Sean | Derive (@SeanNotShorn) header
Sean | Derive (@SeanNotShorn) profile picture

Head of Research @derivexyz

Joined June 2021
Photo by Sean | Derive (@SeanNotShorn)Photo by Sean | Derive (@SeanNotShorn)Photo by Sean | Derive (@SeanNotShorn)Photo by Sean | Derive (@SeanNotShorn)Photo by Sean | Derive (@SeanNotShorn)Photo by Sean | Derive (@SeanNotShorn)Photo by Sean | Derive (@SeanNotShorn)Photo by Sean | Derive (@SeanNotShorn)Photo by Sean | Derive (@SeanNotShorn)Photo by Sean | Derive (@SeanNotShorn)
This bet is really a 2 year one touch on BTC at $126.2k. @DeriveXYZ 's BTC SEPT27 options have an IV of 39%, meaning the odds of a $126K one touch by SEPT27 ~19%. Extrapolating for the 2 year gives a probability of ~37%. At even money, this is +$260K of EV for @jason
Bitcoin will never break its all-time high again." — Jason Calacanis Jason, I'll bet you $1,000,000 it will break its ATH. Here are the terms: Bitcoin hits or exceeds $126,210.50 on or before October 28, 2028, 12PM PST I’m happy to trust you to pay or if you prefer we can each escrow the dollars with independent party. The bet is either settled when Bitcoin hits the ATH or on October 28, 2028. @jason Do we have a bet?
1
1
12
1,224
Sean | Derive retweeted
HEAT is live. Options trading built around the chart experience. Pick a direction, drag a strike, see what you make if price ends there. Watch what other traders are doing, copy the biggest winners, and post about your trades! How it works ↓
27
12
5
164
65,735
This is the start of trillions of onchain options. @josh_pwrk is one of the smartest and hardest working people I've ever met and this interview is an incredible overview of the v3 architecture.
A closer look at our thinking behind V3. Our CTO @josh_pwrk sat down with @Nomaticcap to talk through how we got here, why we chose Ethereum and ZK, and where we think onchain finance is headed. We've spent five years building onchain options and learning from the traders who use them. Josh shares the lessons behind V3 and why we want to make it easier for others to build alongside us. Watch the full conversation below.
36
809
Sean | Derive retweeted
Our Head of Research, Sean Dawson in Reuters on where the December BTC book is sitting. Full article in next tweet 👇
5
8
76
6,670
Amazing thread by Ksett - if you want to see the future of finance check this out
This moment feels like an origin story for @DeriveXYZ 5 years of persistence. Infrastructure that scales well beyond the walls of crypto. Shipping repeatedly, consistently…and then finally: traction 🧵
1
19
617
oh?
17
8
6
149
7,148
2x better than tbills!
Some of the best USDC rates in all of crypto @DeriveXYZ
1
12
552
Sean | Derive retweeted
Closing the month with a $130m day, and $2B turn-over while we had such a boring market is a sign Derive is going to pop 💥. Especially because the biggest announcements are yet to come.
A $130m Friday takes us to the end of July. A quieter month in general for markets - but some big strides made - $XAUT options launched, our first foray into RWAs (go trade and win a Derive branded gold bar) - $2B in volume (up 4x YoY) - Derive v3 internal testnet live - Signed an integration deal that has been in the making for a year and a half, more to come on this. - 733,500 $DRV bought back - Market share continued to strengthen vs centralised options exchanges A lot of unsexy grind work that has been done behind the scenes. It’s not flashy, but building a great options exchange is about getting 1,000 small details iteratively right. It’s relationship building - for the latest deal we signed I sat across from the CEO of our partner company and he said he gets dozens of calls from teams trying to get an integration for options - but that the only reason he was taking the meeting was our track record of building in the category with focus for 5 years. Tough to fake. I am optimistic that these advantages will begin to compound in a much more visible way throughout the remainder of 2026. As always, reach out in DMs if you are building structured products, vaults, options frontends, or hedging tools.
2
12
573
A $130m Friday takes us to the end of July. A quieter month in general for markets - but some big strides made - $XAUT options launched, our first foray into RWAs (go trade and win a Derive branded gold bar) - $2B in volume (up 4x YoY) - Derive v3 internal testnet live - Signed an integration deal that has been in the making for a year and a half, more to come on this. - 733,500 $DRV bought back - Market share continued to strengthen vs centralised options exchanges A lot of unsexy grind work that has been done behind the scenes. It’s not flashy, but building a great options exchange is about getting 1,000 small details iteratively right. It’s relationship building - for the latest deal we signed I sat across from the CEO of our partner company and he said he gets dozens of calls from teams trying to get an integration for options - but that the only reason he was taking the meeting was our track record of building in the category with focus for 5 years. Tough to fake. I am optimistic that these advantages will begin to compound in a much more visible way throughout the remainder of 2026. As always, reach out in DMs if you are building structured products, vaults, options frontends, or hedging tools.
