In this article, we review Aluna.Social, a multi-exchange crypto trading terminal, copy trading, and social network platform. Aluna’s goal is to improve transparency and the trading experience for both retail and professional market participants.
- The key idea behind the Aluna platform is to incentivize transparency among the trading community so participants can make informed decisions based on the wealth of sentiment and analytics data available.
- The Aluna.Social platform combines several core features such as the multi-exchange trading terminal, the traders’ social network, the copy (and counter-) trading functionality, and prediction games (to be released at a later date).
- The platform’s ALN utility token is set to play an important role in tying the ecosystem together and promoting its development, weaving incentive and gamification mechanisms into every aspect of the platform.
How Aluna.Social Works
Aluna attempts to make crypto traders’ lives easier by, first and foremost, allowing traders to “put their money where their mouth is.” Currently, traders on the internet can recommend their followers to buy or sell an asset without necessarily doing the same themselves. With Aluna, everyone who uses the platform for trading will have their transactions published for all to see (without having to reveal how much their wallet is worth). Other traders will, thus, be able to verify that what is promoted is actually traded, and they can then act with the knowledge of what the other traders are doing.
The second core prong of the platform is its multi-exchange trading terminal that allows users to trade across the participating cryptocurrency exchanges in a completely non-custodial manner. Hence, Aluna combines radical transparency with user control of the funds.
Also Read: What is an Example of Social Trading?
Aluna Review: Features
Multi-exchange trading terminal
One of the issues many crypto traders face is the need to manage their activity across multiple exchanges as there is no single exchange featuring all the important trading pairs. The Aluna platform changes that by allowing users to connect their exchange accounts using their API keys to manage all their accounts in one place.
Aluna enables traders to make transactions on all the exchanges that they have accounts on by connecting to the exchanges’ APIs. They can also track the performance of their whole portfolio within one interface.
A Social Network for Traders
One of Aluna’s most innovative solutions is its social network for traders. The key difference from the more traditional social networks like Twitter is that it not only allows users to post opinions but also tracks their actual trading activity. This makes it possible for other members of the community to compare their words to their deeds to see if they themselves attempt to profit from the views that they are sharing. Thus, an Aluna Profile works as a trust pass or “proof of performance”.
Automated trading: copy (and counter-) trading, algorithmic strategies
Aluna offers the platform participants two main automation options. First, the presence of the social network of traders makes it pretty straightforward for Aluna to provide copy trading and counter-trading functionalities. A trader on Aluna can designate a certain amount of crypto that will be programmatically used to automatically make the same trades as an account of their choosing or the opposite ones.
Copy trading currently works only for margin and futures markets, and will also be available for spot portfolios in the future.
Secondly, more experienced and tech-savvy traders can bring to Aluna the algorithmic strategies from custom trading bots, which can also be copied. In the future, Aluna will also provide a platform for users to develop their own strategies.
Monthly Trading Competitions
Aluna is also developing what they call ROI (Return on Investment) Farming, which is basically a sophisticated name for giving ALN awards to the best traders on the platform. On Aluna, a cross-exchange Leaderboard ranks users based on their performance and ROI. The top traders will then be rewarded (on a monthly and yearly basis) with ALN tokens, which will effectively act as a performance incentive. This will further induce good traders to share their trades on the social network.
Profit Sharing
Once PRO subscriptions go live on Aluna, up to 50% of the monthly subscription fees paid for accessing premium features (such as copy-trading) will be transferred to the Performance Pool. The latter will then be used to reward top traders on the platform as determined by the Leaderboard every month.
Prediction games
The other two prediction game features in Aluna’s pipeline are binary outcome and social trading games. Binary outcome games involve predictions about questions with two mutually exclusive answers. An example of such a question is whether the price of BTC will be more than $20,000 on December 31. Social trading games will give users the opportunity to make bets without fully exposing themselves to the adverse outcomes. The way this is achieved is through enabling them to wager on whether individual trades will succeed or fail, without fully copying them.
