Recap: New Trading System & API Twitter Space

Hosted by Anna, Poloniex Marketing Manager

Last week, we were able to sit down with Eddie, our Head of Marketing at Poloniex, to discuss the technology and importance of our New Trading System as well as what our APIs can offer to all of our users, whether they be beginner or expert traders.

Below we have the transcript of the Twitter Space Q&A. You can also listen to the recording below and follow along! To be in-the-know for future events like this, follow our Twitter!

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Twitter Space Q&A Transcript

Anna (Host): Hello everyone! Welcome to the Poloniex Twitter’s Space. My name is Anna, I am Poloniex Marketing Manager and today I will be your host.. We are delighted to have Eddie, Head of Poloniex Marketing as our guest.

On behalf of all the members and the management, we would like to extend our warmest welcome and good wishes. Thank you all for coming today!

Eddie: Hi! My name is Eddie and I am the Marketing Head at Poloniex. Nice to virtually meet you all.

Anna: Hello Eddie! It’s nice to have you on Today’s Twitter Space. Let’s start with the first question. A lot of our users are interested in the technology that the new trading system (NTS) uses. Could you explain to us the details of this system upgrade?

Eddie: Sure! The most prominent change is speed. Under the new system, users can trade faster since we have increased the new system’s order matching speed by 30x and TPS (transactions per second) by 10x, respectively. Besides, the latency has been reduced by 5x. Simply put, the upgrades significantly improve its capacity to handle traffic spikes to allow users to trade 24/7 without disruption.

The system’s stability is also improved. For example, the new trading system has higher fault tolerance since it adopts a microservices architecture, which ensures uninterrupted functionality of other modules if one has failed. With support of clustered deployment, sharded databases and auto-scaling, the new system can scale swiftly with no downtime required during upgrades. This means that the system has significantly improved its capacity to handle traffic spikes without compromising the stability of the service and users’ trading experience.

Also, the overall usability, aka UI/UX, is also improved with a few notable features including the market order, the stop-market order, and an enhanced candlestick chart to meet the needs of both amateur and professional traders. Now, both web and mobile app interfaces are fully upgraded to provide a clearer, more intuitive, and more user-friendly experience to allow users to keep abreast of the ever-changing market and plan their investments more strategically.

Anna: Poloniex rolled out zero-fee trading after the NTS launch to give back to its customers. What is the reason behind such generosity?

Eddie: There are two reasons behind the campaign. First, we want to express our gratitude to long-term customers. Poloniex always puts customers first, that’s why we always seek changes to revamp our trading system to give them a better world-class trading experience. No system is perfect, neither are ours. We realized our insufficiencies and we made a lot of improvements on the new system that we focus more on the speed, stability and usability, which I have mentioned earlier. As we have upgraded the new system, we want to give more to the existing and potential customers to provide them a whole new trading experience, especially during the crypto winter. That’s why another reason to launch the zero-fee policy is to restore crypto traders’ trust amid uncertainties. As I mentioned earlier, Poloniex cares a lot about our customers, so we are very willing to sacrifice a little profit to achieve a bigger goal in the long run.

Anna: Currently, Poloniex only offers USDD pairs for zero-fee trading. Will the promotion include more trading pairs?

Eddie: We will take any suggestions into consideration. The latest zero-fee trading policy supports 30 spot trading pairs, including the newly-listed potential hard fork tokens, ETHW (ETH1, Ethereum PoW) and ETHS(ETH2, Ethereum PoS), with zero maker fees and taker fees. But it’s just the beginning, so far we have received a lot of positive feedback from the community and we will closely monitor their sentiments to optimize the current and future plans accordingly. I’m sure in the future Poloniex will offer our users more surprises. Just stay tuned with us.

Anna: The new trading system has brought the platform to the next level, the API included. Could you explain how the NTS has upgraded Poloniex’s APIs?

Eddie: Sure! The noticeable changes are the overall improved throughput, lower latency and higher bandwidth. Poloniex provides both HTTP (RESTful) and WebSocket APIs for market makers, institutional traders, and professional traders alike and the new APIs are with better scalability, usability, and adaptability that allow them to trade 24/7 in a more responsive ecosystem amid the ever-changing crypto markets.

As for scalability, the new APIs have been redesigned for simplicity and seamless interaction with the new trading system allowing for much better performance. Moreover, the trading tier statuses provide different rate limits based on user needs adding more flexibility to the system.

The new API also enhances usability and delivers a more comprehensive trading experience with an optimized matching service, more order types, faster market data, and a better user experience on the web and the app.

Anna: How would the new APIs of the new trading system benefit different users? Will Poloniex introduce a detailed tutorial and SDK documentation?

Eddie: API trading is a trend no matter in the traditional financial world or the crypto world. That’s why the new APIs have been redesigned for faster performance and more comprehensive features, all of which are beneficial to market makers, institutional traders and professional traders. This will help improve the liquidity of the platform, which will further benefit retail users.

For more information about our API, please refer to https://docs.poloniex.com/#Introduction

Anna: The most compelling issue in the current crypto world is no other than the ETH Merge in September. Poloniex is the first crypto exchange supporting ETHS and ETHW, the potential ETH-forked tokens. What are the thoughts behind this action and how would it benefit Poloniex users?

Eddie: Because we fully respect the community’s opinions and choices. Poloniex has been always supporting the Ethereum community that it was the world’s first crypto exchange to list ETH, and was also the first to support ETC. Eight years later, Poloniex’s support to the community remained unchanged and it also became the first exchange to show full support for the Merge. Therefore, on Aug 7, 2022, Poloniex listed two potential forked ETH tokens: ETHS and ETHW, which represent the new PoS chain and PoW chain respectively.

Poloniex will always support the Ethereum community even after the Merge. But, let me clarify that Poloniex doesn’t support any specific ETH fork solution. The new POW chain with the most hash rate and with the broadest community support will serve as the main chain of ETHW. We will also support other PoW chains resulting from the fork, if any.

For our users, of course, no one can predict the post-Merge era, but you can study the opportunity to buy the dip or swap some ETHs for any potential fork tokens in the existing market, like Poloniex, to prepare for any scenario happening in the future.

For holders who care more about stability, it is a safe choice to just leave your ETH on the exchange and wait for airdrops; for more professional traders, there are also some opportunities for arbitrage and risk hedging. At present, Poloniex’s ETHW and ETHS trading pairs are free of trading fees, reducing everyone’s transaction costs.

Anna: In fact, some users don’t quite understand the terms “potential forked tokens” and “IOU”. Would you explain the meaning and mechanisms of these two?

Eddie: Actually, IOU, “I owe you”, refers to an informal document that acknowledges a debt one party owes to another. For example, if you borrow an ETH from a colleague and you need an IOU token to document the agreement between you two. So, when your colleague (the creditor) returns the IOU token at a certain period of time, that person is effectively requesting reimbursement for the cryptocurrency you (the debtor) took and you make profits based on the borrowed token performance. Based on this concept, potential hard fork tokens are one of the IOUs. However, the trading policy varies depending on the different exchanges. Before the Merge, many exchanges launched different tokens/ coins. As for Poloniex’s potential hard fork tokens, ETHW (ETH1, Ethereum PoW) and ETHS(ETH2, Ethereum PoS), they can be swapped and traded their ETH at 1:1 ratio, so technically you can still own a token regardless of the results. No matter what, I strongly advise you to DYOR before investment.

Anna: On the ETH upgrade and hard fork, most users are divided into two groups based on the consensus mechanisms they support — Proof of Work or Proof of Stake.

We are interested in the position of Poloniex on this issue. What will ETH’s eminent change bring to crypto space?

Eddie: The Ethereum community hopes that the Merge will improve 1. network congestion; 2. limited desk space; and 3. high energy consumption to achieve full scale, security and sustainability.

Although no one can predict what will happen next in the post-Merge era, the community is optimistic to see the energy consumption will be greatly reduced by ~99.95%, which is very encouraging since Ethereum is dubbed as the world computer with its smart contract and DeFi functionalities, which allow developers to build DAO and dApp.

However, Poloniex remains neutral, no matter before and after the Merge, and we will always support the chain with the highest hashrate and broadest support from the community.

In a nutshell, the Merge is the historic event in the community as well as the crypto space, and I am very excited about it!

Anna: With issues such as record high inflation rates, the US Fed rate hikes, and currency weakening in several countries, what’s your take on the current global economy? And what impact will such an environment have on the blockchain?

Eddie: I am optimistic about the industry even in the bear market since digital assets, including cryptos, can hedge against inflation. I read a piece of article lately about Google’s parent company, Alphabet, becoming the largest publicly-traded company to invest nearly $2B in blockchain-related projects in 10 months even if the company has extended hiring freeze. Also, the blockchain craze isn’t just limited to FAANG, big fashion brands, including Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Tiffany & Co. and beyond are very using crypto, NFT and the underlying technology to receive payments as well as to attract, verify and connect with consumers from all over the world. So, you can foresee there will be many many blockchain applications in the future.

Anna: Some believe that the crypto market has hit the bottom and now it’s the right time to buy cryptos, while others think that we need to take extra caution since the market just stepped into bear territory. What’s your view on these two conflicting ideas?

Eddie: For me, I think we are still in the bear market, and I believe one of the most important word during the cycle of bearish mark is “BUIDL”. It’s a good time to focus on observing and learning, and to accumulate more knowledge of this industry. So that when the next bull market comes, it will be easier to find high-quality projects.

Anna: That’s all of the questions for today’s Twitter Space, many thanks to Eddie. It was an amazing conversation with him, as we learned a handful of information about Poloniex recent developments and future plans. Thank you all for being here today and taking time to join our talks, I wish you all a blessed day.

🎤Recap: New Trading System & API Twitter Space was originally published in The Poloniex blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.