Meet Gains Network (2/3): Why gTrade

In the first part of this series, we briefly explored how Gains Network’s gTrade is built, its architecture, oracle system, how the price feed is derived, and where liquidity comes from.

In this part, we’ll focus on the real question, what this design mean for you as a trader, how does it translate into fair execution, transparency, and a smoother trading experience.

Broad Market support

So lets start with the obvious, but often overlooked benefit that comes with an oracle-driven perpetual futures engine like gTrades’s, it’s wide asset support. One of the first things you’ll notice is just how many markets gTrade covers. In addition to a large selection of crypto trading pairs (more than 250), gTrade offers 17 forex pairs, spanning majors and minors, plus commodities, indices, and over 20 U.S.-listed stocks. Want to unleash your inner Soros and take that short setup on cable? No problem, gTrade’s got you covered. Want to top blast that run on gold or get in on that juicy silver squeeze? Covered. Is Tesla due for a sharp rally after an earnings miss? Covered. You get the point, you can express your ideas across multiple asset classes without having to jump between different trading venues.

This breadth gives traders more flexibility, whether your strategy focuses on a single market or looks for setups across several. You don’t need to adapt your system to crypto-only conditions, because gTrade offers a variety of assets. And it’s constantly growing, new listings are added regularly, expanding the basket of tradable pairs every week.

You can find a detailed list of available trading pairs for each of the asset classes, including their market hours, below:

• Crypto,
• Forex,
• Commodities,
• Stocks,
• Indices.

Fun fact: Gains Network was the first to launch pure volatility perps on a decentralized perpetual exchange. That means you can even trade Volmex’s volatility indices on Bitcoin ($BVIV) and Ethereum ($EVIV) as perpetual futures allowing you to express your view on market uncertainty and trade implied volatility directly. 

Scamwick protection

Let’s first get the the definition of what a scam wick is out of the way. Small wicks occur quite frequently, however, to qualify as a “scam wick,” a wick must be extraordinarily large.

“While there is no official definition, the accepted meaning is that a scam wick is a violent price move, often orchestrated by a large or informed market participant or centralized entity, with the express intent of triggering stop-loss orders and liquidating leveraged positions, a relatively common occurrence in the crypto market.”

The essential environment for a scam wick is low liquidity. In a low-liquidity market, the order book is thin, meaning there are not enough buy or sell orders to absorb a large trade without causing significant price slippage. This makes the market vulnerable to manipulation. The initial move is often amplified by a chain reaction of automated orders, triggered stop-losses or liquidation cascades. In some cases, when the price becomes highly volatile, market makers withdraw their orders to avoid risk, further reducing liquidity and intensifying the move. These anomalies are often localized events, meaning the price disruption is typically contained to a single exchange, indicating a local liquidity issue or manipulation rather than a market-wide event.

From the perspective of a trader not explicitly looking to participate in such retracements, scam wicks can be one of the most frustrating aspects of leveraged trading. Regardless, the goal behind these events is always the same: pushing the price to levels where a high concentration of stop-losses or liquidity sits otherwise known as stop-loss or liquidity hunting and chances are, you’ve probably been a part of it before.

So, how does gTrade eliminate this? This is where the custom price feed we discussed in Part 1 comes in. gTrade takes the median price of an asset from up to eight data sources for each order. On top of that, its oracle architecture uses additional Price Feeds as anchors, meaning that if gTrade’s internal median price differs by more than 1.5% from the price feed, a circuit breaker is triggered.

Let’s look at an example of the price action on one of the best-known centralized exchanges. Because gTrade’s architecture uses multiple price sources for every pair, the ETH/USD price only dipped to $2,980.32 during a specific period of volatility.

$2,977.62 was the bottom. This means one of your trades could have been liquidated on this exchange because it would have reached below your liquidation threshold, and your trade would not have remained open to later see profit.

The price difference between the Chainlink DON and the centralized exchange price is 0.09% in this case, which represents 13.5% PnL on 150x leverage. This example is an average one, as it often happens multiple times a week, and it is clearly enough to make a trading strategy unprofitable.

Another example of how this price feed design translates into scam wick protection can be seen during the market crash on October 10th, when comparing the price action of BTC, ETH, and SOL.

Lowest wick price of:

 gTrade ( $GNS ) vs Hyperliquid ( $HYPE )

$BTC: $103,151 vs $100,837 or -2.2%

$ETH: $3,434.5 vs $3,241.2 or -6.6%

$SOL: $168.97 vs $137.51 or -18.6%

Zero price impact on BTC and ETH

Yes, you read that right, zero price impact on BTC and ETH when opening positions.

“Price impact refers to the difference between the expected price of a trade and the actual execution price, basically, the cost of slippage and spread. It’s one of the killers of profitability, especially in leveraged trading.”

gTrade eliminates this by executing all trades synthetically against its on-chain oracle price. No matter the trade size, you can open positions at the oracle market price, ensuring cost-efficient and predictable (no widening of spreads) execution costs, even during volatility.

You can find a more detailed explanation on how it works and comparisons with real examples here.

Guaranteed execution

Another trader-friendly feature gTrade has introduced is guaranteed execution.

Through its lookback oracle mechanism, gTrade can retroactively reference recent price data rather than relying solely on the current tick. This ensures that limit, stop, SL, and TP orders execute at the exact price you set, the only exception being when the market gaps during open or close times, in which case execution happens at the first available price post-gap.

This creates a fairer, more reliable order system where traders can trust that their orders are executed as intended.

High Leverage option

Due to it’s design, gTrade also takes pride in offering some of the highest leverage available across decentralized trading venues:

- 50x on stocks

- 150x on crypto

- 1000x on forex

You can set the leverage for each individual trade, and as always, keep in mind to use this tool wisely.

Carrot x gTrade

These mechanisms enable a realistic, transparent trading environment. And at Carrot we’re focused on offering a simulated experience that can be replicated and hedged on an actual protocol with real liquidity, for you, this means you face the same conditions in the funded phase as you do during evaluation.

When traders succeed under unrealistic costs, those results don’t translate to the real world, since they can’t be meaningfully funded or copied and this is where a lot of existing prop firms run into trouble. That’s why our integration with gTrade is about more than just access, it’s about ensuring that transparency, fairness, and real-world trading conditions come first.

You’re essentially trading in a dark pool, but one that’s lit and transparent by design. Your trades don’t move or impact the market, so you’re effectively not giving away information to other participants.

By now, you probably have a good understanding of the unique advantages gTrade offers to you as a trader. But if you have any questions about the mechanisms covered in this post, feel free to ask them in our Discord, we’re always happy to dive deeper.

Stay tuned for Part 3, where we’ll look at the current limitations, fees, and spreads, and the things you need to be aware of when choosing gTrade as your trading venue of choice.

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