Hey Dragons! 
We are thrilled to share our roadmap for the coming months, focused on perfecting HMX and ensuring a sustainable, innovative future for the protocol. Your feedback matters greatly, so we invite you to explore the details and share your thoughts with us. Let’s shape the future of HMX together!
The Purpose of This Roadmap
After over a year of operation as HMX, it’s time to reflect on our progress and plan for the future. While we’ve achieved significant successes, there is still room for improvement.
This roadmap outlines our next steps to address challenges, create a stronger, more sustainable protocol, and eventually become the “One Piece”, the leading liquidity layer for perpetual trading.
Success Highlights:
- Achieved over $50 billion in trading volume.
- Delivering the best rates for major assets to traders.
- Generated $18 million in fees with a P/F ratio (circulating) of 0.6, one of the best among perpetual DEXes.
- Consistently ranked as a top 5 platform on Arbitrum by trading volume.
- Proven resilience with a battle-tested platform.
Challenges Identified:
Despite these achievements, the HMX token price has underperformed. Addressing this issue requires confronting the following factors:
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DeFi and Perpetual DEX Narratives: The broader DeFi and perpetual DEX sectors have yet to completely regain momentum. Most perpetual DEX tokens have seen declining prices, but the recovery of Ethereum and DeFi tokens indicates a potential turnaround.
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Tokenomics Issues:
- High Emission Rates: The use of esHMX as a bootstrapping tool has led to inflationary pressures, weighing down token prices.
- Excess Supply: A large amount of uncirculated tokens reduces their appeal to both investors and users.
- Branding Challenges: The name HMX has created misconceptions, with some viewing us as a follower rather than an innovator in the perpetual DEX space.
This roadmap presents a strategic plan to address these challenges and deliver a sustainable future for all stakeholders.
TL;DR
This roadmap marks a transformative phase for HMX, focusing on three core initiatives:
- New Product: Launch of the Central Limit Order Book (CLOB) model.
- New Tokenomics: Solving existing pain points to enhance token value and market confidence.
- New Branding: A complete rebranding to reflect our evolution and future direction.
1. New Product: Central Limit Order Book (CLOB) Model
What Will Happen?
In Q1 2025, HMX will introduce a Centralized Limit Order Book (CLOB) model on our mainnet, while retaining the current pool-based system (HMX V1).
- Users will have the option to choose between HMX V1 and CLOB model for their trading.
- CLOB model will be powered by top-tier market makers, ensuring a seamless trading experience with no liquidity shortages.
Why This Change?
- Market Share Trends:
CLOB-based perpetual trading dominates the market, capturing around 80-90% of market share, significantly outpacing pool-based competitors.
(Yellow representing orderbook-base model while Black representing pool-base model)
- Addressing Pool-Based System Limitations
The CLOB model overcomes many limitations inherent to the pool-based system, including:
- Market Listings: Pool-based models rely solely on oracles for pricing, making them vulnerable to manipulation in low-liquidity markets. It also requires price feed to be available on oracle services before listing is possible. This constraint precludes the listing of new tokens. CLOB models offer deeper liquidity, better price discovery, and improved market-making for traders.
- Funding Fees: In pool-based models, passive LPs can’t hedge their positions, leading to OI skewness and higher trading costs for traders. Fee-sensitive traders prefer CLOB’s more efficient cost structure.
- OI Limits: On pool-based DEXs, OI is capped by a factor of LP’s TVL, limiting scalability and market expansion. During volatile periods, OI often hits its cap, preventing additional trades. CLOB has no such constraints, enabling greater scalability.
- Advanced Trading Features
Our CLOB model offers superior features compared to competitors, including:
- Real-Time Order Matching: Sophisticated algorithms ensure efficient trade execution.
- Low Latency and High Efficiency: Processes a high volume of transactions per second for optimal user experience.
- Flexible Trade Settlement: Traders can withdraw unrealized profits (uPnL) without closing positions and defer losses temporarily, offering superior liquidity management during volatile conditions.
- Multi-Asset Collateral: Unlike most other CLOB DEXs, we support multi-asset collateral, enabling traders to deposit a variety of assets, such as wBTC, ETH, or stETH. This feature offers greater flexibility and unlocks advanced strategies like carry trading for traders.
For more details on CLOB model’s features, visit the HMX CLOB Testnet Guide.
- Reduced Supply-Side Costs (Liquidity Provider Cost):
- The current pool-based model requires a significant portion of revenue (50%) to compensate liquidity providers (LPs) for their cost of capital and risk as counterparties to traders.
- The CLOB model eliminates this cost by using market makers, reducing overall supply-side expenses. Even with market maker fees, token holders will benefit from increased returns.
- Strategic Vision: The One Piece
- Together with our strategic partner, we’ve built a powerful orderbook infrastructure that will serve as the foundation for the “One Piece”, a unified liquidity for perpetual trading ecosystem, seamlessly bridging traders across both EVM and non-EVM chains, beginning with Arbitrum and TON networks.
2. New Tokenomics: Addressing Key Pain Points
The new tokenomics framework aims to improve market sentiment, stimulate demand, and stabilize token price action.
Key Changes in Tokenomics Migration
- Burning Uncirculated Supply:
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Some portions of not-yet-used tokens in the Community Incentives and Ecosystem Fund allocations will be partially burned.
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By mitigating the low circulating supply relative to total supply issue, speculative selling is reduced, boosting market confidence.
(Reference: Current HMX Tokenomics)
- Governance-Based Inflation Model:
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If additional tokens are needed for incentives or ecosystem expansion, the protocol will adopt a governance-based inflation model.
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Examples:
A. competition in the industry becomes more intense, requiring increased trader incentives;
B. HMX plans to expand to other chains and needs bootstrapping instruments; or
C. HMX needs to provide special grants to contributors or early adopters of new protocol services, infrastructure or business initiatives.
In any of these cases, token holders can propose and vote on the annual inflation rate needed for these purposes.
- This approach provides flexibility without large-scale emissions, ensuring token sustainability.
- Airdrop Campaign:
- A portion of the new token allocation will be dedicated to a one-time airdrop to drive engagement and onboard new traders for CLOB model, creating additional visibility and boosting trading activity
Note: A separate proposal will detail the complete new tokenomics, including token allocation and migration process from HMX tokens.
3. New Branding: Reflecting Our Evolution
With the introduction of CLOB model and updated tokenomics, the time is ripe for a complete rebranding to reflect HMX’s transformation.
Why Rebrand?
- The name “HMX” has led some to mistakenly view us as a follower rather than an innovator in the perpetual DEX space, which has held back the public perception of our protocol.
- By adopting CLOB and sustainable tokenomics, HMX positions itself ahead of competitors. A new brand will represent this evolution.
Key Rebranding Aspects
- Updating platform interfaces, social media presence, and marketing materials to a new brand.
- HMX tokens will be migrated to new tokens with new token symbols and tickers to align with the revised tokenomics.
4. Execution Plan and Timeline
Roadmap Overview:
- Q4 2024: Community review and governance feedback.
- January–Mid-February 2025: Rebranding and launch of CLOB model.
- February 2025 Onwards: Marketing campaigns fully launched to add visibility to our rebranding and new tokenomics.
- April/May 2025: Migration of HMX to the new tokenomics system.
Conclusion
This roadmap represents a decisive transformation in HMX’s evolution, setting a clear path toward market leadership and long-term success.
Through the strategic implementation of the CLOB model, enhanced tokenomics, and a fresh brand identity, we are directly tackling our challenges and building a stronger foundation for growth.
Join us in shaping HMX’s future - we welcome your insights and feedback as we embark on this exciting journey.