stands at 500 XLM to be split to the 6 most profitable traders: 40% - 20% - 10% - 10% - 10% - 10% after competition ends.

To prevent cheating, competitors may only trade markets with whitelisted assets listed in Rules. We have added a competition filter (trophy icon) in the exchange. Please see Rules for all the details.

Donations to the prize pool are welcomed, please send to the address listed on the leaderboard:
GCT7WKPSBTVMXZDRSVCHT5P32VPAL2FLDAIHAAMZBOLU737LDS7U3YXI

If you want to be listed as a sponsor please let me know. If you donate and want to show a logo, please send me a link to the image.

dexter

New version of NiceTrade has been released:

NiceTrade now support a convenient username/password authentication alongside new wallet creation. There is a new profile section where you can change username and add avatar. We have fixed a SEP-10 authentication issue with CosmicLink integration.

NiceTrade supports multiples ways login:

Username/Password (SEP-10 Authentication)
Public Address, Federation Address, or Keybase Username
Secret Key (SEP-10 Authentication)
Cosmic Link (SEP-10 Authentication )

Improvements to NiceTrade's Trading Terminal

Support custom market selection
Support reversing asset pair
Allow searching for markets by asset issuer name

Improvements to Multi-Account Manager
We have also added better back button handling so you can go back to previous account balances, offers, effects, etc...

Social Trading
We have also started the trading competition pilot. Competition leaderboard is periodically updated with profit metrics and ranking of the competitors. You can browse each competitor's entry to see what trades they have made. There will be more improvements in this area in the future.

Thanks to all who have provided feedback. We will continue to make NiceTrade better and get more people trading on Stellar's Distributed Exchange.

dexter

New version of NiceTrade has been released 5/10:

Introduced Account Types and direct SEP-7 support. This enables different secondary accounts to have different default signing options. The Keybase account type now default directly to SEP-7 for signing transactions. This provides a more optimal user experience for trading with Keybase.
Optimized app load time (approximately 50 - 100% speedup)
App received another cosmetic face lift with improved typography and display for numbers.
Fixed display issues that affected very small decimals (for markets like inverse BTC/XLM)
Improved trade grouping in Trade History
General bug fixes

Thanks to all who have provided feedback. We will continue to improve NiceTrade and get more people on Stellar!

John

dexter Good work, Keep growing!

dexter

NiceTrade Update 5/16

We have improved the user experience for the user when he/she is waiting for transaction confirmation. There is now a spinning indicator and a pending transaction tracker:
Transactions in Progress

This change gets us closer to an ideal user experience that is completely non-blocking- the user should be able to continue using the app while a transaction is being confirmed in the background. This feels faster and more responsive than the modal spinner used by Stellar exchanges today.

Once we implement channel accounts this will be fully possible. The user will be able to submit multiple offers in quick succession and continue using the app while they're processed in the background.

We have fixed an issue where Account page was not showing for public key (non-authenticated) logins.

We have also added support for issuing assets and manually adding trustlines. For more info, please check out this tutorial on issuing assets on NiceTrade.