You might also be interested in:
ALN token and Tokenomics
The Aluna platform’s design relies significantly on its native ALN token. ALN is an ERC20 utility token residing on the Ethereum blockchain. All the 100,000,000 tokens that will ever exist have already been minted at the token generation event.
ALN is supposed to create utility in four main ways:
- Protocol mining. Liquidity providers and active participants on the platform are going to be rewarded with the ALN tokens allocated to the Ecosystem Fund.
- Staking. Users who stake ALN will be eligible for a range of benefits, depending on the amount staked. Those include access to the premium features, gaming fee reductions and bonus token rewards.
- Payments. ALN holders will be able to pay discounted prices for using the premium features of the platform.
- Governance. Aluna’s token will also be usable for participation in the protocol governance, as discussed in the next section.
The token supply is distributed in the following way. 49% of the ALN supply will be kept in the project’s governable treasury. 11% will be used to remunerate the project team and advisors. 15% will be crowd-sold at the upcoming token sale. The remaining quarter will be allocated to the Ecosystem Fund (to be used to reward certain platform participants, such as the best traders on the Leaderboard, and for general airdrops) and the early adopters.
The ALN supply is set to reduce over time through a burn mechanism, which may make it rather attractive to investors.
For more information, please refer to the Aluna Whitepaper and Token Page.
Aluna review: Governance
While the Aluna project is currently being run as a traditional startup, the Aluna team is envisaging making the platform decentralized in the future. This is supposed to be achieved through the creation of a decentralized autonomous organization, the Aluna DAO, while the transition is planned to take place gradually over three years.
Aluna is planning to launch the first version of their DAO in Q1 2021. In this setup, users will be able to stake ALN in order to submit governance proposals, while other participants will be able to stake ALN in order to vote on them. In this way, the community will be able to govern the protocol and even partly shape the way the platform develops.
Aluna also has a permissioned chat group where users holding more than 1337 ALN in their MetaMask wallet have the opportunity to keep in touch with each other and have more elaborate and real-time discussions with other ALN holders.
Current Status and Roadmap
Currently, Aluna has already implemented in beta the multi-exchange trading terminal and copy trading functionalities. It has on boarded five major cryptocurrency exchanges: Bitfinex, Binance, Bitmex, Bittrex and Poloniex. You can sign up for Aluna’s free beta here.
The key upcoming developments for the platform are the integration with more exchanges, the prediction gaming functionality, as well as the implementation of other Web3-related features – such as the decentralized trading tracker and on-chain social trading. Aluna is also set to conduct its public token sale to distribute 5% of its supply to investors in Q4 2020.
Aluna review: Pros and Cons
Pros
- You can already try the Aluna.Social copy trading and traders social network platform in beta for free.
- Aluna allows users to safely consume other traders’ opinions and express valuable opinions themselves, as well as benefit from token rewards for participation and trading performance.
- In contrast to centralized copy trading alternatives like eToro, Aluna is completely non-custodial, meaning that users always remain in control of their funds.
- Innovative incentive mechanisms including ROI Farming, and a performance pool from monthly subscriptions that is split among the top traders of the month.
Cons
- A limited number of integrated cryptocurrency exchanges. However, this will change in the future, as the platform adds other exchanges as it develops.
Aluna Review: Conclusion
As the crypto space becomes larger, with new blockchain platforms, DApps, tokens, and exchanges created regularly, crypto investors and traders – both retail and professional – increasingly need one-stop-shop solutions like Aluna.Social to maximize their potential. Retail market participants will benefit from the possibility to learn from their experienced brethren and follow them in their moves through copy trading. Meanwhile, professional traders can enjoy the seamless trading experience across multiple exchanges and earn token rewards for their participation on the platform and positive trading performance.
As usual, we will be delighted to read what you think about our Aluna review in the comments section below.
Also Read:
