Author:Mona,ChainCatcher

2026 sees a trading industry that presents a seemingly contradictory picture.

On one hand, TradFi,RWA, stablecoins, and on-chain derivatives are continuously expanding, and the asset boundaries that trading platforms can reach are increasingly broad; but on the other hand, BitMart,BitMEX, and otherestablished exchanges are exiting the market.

This points to a real issue, for small and medium-sized exchanges, market conditions and asset expansion can bring new trading demands, but it does not mean that the platform can naturally achieve long-term growth. Liquidity, compliance, security, risk management product iterations, customer acquisition costs, and user retention, any one of which stalling, can impact the platform's short-term or even medium to long-term operational performance.

Against this backdrop, established three years ago, Websea has recently made frequent adjustments to its product and business layout.

In the past month or so, Websea has focused on launching or upgrading contract insurance, copy trading, VIP, gold and silver CFD, proof of reserves, and co-hosted the global RWA summit in Almaty. According to Websea's three-year anniversary announcement, the platform disclosed that global registered users exceeded 1.5 million, and according to CMC data, its average daily trading volume recently reached 5 billion USD.

From these actions, Websea's recent product adjustments mainly focus on risk management, multi-asset trading, and asset transparency.

Starting from the aftermath of the bear market, entering a new phase of competition three years later

Websea was established in 2023, when the industry was still in the aftermath of the previous round of deleveraging. After that, the Bitcoin spot ETF, halving cycles, and institutional funds drove the market recovery, and exchanges began to enjoy the industry dividends brought by the recovery in trading volumes. As we enter 2026, competition has started to differentiate again: leading platforms are vying for global liquidity and compliance entries, on-chain trading is eroding some demand for long-tail assets, while mid-sized platforms must find their place among product features, regional markets, and user operations.

This is also a context for understanding Websea 's three-year anniversary data. The user scale and trading volume disclosed by Websea reflect the current business scale of the platform, but the quality of platform operations still requires longer-term data observation. More specifically, for exchanges, registered users, trading volume, and short-term activity can only explain part of the growth; whether users continue to trade, whether assets are retained long-term, and whether the platform can maintain product operations after market cooling will ultimately determine the quality of scale.

Websea has also experienced market pressure and business adjustments over the past three years. In April 2026, the platform announced a phased adjustment to withdrawal services, and later stated that it would conduct asset verification and subsequent recovery arrangements. For platforms that have gone through this phase, how to continuously enhance asset transparency, risk management, and user trust has also become an important test for subsequent business development.

From recent actions, Websea is conducting product adjustments around several directions: contract insurance and copy trading products are primarily aimed at the risk management needs in derivatives trading; TradFi and CFD expand the range of trading assets; PoR provides a portal for users to verify the platform's reserve status; RWA points more towards regional industrial resources and potential asset cooperation.

These directions correspond to the different issues currently facing exchanges, but whether they can ultimately form stable commercial value still requires subsequent trading data, user feedback, and business implementation to validate.

Risk management products, can they form long-term competitiveness?

Spot, contracts, copy trading and wealth management have become common configurations for centralized exchanges. As products become increasingly similar, the cost of user migration is very low, and the new additions brought by fee subsidies and activity rewards are also hard to naturally solidify.

Websea has adjusted key products such as “contract insurance” and “copy trading”, from the product design perspective, these functions mainly revolve around trading risk management and user participation experience, with some mechanisms also attempting to lower the threshold for user understanding and use upon first participation in related products.

In the upgrade on July 20, Websea injected the trading fees from insurance orders into the corresponding insurance pool and adjusted the distribution rounds and VIP privileges. On the copy trading side, new users can receive corresponding incentives. On August 18, the upper limit for ordinary subscriptions increased, and some traders’ subscription periods were changed to 7, 14, and 21 days, with subscription fees adjusted from a fixed amount to a proportion based on copy trading amounts.

From the product mechanism perspective, Websea is attempting to combine new user incentives, copy trading, risk management, and VIP privileges. Users first familiarize themselves with the product mechanism through the experience quota offered by the platform for new users, then participate in actual trading, and utilize features such as profit and loss limits, position management, and contract insurance for operations. Compared to one-time user acquisition activities, this mechanism focuses more on linking user incentives with subsequent trading experience.

However, risk management products also have clear boundaries. They do not mean that users can obtain guaranteed returns, and contract insurance does not imply that all losses incurred from leveraged trading can be covered. Whether the safeguarding conditions are easy to understand, whether the insurance pool funds are sustainable, and whether the payout and collection rules are stable will all affect users' real evaluations of the products.

Therefore, for Websea, whether contract insurance and copy trading can form long-term competitiveness ultimately depends on whether the product rules are clear, whether execution is stable, and whether they can continuously disclose relevant data.

TradFi heating up, exchanges competing for users' asset time

The expansion of crypto exchanges into TradFi has a straightforward business rationale, as when the crypto market lacks a mainline, gold, US stocks, indices, foreign exchange, and commodities still present trading opportunities. Providing more asset classes can increase user stay time and smooth out the impact of the heat changes in single markets on trading volume.

CoinGecko data states that in the first half of 2026, crypto exchanges processed TradFi perpetual trading volumes exceeding 1.45 trillion USD, with perpetual contracts accounting for 98.5%. The data indicates that the path that users are more familiar with at this stage is still the price exposure of trading traditional assets, while holding real assets on-chain involves more complex aspects such as issuance, custody, valuation, and redemption.

CoinGecko's “2026 RWA Report” also indicates that the market value of tokenized RWA has risen from 5.42 billion USD at the beginning of 2025 to 19.32 billion USD at the end of Q1 2026, with government bonds and commodities forming the major parts, and stocks and ETFs also beginning to appear on the scale. The trading volume of derivatives and asset tokenization has risen simultaneously, thus providing exchanges with two categories of opportunities: undertaking price trading and connecting liquidity needs after asset on-chain.

Image: Market value changes of tokenized RWA assets by category; Source: CoinGecko's 2026 RWA Report, data as of March 31, 2026.

In the context of TradFi continuing to heat up, Websea successively launched gold and silver CFDs on August 11, earlier covering US stocks, global indices, ETFs, foreign exchange, and commodities, allowing users to trade across different markets within their USDT accounts.

Here, it's necessary to distinguish product attributes. CFDs provide price exposure to relevant targets, with users not directly holding stocks, gold, or other underlying assets. As a result, exchanges acquire new trading scenarios, but must also handle price sources, liquidity, funding costs, trading halts, and extreme market risk controls. Whether TradFi can become Websea's second growth curve still requires time to verify.

PoR and RWA, two different competitive strategies

On August 18, Websea launched the first proof of reserves. The reserves disclosed by the platform for USDT, BTC, ETH and WBS are respectively 111%, 100%, 102%, and 174%, users can verify their personal assets through a Merkle tree, and can also download wallet addresses, user asset files, and open-source tools for rechecking.

Image: Websea proof of reserves officially launched; Source: Websea official poster

PoR can provide a public verification entry for centralized platform asset transparency, but one disclosure can only provide a snapshot in time. Its reference value still requires considering update frequency, address coverage, liability parameters, and continuity of historical reports. Websea's CMO Herbert R. Sim has stated: “The platform will regularly publish various data and historical reports.”

On the same day, the global RWA summit held in Almaty may reveal another expansion strategy. The summit involves industries such as mining, agriculture, real estate, and green energy, connecting industry and investment participants from China, Kazakhstan, and its other markets. Central Asia possesses energy, minerals, agriculture, and cross-border trading scenarios, providing a real asset basis for RWA, while also bringing specific issues such as asset identification, compliance, custody, valuation, and cross-border settlement.

Image: RWA summit venue in Almaty; Source: Websea official poster

From a business logic perspective, summits and similar regional activities can become a channel for Websea to engage with local asset ends and cooperative networks. However, there are still many layers to go through before producing RWA products that are tradeable, verifiable, and sustainably operable.

Of course, whether this route ultimately proves effective will require ongoing assessment of project implementation, partner structure, asset cash flow, and legal arrangements. In general, regional activities provide entry points, while business outcomes determine how far they can go.

After the third anniversary, what does Websea need to prove?

In the past three years, the competitive logic of crypto exchanges has been constantly changing.

Initially competing for the speed of listing tokens and the number of trading pairs, in the bull market phase competing for traffic and contract depth, as the industry matures, transparency, risk management, global assets, and regional services have been pushed to more important positions.

Websea 's recent layout generally follows this change. Contract insurance and copy trading address users' risk perceptions, TradFi expands the range of tradable assets, PoR establishes a publicly verifiable entry point, and the Central Asian RWA cooperation extends regional resource networks.

These actions cover several important competitive dimensions currently relevant to exchanges, but for Websea, what’s truly worth watching next may not be how many products can increase, but whether these layouts can convert into ongoing data performance that withstands users' scrutiny.

The competition in the exchange industry still continues. BitMart and BitMEX changes remind the industry that once achieved scale and reputation cannot be permanently exchanged for the qualification to stay at the table.

For Websea , the third anniversary marker has concentrated on showcasing the platform's recent business adjustments: continuing to expand asset trading scenarios while strengthening risk management and asset transparency, and attempting to find regional RWA opportunities.

As for whether these strategies can ultimately translate into stable liquidity, sustained user retention, and verifiable business growth, longer-term data will be needed to provide answers.

This article analyzes the industry based on public information and platform disclosures. Websea's user scale, trading volume, reserve ratio, and product parameters all derive from platform disclosures, with relevant information subject to published announcements and product pages. The media has not conducted independent audits or guarantees on related data. The analysis of the platform's business development in this article only represents industry observations and does not constitute recommendations or investment advice for any trading platform, financial product, or digital asset.

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