Original author: Nicky, Foresight News
Reprint: Oliver, Mars Finance
On September 15, 2025, the native token AVNT of the Base ecosystem derivative protocol Avantis officially launched on Korean exchanges Upbit, Bithumb, and Binance main site. Previously, the token had already been listed on platforms such as Binance Alpha, Coinbase, Bitget, and Bybit on September 10. The price of AVNT nearly doubled within 24 hours, attracting market attention.
From 0 to Base's largest derivatives protocol: Avantis' two-year accumulation
Avantis is a decentralized derivatives protocol based on the Base chain, focusing on perpetual contract trading. It supports synthetic derivatives trading of assets such as cryptocurrencies, foreign exchange (FX), commodities (gold, crude oil, etc.), and US stock indices, with a maximum leverage of up to 500 times.
Since the mainnet went live in February 2024, its cumulative trading volume has exceeded $22 billion, with an annualized trading volume of over $60 billion, serving more than 41,000 traders, with the number of liquidity providers (LP) surpassing 25,000, open interest reaching $25 million, and cumulative fees exceeding $7.4 million.
Currently, the platform's 24-hour trading volume has reached 169 million USD, with a total locked value (TVL) of 16.75 million USD. The TVLs for the Junior Tranche (the LP pool that absorbs 65% of the losses) and Senior Tranche (the LP pool that absorbs 35% of the losses) are 10.6 million USD and 6.14 million USD, respectively.
Behind this data is Avantis' exploration of the “Universal Leverage Layer”. The platform reduces the cost of high-frequency trading through innovative features such as “Zero-Fee Perps” and “Loss Rebates”, while also providing loss protection for LPs (by hedging public positions, the platform commits to ensuring LP profits remain positive in the long term).
The agreement adopts a unique risk layering model, allowing liquidity providers to choose funds with different risk levels. The primary fund bears a maximum loss risk of 65% and shares 65% of the fee income; the advanced fund bears a maximum loss risk of 35% and shares 35% of the fee income.
The annualized return for the current Junior and Senior Vaults is approximately 20% (locked for 180 days), and additional XP subsidies are offered to attract long-term participation.
Team and Financing
Avantis is developed and operated by Lumena Labs, with a core team composed of seasoned professionals in the fields of DeFi, finance, and technology. Co-founder and CEO Harsehaj Singh previously managed consumer infrastructure and DeFi project investments at Pantera Capital and graduated from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley; co-founder and CTO Brank D has full-stack development experience in building trading systems and has led the technology architecture for managing hundreds of thousands of users and assets totaling billions of dollars.
Other team members come from institutions such as McKinsey, Lazard, and Barclays, focusing on on-chain consumer product innovation, especially accumulating rich experience in leveraged trading, risk infrastructure, and the real-world asset (RWA) sector.
At the capital level, Avantis's growth has received continuous support from institutions. In September 2023, the project completed a $4 million seed round financing, led by Pantera Capital, with follow-up investments from Founders Fund, Galaxy Digital, Base Ecosystem Fund, and others; in June 2025, it secured another $8 million in Series A financing, jointly led by Pantera Capital and Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, with participation from Symbolic Capital, SALT Fund, and other institutions. The total amount raised in both rounds reached $12 million, with funds mainly used for technological upgrades (such as expanding to asset classes like stocks and sports), launching a customized EVM-compatible chain to enhance transaction speed, and ecosystem development.
Token Economics and Distribution Mechanism
The total supply of AVNT tokens is 1 billion. The tokenomics design emphasizes a community-first principle, with 50.1% of the tokens allocated to the community, and the remaining 49.9% allocated to the team, investors, and the foundation.
In the community allocation, 12.5% is used for the initial airdrop, rewarding users active in the protocol since February 2024; 28.6% is allocated for on-chain incentives, rewarding liquidity providers, traders, and referrers through XP seasonal rewards in the future; 9% is allocated to builders and ecosystem funding, supporting the development of new front-ends and applications based on the Avantis SDK.
Team and advisor allocation is 13.3%, with a 12-month lock-up period followed by a 30-month linear release period. Investor allocation is 26.61%, with the same long-term release arrangement to ensure ecosystem stability. The foundation reserves 4% as strategic funds and 6% as liquidity reserves for exchange marketing and market-making cooperation.
Market makers: Liquidity support from institutions such as Flowdesk
As a participant in the Series A financing, Flowdesk is an important market-making partner in the Avantis ecosystem. This digital asset trading company, headquartered in Paris, was founded in 2020 and is regulated by the French Financial Markets Authority (AMF). It provides liquidity services, over-the-counter trading, and fund management solutions, with technology deployed on Google Cloud to ensure security and scalability, covering liquidity for CEX, DEX, and real-world assets. In March 2025, Flowdesk completed a funding round of $102 million (including $52 million in equity/debt mixed financing), led by HV Capital and others.
Ecosystem construction and technology development
Despite Avantis achieving significant results on the Base chain, it still faces the need for technical optimization. For example, due to the block generation speed limitations of the Base chain, the platform currently experiences delays in opening and closing positions, as well as occasional order failures; zero-fee contracts have a profit cap (which the official states will be gradually removed as LP scale expands); the limit order take profit and stop loss function has not yet supported proportional settings; and mobile adaptation also needs to be improved.
Avantis is building a developer ecosystem, providing SDK toolkits that allow developers to access deep liquidity on the Base chain. Currently, partnerships have been established with multiple projects, including Bankr (an AI agent that trades via tweets), Keyrock (institutional market maker), Pyth (oracle provider), and Nitrate (Telegram trading bot).
The agreement plans to carry out a comprehensive technical upgrade to improve the automated market maker mechanism to support any type of price feed, including gold, crude oil, and sports odds. In addition, the project also plans to launch a proprietary blockchain compatible with EVM to achieve a fast and gasless trading experience.
These upgrades will be rolled out in the form of Avantis v2 in the coming months, expected to bring a 10-fold increase in capital efficiency, advanced trading features, and cross-margin support for real-world asset markets.
