The Comdex team have taken the next step along the path to having a live product launched, with a DEVNET allowing users to test out the features, and report any bugs they find. This gives us a chance to take a good look at what is coming, and try out a range of features in a safe way, without having real funds on the line. This was announced a short time ago on twitter and having a big bag and a keen eye on the project, I thought I'd share my first experiences with you all.
First thing first, visit the Comdex devnet website and connect your Keplr wallet. Prompt s=will appear to add a couple of chains - these are the testnet's you need to connect.
Second thing I did, once this was done, was to switch to dark mode - it looks so much better.
Then, click the little person icon in the top right corner, and copy your address from the drop down.
Next go visit the faucet site to get some testnet tokens.
Once that is done, you may have to refresh the main page before you will see your tokens.
Once you can see that you have some testnet tokens in your wallet, it is time to play.
This tab is the start page, and contains generic information and stats for the platform. Volume, TVL CMDX price, as well as some stats for the cASSET options that will be available at mainnet launch. Don't forget that this is just a testnet, so these details don't match the mainnet data.
This tab is where you will find details of your holdings. Interestingly, it just shows the USD value, and you can't even see the number of tokens here, just the dollar value.
I started having a play here, first up swapping 50 CMDX into each of the three cASSETS. When you click the little :trade" tab, the screen then looks like any other Dex you may be familiar with.
I tried the "Mint" tab and the "Farm" tab, and they both showed empty and no options. Will take another look at these shortly.
The "History" tab simply shows your TX history - obviously.
So, after these three trades I performed, here is what my home screen shows now:
Anyway, moving on...
Next I take a little look at the assets page, and find it looks like it will function similar to the Assets tab on Osmosis. This is where you will deposit or withdraw tokens from their native chains to Comdex, via the magic of IBC. Pretty straightforward if you use Cosmos and IBC chains, pretty easy to learn if you have not experienced the worders of IBC before.
This tab brings up the same swap function mentioned before. I swapped back to light-mode for the above screenshot, so I can highlight what I missed before, and why I lost lots of fake money on my first trades. The highlighted part shows the premium. The Oracle price for GOLD (in this example) is shown, then, obviously the pool is very far out of balance, and the cGOLD price is a long way from the oracle price. This means I have ripped myself off, and lost a bunch of imaginary money. In real life, this massive gap would be arbitraged away, or be a major arbitrage opportunity.
So, my "lost" funds mentioned above where not a UI bug at all, simply me being a bad trader and not looking at all the information before making the trade. Glad its just a testnet.
So here is where things move from being stuff I'm familiar with, to new experiences. In my time in crypto, I have never really played with Collateralization, debt and borrowing functions before. I just accumulate, and not trade. But here is where the magic happens on Comdex, so I better get my head around it.
I decide to start off by minting some cGOLD. I use 100 CMDX as collateral, and leave the collateral ratio at 200%, favoring safety. (Gotta look after this fake money). After trying a couple of times, and getting low gas fails, I bump the gas and get the transaction through (definitely a little UI bug - the team need to increase the default gas for this TX type).
Once I complete the TX, this is what I see:
It has taken me back to my "home tab" and showing me assets I have minted.
Now I figure I can go make a profit, by selling the minted cGOLD, remembering that it is way overpriced. I trade my cGOLD (the stuff I minted, plus the stuff I bought earlier, and now have way more CMDX than I started with.
I then go back to "borrow" to try and mint some more cGOLD. It does not work, saying the vault already exists, try to edit.
Clicking the edit button, I then deposit another 200 CMDX. Then I use the drop down to "draw" some more cGOLD out, as by depositing I have improved my collateral ratio and can borrow more.
I poke around a little more here, playing with the withdraw, and such before moving on.
Next up, is my main goal here - farming. Once the platform is live, I plan on building positions in these farming pools. Long term exposure to commodity prices, combined with farming rewards is what my primary goal of investing in Comdex has been. Borrowing, collateral, minting and so on is stuff I'm keen to learn, but farming is my main focus here.
I open up a farm position with my cGOLD, and CMDX. Fully aware that the price of cGOLD in the pool is massively wrong, but not caring as it is a testnet. When it is live funds I'm using, I'll be very carefully checking the pool price compared to the oracle price before adding to the farms.
Once that is done, I can see my position here. As the price of cGOLD is totally out of whack, I had to pair a huge amount of CMDX with it to make the position. Anyway, it worked. There is no APY showing, but I imagine once it is live funds that early APR will be nice. It doesn't seem from this that the LP has to be then staked anywhere to farm, but that also remains to be seen on mainnet.
But wait, there is more... Clicking this tab brings up two options, "Staking and Governance" and the much more interesting "Participate in Auctions". The first of those currently has links to two existing wallet options for CMDX, but I believe the team is working on their own native wallet management option, so staking and governance may become available as a "one stop shop" here in the app instead of needing a third party provided app.
The Auctions option, when you click it shows a whole list of assets (currently all CMDX) available to bid on. This is where the liquidations from people whose collateral gets liquidated goes to be bought by other users. Interesting, but I don't have a play at this stage as my time for making this post is running out. Another time.
So after all this playing around, what do I think? I love it. The UX is really smooth, links lead everywhere you need them to, and navigating all the options is a breeze. I will play a lot more with the collateralization during this devnet, as it is a new experience for me. Currently, I have a decent sized portion of my overall Cosmos assets in CMDX, both directly staked and in an LP on Osmosis. My plan once the mainnet is live is to use the returns these existing assets are making to build new positions in the cASSET farms. I won't have much new capital to bring in, but compounding returns and maybe reshuffling some other assets over will be the go.
Long term positions in all three of these commodity assets is the goal. It will be interesting to see what other commodities get added in time (or even crypto's as cBTC would be a very easy addition as the oracles are readily available). I'd love to see Nickel and Lithium as options personally, and also Coffee, as I drink enough to support the global coffee price.
Have a play, and let me know what you think.
Thanks for reading,
JK.
If you enjoyed this post, here are some more you may like:
