Middle school chemistry mentions that to make the bubbles blown out more stable and longer-lasting, one should add Polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) to the solvent — a thickening agent and foam stabilizer that provides structure and durability to the foam, allowing it to maintain its shape and resist external pressure.

Similarly, to maintain the sustainable liquidity and defensible market share of Perpdex, it cannot be achieved through passive farming, signaling, or volume manipulation, but rather through actively constructing an extremely competitive psychological environment. Here, "PVP" not only stands for the chemical stabilizer but also represents Player-vs-Player.

By carefully designed mechanisms, traders are made to compete against each other, and the protocol's mechanism should be used to stimulate the most powerful intrinsic human drives — greed and dissatisfaction — to create a self-sustaining trading activity flywheel, thereby breaking free from excessive reliance on the release of inflationary tokens and ultimately achieving true market stability.

I. The Great Game: Deconstructing the Zero-Sum Reality of Trading

The essence of trading is a zero-sum game; if you lose, I gain, and there is no need to hide or gloss over it.

Meme: The Most Primitive PvP Arena

The trading ecosystem of memes is the purest and most unvarnished embodiment of the PvP principle. Unlike assets that claim to have potential utility or cash flow, the value of memes almost entirely derives from their cultural relevance, community hype, and viral spread on social media — that is, attention itself. In such a market, trading resembles a form of "cultural arbitrage": predicting or jumping ahead of the market to discover the next hot topic. This makes the meme market a stark zero-sum game: one trader's profit directly comes from another trader's loss. On low-fee, high-throughput public chains like Solana, this PvP environment is pushed to the extreme. Trading bots run rampant, with median holding times measured in seconds, and the market evolves into a "super PvP" ecosystem where newly entering retail traders find it nearly impossible to achieve substantial profits. This brutal environment reveals the essence of speculative markets — it is not a collaboratively built community but an arena where participants devour each other.

Since it is a place where one eats another, claiming to be a benevolent entity illuminating the earth seems somewhat superfluous.

The Illusion of Positive-Sum Growth

The mainstream narrative in the cryptocurrency industry often emphasizes its "positive-sum" aspect: the continuously growing total market capitalization, new application scenarios brought by technological innovation, and the ongoing influx of new users. This macro narrative is real and important, but it fundamentally disconnects from the micro level — that is, the daily experiences of traders on Perpdex. For a user engaged in high-frequency trading on Perpdex, their goal is not to "build a brand new financial system," but to seize capital from other market participants amid price fluctuations. What their profit and loss (P&L) interface displays is a brutal zero-sum reality. Any successful PvP protocol must be built on this basic understanding, ceasing to package itself as a universal "public utility" and instead embracing its true identity as an "arena." The protocol's positioning should shift from "trading market" to "defeating other traders," aligning its product characteristics with users' true motivations.

Leverage: The Great Amplifier

High leverage is a core feature of Perpdex, playing the role of a catalyst and amplifier in the PvP dynamics. Leverage not only amplifies financial gains and losses but, more importantly, it greatly intensifies the emotional intensity of PvP conflicts. The exhilaration from a profit and the devastating blow from a loss are disproportionately magnified. This emotional amplification is crucial for "hooking" traders into the psychological cycle we will discuss in the next chapter.

Traditional incentive models assume that trading volume is a function of liquidity and incentives, while trading volume is a function of conflict. By designing mechanisms that create sustained, quantifiable conflicts (such as leaderboards and tournaments), the protocol can generate a stable base trading volume driven by intrinsic competition without relying on direct token rewards.

II. The Dogma of Participation: Weaponizing Greed and Dissatisfaction

The core of PvP is to draw out two human emotions — greed and dissatisfaction.

The Winner's Curse: Cultivating Greed and Overconfidence

For winning traders, the platform's goal is to systematically cultivate their greed and overconfidence, prompting them to engage in bolder, more frequent, and more reckless trading.

• Psychological Mechanism: Successful trades trigger a series of cognitive biases. First is the Overconfidence Bias, where traders tend to attribute their success to their superior skills rather than luck, underestimating the risks of future trades. Next is the Confirmation Bias, where they actively seek information that confirms the effectiveness of their "winning strategy" while ignoring contradictory evidence. This psychological state is known in trading psychology as the "Winner's Curse," where the largest profit often foreshadows the largest loss. From a neuroscience perspective, profits stimulate the brain to release dopamine, creating a powerful reward loop that reinforces trading behavior and encourages traders to take on greater risks for stronger stimulation.

Taking a few mainstream CEX/protocols as examples:

• Platform Amplification Strategy: The design of the protocol should aim to amplify the thrill of victory and transform it into a symbol of public social status.
• Prominent Profit and Loss Display: Show high floating profits and losses (PNL) in the most visible position on the interface, using positive colors like green.
• Achievement System: Establish "winning streak" badges, "hundredfold profit" medals, etc., turning trading achievements into boast-worthy virtual identities.
• Public Leaderboards: Real-time updated leaderboards are a core tool for creating social pressure, turning individual profits into a public competition.
• Social Sharing Features: One-click sharing of profit screenshots to social media turns winners into the platform's "walking advertisements," while also imposing FOMO, jealousy, and anxiety on other users.

The Loser's Game: Creating "Dissatisfaction"

For losing traders, the platform's goal is to prevent them from rationally exiting due to losses, instead igniting their feelings of "dissatisfaction," prompting them to immediately engage in the next trade to "recover." This is a more powerful and critical link in the entire psychological cycle.

• Psychological Mechanism: At its core is the Loss Aversion theory. Pioneering research by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky has shown that the psychological pain of a loss is twice that of the pleasure derived from an equivalent gain. This intense negative emotion can lead to a series of irrational behaviors, such as stubbornly holding onto a continuously declining position to avoid admitting a loss (sunk cost fallacy), or more importantly — revenge trading. Revenge trading is an impulsive, high-risk trade made out of anger, frustration, and "dissatisfaction" after suffering a significant loss, with the sole purpose of quickly recouping losses. This feeling of "dissatisfaction" is the key engine for retaining losing users and encouraging them to continue contributing to trading volume.

Taking a few mainstream CEX/protocols as examples:

• Platform Amplification Strategy: Every detail of the interface should be designed to maximize users' "dissatisfaction," preventing them from conducting calm reviews and risk assessments.
• Visualizing "So Close": When users are forcibly liquidated, the interface can show how close the price was to their stop-loss line or profit target, suggesting that it was merely bad luck rather than a strategic error.
• Loss Framing Effect: Describe losses as temporary "floating losses" or "pullbacks" rather than permanent capital losses, and immediately push new "market opportunities."
• Instant Re-entry Incentives: After users close positions or are liquidated, immediately pop up prompts like "one-click reverse position" or "claim trading fee discount coupon to fight again," shortening the decision time from loss to the next trade, leveraging the emotional window to facilitate impulsive trading.

From the perspective of protocol operation, the most valuable users are not those who continuously profit and regularly withdraw — the "smart money." On the contrary, the ideal users are those trapped in the cycle of profits and losses. Regardless of their net gains or losses, they continuously generate substantial trading volume and fees. The maximization of the protocol's revenue comes from the intense churn of capital between winners and losers.

Therefore, every element of platform design — from the color of profit and loss numbers to the animations after transactions, to the default leverage ratios and social features — is no longer merely an aesthetic choice but a tool for manipulating traders' psychology, guiding them towards the two high-volume behavior patterns of greed and "dissatisfaction."

III. Liquidity Spiral: From Psychological Cycle to Protocol Flywheel

Once enough traders are captured through carefully designed psychological mechanisms, the protocol can initiate a self-reinforcing positive cycle known as the "liquidity spiral." This process transforms individual irrational behaviors into a sustainable, structural competitive advantage at the protocol level.

Stage One: The Core Engine Composed of "Hooked" Traders

The starting point of this spiral is the core user group driven by greed and dissatisfaction, as detailed earlier. These winners and losers are locked in a continuous trading loop. Their trading behavior is, in a sense, "organic," as it is driven more by intrinsic psychological needs (seeking pleasure, recovering losses, proving oneself) rather than external token incentives. This core group creates a stable and predictable flow of base trading volume and fee income for the protocol. This is the first step for the protocol to break free from reliance on speculative/"mercenary capital."

Stage Two: Attracting Mature Liquidity Providers

With a stable and substantial base trading volume, the protocol becomes highly attractive to the second tier of market participants — professional liquidity providers. Market Makers are drawn in because they can earn stable profits from the frequent trades generated by core traders. Arbitrageurs are attracted by price fluctuations, and their activities help align the protocol's prices with the broader market, thereby improving market efficiency. The injection of this professional liquidity significantly deepens the order book, reduces slippage, and enhances the trading experience for all users. This makes the platform more appealing to new users, further solidifying the core engine.

