When we started building StandX, everyone asked why we built a stablecoin first. We kept going, because every layer was a step toward one goal: perps on anything, permissionlessly.
Memecoin launchpads opened up ultra-early assets. Uniswap opened up spot. But derivatives, a $960 trillion market, are still gatekept.
So we built backward. DUSD gave us yield-bearing margin. Perps let every position earn yield. MM Uptime brought tick-level community market making. Today we ship the layer that ties them together: SIP-5, Universal Markets Listing.
The Road to Permissionless Markets
Look back at how DeFi evolved. From 2019, core protocols like MakerDAO, Uniswap and Compound matured and laid the infrastructure for decentralized finance. By 2020, permissionless spot listing and AMM based liquidity ignited the first wave of large scale DeFi growth.
Every shift came with a fundamental liberation of asset power.
Break down today’s crypto financial markets layer by layer and the pattern is clear:
- Pre-listing memes are permissionless. First generation, done.
- Spot, through Uniswap and AMMs, is permissionless. Second generation, done.
- Perps, the largest derivatives surface in crypto, are still gated by protocol operators.
- Options, prediction, and RFQ remain scattered, not yet a paradigm.
Every leap forward in crypto finance has repeated the same sentence at its core:
Liquidity is everything, and permissionless listing is the spark that ignites it all.
Yet when the industry turns to derivatives, the most imaginative frontier in financial markets, an inconvenient fact shows up: the right to list and the right to make markets for derivatives has never been unlocked.
This isn’t because open issuance is technically impossible. It’s because the industry hasn’t found a mechanism that is risk controlled, sustainable, and incentive aligned enough to return derivative listing to the market the way Uniswap returned spot.
When we built StandX, launched the yield-bearing base asset DUSD, and assembled a high performance Perps engine, we came to terms with a plain reality. For an emerging derivatives venue, launching with 300 to 400 trading pairs on day one and out-subsidizing incumbents on depth is simply unrealistic.
Real liquidity should not be force subsidized by the protocol. It should be returned to the market.
That is the core logic behind SIP-5: let communities and project teams own their own liquidity, and keep incentives aligned for the long term.
To get ready for this moment, we laid the groundwork:
- We created DUSD.
- We built DUSD margined Perps.
- To cold-start liquidity from zero, we invented the tick-level MM Uptime Program.
Now it’s time to close the loop and move into SIP-5’s full form.
Introducing SIP-5: Universal Markets
SIP-5 brings the Universal Markets framework to StandX. It returns the rights to list, make markets, and capture long-term revenue from perpetual derivatives back to the community, permissionlessly.
Here is the idea. Anyone can deploy any asset as a permissionless perpetual market on StandX: major crypto, long-tail tokens, pre-TGE tokens, on-chain events, and a wider universe of settleable targets. Each one comes online through a Sponsor and an Oracle Grid as an independent Market.
Within this framework, any user, community, protocol or project team that meets the staking and risk-control thresholds can act without prior approval from the StandX team. They commit qualifying assets, submit a market proposal, set a liquidity budget, and take on the ongoing maintenance. We call this role the Sponsor, the Market Initiator and Steward. We deliberately avoid “Asset Owner” or “Issuer,” because no one owns the market. The Sponsor’s job is to start it, guard it, and keep pushing it forward.
Underneath, a self-growth loop keeps Universal Markets running on their own:
- The Sponsor injects budget into the MM Uptime Pool.
- Community MMs earn rewards from the pool.
- Two-sided depth forms on the book.
- Volume picks up and fees start flowing.
- Stand Mode recycles fees back into the pool.
- Back to step two, and the market feeds itself.
The full stake injected by the Sponsor flows into that Market’s dedicated MM Uptime Pool. It goes to real community market makers based on measurable metrics: two-sided quotes, uptime, depth at the top of book, and proximity to mid.
In return, the Sponsor receives up to 70% of qualifying fees over the long term. They can also enable Stand Mode to keep recycling that fee share back into the market making budget, putting the Market into a self-reinforcing flywheel.
Once a Market gets going, it grows deeper, livelier, and more resilient on its own. The protocol does not need to subsidize it. The market feeds itself.
Every Universal Market inherits the core risk-control framework of StandX Perps. Margin, liquidation, position limits, oracle monitoring, insurance fund, and ADL all carry over. Sponsors can also configure a dedicated Market Shield as a first-loss buffer at the market layer.
SIP-5 turns “listing” from a one-time admission decision into a continuous market construction contract. The protocol no longer decides on its own which assets to list. That right goes to communities willing to share responsibility for liquidity, price quality, risk boundaries, and long-term growth.
Looking back at DeFi’s paradigm shifts:
- Memecoin launchpads returned ultra early stage issuance to the people
- Uniswap returned spot issuance and market making to the market
- StandX returns perps issuance, market-making, and long-term market-building to the community
Sponsor funded. Community made. From community, to community.