6
12
2
65
4,352
Sean | Derive retweeted
Hyperliquid held through a 27% crash, then rallied. Not on hype, on a mechanism: every fee it earns buys back and burns its own token. What's next? So I audited 13 tokens that claim to do this. Only 7 actually put a floor under the price. The rest hoard it, pay lockers, or run opaque, they just look identical on the dashboard. And even 7 isn't the answer, because a floor doesn't tell you when to buy, or where the signal works at all. Here's where the cash really goes, and where the edge actually lives 🧵
2
1
1
281
I am very proud to announce that we have launched the @ammalgam protocol. I have spent the last 4 years building a simple idea, a dex coupled with a lending protocol to create capital efficiency for dex liquidity providers, and the utility to borrow anything. There is a lot to say from a technical perspective about the construction of various elements of the protocol. It is complex, this was the cost of building something that can theoretically support borrowing on any token. Decoupling off-chain crypto trading data from lending markets is a critical step to unlock decentralized finance. Some critical features: - Dex trading assets are automatically lent out in the integrated lending protocol to earn swap fees and lending fees - Dex trading assets can be used as collateral to borrow against, unlocking neutral, long, and short market making, and leveraged liquidity. - Leveraged market making is similar to concentrated liquidity in its effect, but uses borrowed assets rather than a protocol mechanism - Users can borrow dex liquidity shares to allow for turning impermanent loss into impermanent gain. - liquidity is fungible allowing for both simpler math for borrowing calculations and easier matching of users needs, similar to the advantages of perps over options. - Swap fees scale with price change impact rather than swap size to allowing for algorithmically pricing informed vs uninformed order flow to the dex. Additionally making it expensive to manipulate the price - A series of protections are in place to protect the concept of price from manipulation, using a price range from multiple twap lengths and spot price, pricing assets with the worst price in that range for ltv calculations, and limiting recorded prices in the twap to move 10 ticks per block to ignore outliers. - Each new loan is checked for its impact to liquidation risk by bucketing the price curve into 25 tick tranches and capping how much potential liquidation risk can be supported in each tranche by pool swap reserves in case of cascading liquidations. - Debt spanning multiple tranches can be liquidated in chunks, one tranche at a time using a dutch auction that increases the premium as the ltv of that chunk increases. This ensures that massive loans are not at risk of destroying the price by being liquidated all at once (👋 @newmichwill). Perhaps some will say that the design and concept we put forward is similar to something else. This is likely true in many facets of what we built, we surveyed everything that has been built and took ideas from everywhere, this wouldn't be possible without the free sharing spirit of open source code. As such all contracts are open source and available to view on etherscan. We spent a tremendous amount of time and effort working to fix all the issues we could find. Perhaps it was enough effort, perhaps it was not. Today marks the start of the final audit and the start of our ability to find product market fit. Today ends one chapter and start the next. I am looking to get in touch with: - Creators of tokens - Vault operators - Providers of on chain market making liquidity - Anyone who has used a lending protocol before on chain - Swap aggregators - Searchers - And anyone else who is curious about how to leverage what we built
Ammalgam is LIVE on Ethereum mainnet. Trade impermanent loss for permanent gain: ammalgam.xyz
39
30
8
144
26,190
Sean | Derive retweeted
Derive RFQs are getting interesting, the largest one this week was a $1.34M block, sell 150 BTC 65K/60K put spread expiring Jul-31, net $445K credit collected. And that's just Monday and Tuesday. As the week progresses we can see more interesting blocks come through. Text by @derivativemonky
3
11
524
Sean | Derive retweeted
An interesting dataset I left out of the report is the book liquidity coverage against RFQs, along with overall improvements over time. Main takeaways are: - Book liquidity has improved each month in all tenors - The best displayed median spread got worse in the recent two months for most tenors, which can be explained by the increase in coverage in May and June - Despite the median spread worsening a little bit, an increasing order book coverage is essential for any successful trading venue, as it provides confidence to traders that they will be able to get in and out of positions when needed - The book liquidity improvement for contracts below 10-delta is pretty impressive during May and June. - Despite 80%+ of the volume coming from RFQ (see item 3.1 in the article), nearly 80% of total legs traded could be filled by the book in June by most tenors except for 61+ DTE, which got materially worse than in the previous months The $HYPE book on Derive has improved by orders of magnitude since launching 8 months ago, and it has become the largest non-BTC or ETH options market in the whole industry, having surpassed $SOL in all exchanges' OI since April
1
6
4
37
244,043
Sean | Derive retweeted
Panel: Advancing Digital Asset Options Markets Through Institutional-Grade Data & Analytics @SeanNotShorn of @DeriveXYZ Andrew Melville of @BlockScholes John Lagman of @Bloomberg Session highlights below
1
3
3
487
come see me yap about options
Our head of research @SeanNotShorn will be speaking at Redefine Tomorrow on June 5th with @BlockScholes and John Lagman @Bloomberg
1
4
403
Sean | Derive retweeted
All-time high in $HYPE options volume on @DeriveXYZ. Wondering who's behind a decent chunk of those volumes. d2HYPE coded. Ur welcome @dcfgod @0xAlvaroHK 💚 Hyperliquid
Today was our largest HYPE trading day, with almost $70M in HYPE options volume. Since launching in Dec 2025, we’ve seen: • $1.63B total notional traded • $720M in HYPE options volume • $27M of HYPE & kHYPE used as collateral In under 6 months, HYPE is challenging ETH for Derive’s second-largest market.
11
7
1
42
17,572
Alt option markets are surging in popularity. In less than 6 months, $HYPE has overtaken $ETH in option open interest on @DeriveXYZ. Option markets are due for a shake up in 2026 🔥
1
3
1
19
6,167
First big Cardano (yes you read that right, Cardano) options trade hit the tape on @DeriveXYZ today ~$5m call spread selling upside and collecting USD, collateralized with $ADA If you want market leading pricing for exotic options in size (this is a pilot), DM me
5
9
41
2,597
ETH bulls coming back into the fold 9 of the top 10 options (sorted by premiums bought) in the last week were calls. Seems these traders are betting on $2500 ETH as early as May, and a super recovery to $4000 by the end of Sept.
3
2
13
489