Stage Three: The Return of "Mercenary Capital" and the Formation of a Liquidity Black Hole

When the protocol establishes a deep, active, and efficient market through the first two stages, an interesting reversal occurs. The "mercenary capital" that the protocol initially sought to escape now actively returns. But this time, they are not attracted by tokens airdropped by the protocol, but by excellent trading conditions (extremely low slippage, huge trading depth, abundant arbitrage opportunities). Their arrival completes the final piece of the liquidity spiral puzzle. The influx of massive capital turns the protocol into a "liquidity black hole" — a market with such immense gravitational pull that competitors find it difficult to shake its position. At this point, the protocol's competitive moat has shifted from temporary incentive measures to structural barriers formed by network effects and deep liquidity that are hard to surpass.

The core of this process lies in the fact that PVP is a strategy that utilizes artificially designed mechanisms (gamified incentives, psychological cues) to create a state that appears and feels like an "organic product-market fit." Traditional liquidity mining, such as SushiSwap's vampire attack and AsterDex's volume manipulation, addresses the "cold start" problem of liquidity but fails to solve the "loyalty" issue of users. The retention rate of users attracted by incentives is extremely low. The PVP mechanism and model aim to fundamentally address the retention problem by replacing economic "incentives" with a behavioral "addiction" (as described in the psychology of gambling addiction). An addicted user does not need you to pay them to play.

Therefore, most protocols view acquiring liquidity as a primary goal, while the PVP model redefines it as an outcome. The primary goal is to maximize user engagement and trading volume through psychological mechanisms. Deep, stable liquidity is merely a natural byproduct of achieving this primary goal. In the context of fierce competition for liquidity among exchanges, the PVP model offers a path of higher capital efficiency: investing resources into product features that can create a competitive atmosphere, and liquidity will naturally follow trading activity.

IV. Catalyst: Designed for "Breakthrough Points"

To initiate a powerful PvP flywheel, precise and strong catalysts are required. This demands that the protocol abandon the "inclusive" incentive model and shift towards a "breakthrough point" strategy that can create conflict, filter winners, and stimulate the fighting spirit of losers.

A broad-based liquidity mining or trading rebate strategy is criticized by users as a "large and comprehensive" platform strategy. This strategy is inefficient because it indiscriminately rewards everyone, including "zombie users" who passively provide liquidity and trade infrequently, as well as those who manipulate points. This not only dilutes the incentive effect for high-value, highly active traders but also creates significant token inflation pressure, ultimately leading to mercenary capital quickly exiting after rewards diminish.

An effective "breakthrough point" incentive model should be based on relative performance rather than absolute participation. The core principle is to reward those traders who succeed in PvP competition, rather than all participants in trading.

A successful PvP incentive program must inherently create a large number of "losers" who gain nothing. This runs counter to the "inclusivity" and "community sharing" spirit typically promoted in the Web3 space, but it is crucial for the model's success. It is precisely the strong feelings of "dissatisfaction" experienced by these losers who narrowly missed out on the grand prize that constitute their core motivation to continue participating in platform trading in the absence of direct incentives.

We cannot expect a platform that emphasizes zero-sum games and winner-takes-all mechanisms to engage in "inclusive finance," can we? If you are bound by the moral perspective of "inclusive finance" or pressured by a community that demands fair treatment, you may not be well-suited to enter this "dog-eat-dog" trench.

Conclusion: Sustainable Bubbles

Let us return to the initial chemical analogy. Speculative markets are inherently filled with bubbles; this is their intrinsic property. The goal of PVP is not to eliminate bubbles but to stabilize them. Just as Polyvinylpyrrolidone provides structure, resilience, and durability to foam, a well-designed "player versus player" system can also impart a sustainable structure to the market's frenzied activities. It creates stability in trading activity and fee income amid dramatic price fluctuations.

The ultimate strategic recommendation is that in the future competition among Perpdex, the victors will not belong to those protocols offering the highest APY, but to those that deeply understand and master user psychology. Success is no longer merely the work of financial architects but a masterpiece of behavioral psychology architects.

Form the doctrine of PVP — like a Chaozhou person, bring the gaming arena to your own backyard; without guidance, the water will naturally flow to every value lowland.

Be like a Chaozhou person.

免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。