Clipper

Allow us to introduce you to Clipper, a DEX that is built solely for retail traders. The Clipper community has grown around the advent of its offering and can boast of a total trading volume of $2.3B. They have established themselves by bringing in over 200,000 unique traders.

Mark Lurie is the CEO & Co-Founder of Shipyard Software, builders of Clipper. He is a serial entrepreneur and investor who previously founded two venture-backed startups - Codex  (a blockchain-based title registry for art & collectibles used in the offline auction world with 500,000 NFT titles created) and an NFT marketplace. Another key figure behind the rise of the platform is Angie Malltezi - the Chief Strategy Officer. Under their able leadership, Clipper DEX managed to facilitate over 2 million transactions across the community of active users. 

There are over 13k monthly active users and the numbers speak for themselves.

These dedicated traders contribute to the platform's thriving ecosystem, making Clipper a hub of constant activity and opportunity. Clipper is the leading DEX for making profits from Liquidity Pools. Clipper’s novel Formula Market Maker (FMM) architecture solves for price quotes off-chain before verifying them on-chain. Following this, sophisticated pricing formulas and real-time price oracles help with efficiency and cost reduction. This ensures that the entire system remains trust-less and transparent.

Highlights of the Journey

• Clipper DEX launch was launched in Q3 of 2021. It was the first product from Shipyard Software.
• ClipperDEX passed 100k unique traders in Apr 2022 and $1B in total volume in May 2022.
• In November 2022, they soared past $2B in total volume. By January 2023, they were home to 300k unique traders and accounted for over 2M transactions by June 2023.
• In addition to the DEX, they also launched the OFAC sanctions list to provide comprehensive and up-to-date information to its users.
• Shipyard Software  recently launched NFT marketplace called Galley.
• Another significant event in Shipyard Software's development that occurred in 2022 was the launch of AdmiralDAO. This launch introduced a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) that aimed to empower users and provide them with greater control over the platform.

These important milestones in Shipyard Software's development showcase their continuous innovation and dedication to creating valuable products for their users. The protocol is live on Ethereum Mainnet, Optimism, Arbitrum and Polygon.

Major Challenges and solutions

• Clipper offers the best prices for traders by implementing key strategies 

Clipper’s novel Formula Market Maker (FMM) architecture solves for price quotes off-chain before verifying them on-chain. This enables sophisticated pricing formulas and real-time price oracles that are both highly efficient and avoid high gas costs, while retaining the noncustodial nature of a DEX.

Moreover, To prevent front-running by bots and whales, Clipper bans these entities, ensuring a level playing field for LPs, which in turn enables better prices for human traders. 

• To eliminate impermanent loss in Liquidity Pools 

             Other AMMs charge protocol fees on every trade, which incentivizes DEXs like Uniswap and Sushi to make frequent, reckless trades regardless of LP profitability. This is why they are ok with Impermanent Loss hurting LPs. Clipper is different. It only makes money when LPs profit, so it only makes trades that are profitable for LPs. That’s why it cared to incorporate real-time price feeds, uses more sophisticated pricing formulas, and bans bots and whales - all to prevent Loss, Impermanent or otherwise. 

To prove this, Clipper recently launched a benchmarked daily rebalancing portfolio that shows how it transforms volatility into LP gains with not IL.

• To energize the Clipper community, periodic "adventures" are organized, engaging community members in various DeFi activities. 

Community members are divided into ships, competing in activities like trading competitions, yield farming challenges, and liquidity provision contests. More than 10,000 community members have participated in each of Clipper’s three previous adventures. Adventure Four sign-ups are open now, with more than 15,000 verified pirates already on board!

Partnerships and Future Plans 

• Clipper has received grants from Optimism, Arbitrum, Polygon, and Moonbeam. 
• They have tie-ups with DEX aggregators 0x and 1inch
• They have a few exciting things happening and you may need to peek into their discord channel for these updates.
• Shipyard plans a ‘longship’ launch shortly - A derivatives DEX that offers leveraged long positions and impressive yields pegged to a reliable US dollar value.