We’re entering the third quarter, and it’s been a difficult six months for the web3 space. Gradient has felt this pain especially. We cater mainly to traders of lowcap tokens, and that’s the corner of the market that always gets crushed hardest in a bear. I’ll start by saying the problem we built Gradient to solve is still very much alive. Declining volume has made it hard for an emerging startup like us to establish a presence. It’s set us back, but it hasn’t ended us. When Gradient launched, it proved how effective the platform could be. Users saved an average of 6–8 cents on every dollar they traded— over $700k in savings on low eight figures of total volume. It worked exactly as intended, and we were growing week over week at a huge rate. Then adoption slowed. The core projects we started with began to decline, and as they faded, so did their communities. People who no longer traded had no reason to use Gradient or tell a friend, and that quietly took our growth plan apart. It left us active only where we’d started, in our own community— which was no longer a path to scaling. Gradient is permissionless. Any coin on ETH, BASE, and BNB can be traded here, price-impact free, against either a counterparty or a market maker. The trouble is that both are hard to find right now. In this market, the incentives simply aren’t there. If you’ve read this far, you’ve probably spotted the chicken-and-egg problem: Gradient is incredibly useful when people are actively trading lowcaps that last longer than a few days, and not very useful when they aren’t. $GRAY has suffered alongside, it captures fees, and fees track volume- so when volume dried up, the token followed. That isn’t a side effect we’re hiding from; it’s the mechanism working as designed, in a market that stopped giving it anything to work with. I won’t pretend there’s a lever we can pull to change that on its own, separate from volume and mindshare coming back. There isn’t. What I can tell you is what we’re doing in the meantime. Solana integration: We’re bringing Gradient to @Solana the most active lowcap market in crypto right now, and an entirely new addressable audience for us. Rethinking how lowcaps launch and trade: Gradient’s mission has always been more efficient lowcap markets, swaps were the easy target. The deeper problems sit upstream in how tokens launch, how early liquidity forms, and how they go on to trade. We’ve spent a long time inside these mechanics, and we’re researching and developing ways to fix them. As tokenization takes hold, the venues where assets launch and trade will matter more than ever. - Douglas

Good afternoon Grads. As of Sunday, our v1.1 contracts went live to mainnet. This marks the end of our limited beta, with a full, permissionless platform release just around the corner. All tokens will soon be tradable on the Gradient, making our platform the leading solution for chain-wide price-impact-free trading. Currently the Gradient is undergoing the final migration to v1.1, after which the remaining features will be rolled out (public market-making, UI updates, and auto-fallback). As token partner teams migrate their liquidity to the new contract, flash layer liquidity will be limited on partner pairs. This means that regular matching orders remain functional on all pairs, alongside the $GRAY flash layer liquidity. Cheers to the magnitudes of progress 2025 brought us— 2026 is where we really kick things off.

8 figures of price-impact free trading later, the Gradient has saved its users north of $500,000. All of this has occurred across only 8 token pairs, as part of our partner release. As far as POCs go, Gradient has ticked every box. We have now continued the rollout into a widespread release, with APIS prepared for platform integrations and our first update (v1.1) rolling out in preparation. V1.1 brings a few tweaks to the Gradient, which optimize user experience. These features are set to begin rolling out over the coming week. Read about the update here: docs.gradient.trade/app-upda… The core focus of the update is to: Reinforce the value of trading on the Gradient. With savings per trade and total account savings being integrated into our UI, users are constantly reminded why trading on Gradient is beneficial. Allow for more fluid swapping on the platform. The enabling of automatic fallback propels platform volume - users swap on Gradient as they would on any DEX with the added ability to save depending on TTL. Expand tradable pairs. With the integration of UNI v3 pairs Gradient opens its door to more tokens, expanding its potential user base. Look out for updates pertaining to v1.1 on our main page, as we begin unfolding Gradient’s next chapter!

Today, the Gradient platform volume has reached an all-time high (excluding launch day) thanks to our liquidity recycling update. In the last 24h, over 400k of orders have been instantly fulfilled. Gradient is officially the first ever over-the-counter platform to allow for perpetual instant liquidity— eliminating the need for counter-parties to satisfy demand.

Since the release of $GRAY on the Gradient, platform progression has been signalling increasing adoption. 

Over the last week, individual wallets trading on the Gradient have jumped by over 100 users. We also saw platform volume soar past $2M this week, generating roughly $20k of fees which have since been used to buy $GRAY. These tokens will be burned over the weekend, marking the start of official Buys & Burns on the Gradient. We have also integrated 2 new UI based features allowing users to: - Toggle all values in USD - Quick Fill feature, allowing users to directly fulfill limit orders by clicking on them in the order book. Looking forward to our upcoming next major milestone, where we will be welcoming partners of the Gradient for trade on the platform, expected near month end.

Just 3 days after launch, Gradient has already surpassed $1.5M in trading volume. That translates to... Six figures saved for traders. Five figures in fees fueling $GRAY buybacks. A massive milestone driven entirely by the trading of $GRAY. This serves as a strong proof of concept and a segue to our full release. With over 15 verified liquidity partners & their communities on their way to join us, alongside any and all tokens, the real fun has yet to begin. Our rollout is setting the foundation for adoption— the next chapter in our roadmap; releasing this upcoming week. Checkout the on-chain stats for yourself: dune.com/usethegradient/grad…

Yesterday select token partners went live for trade on the Gradient as part of our final beta ahead of public release. This is the first time that any token other than $GRAY has been traded on the platform- as anticipated, the trading of partner tokens is going incredibly well. Users are currently instantly trading in the flash layer & completing orders in the matching layer all while avoiding price-impact. Even in this beta version, with few users and limited tokens, Gradient’s strength is already on display. As an example, on both $GRAY & $KIWI in less than 24H, 5 figures + of sell pressure has been absorbed, with buyers equally taking advantage and accumulating similar amounts. Communities are already coming together, powering a new and more efficient way of trading the low-cap tokens we all love. Just imagine when the gates open to all.

Our final beta event is the last thing standing between Gradient and its public release. This makes it a great time to dive into how we've planned our release after the event... The Final Beta The second and final event is to include the trading of select partners, the market making panel, and custom price orders. Our tester group size will be far greater this time around. GRAY on Gradient We'll be closing this beta with $GRAY being permanently tradable by the public on the Gradient platform. Partners on Gradient Shortly after, our 15+ partner tokens will join us on the Gradient, committing liquidity to the Flash Layer. Public communities will be able to trade these coins price-impact free through both layers for the first time ever. Any & all coins on Gradient Next up will be our wide-spread platform release, allowing any and all coins to be traded on the Gradient in a permissionless fashion. Integrations with leading trading platforms and protocols will follow, enabling users to route trades through Gradient directly from their preferred apps.

I just bought some $GRAY with @useGradient, here's how it went. [check thread for details & transactions]