Disclaimer: The below article is sponsored, and the views in it do not represent those of ZyCrypto. Readers should conduct independent research before taking any actions related to the project mentioned in this piece. This article should not be regarded as investment advice.
RISEx, the fully on-chain perpetuals exchange built on the high-throughput RISE Chain, has officially launched Ignite: Season 1 — its core loyalty and ecosystem points program. Backed by Galaxy Ventures and Vitalik Buterin, the platform arrives at this milestone following an invite-only beta that generated over $3 billion in cumulative trading volume.
Launch week concluded today with the distribution of Season 0 retroactive points, recognizing users who traded on a merit-based, invite-only venue with no guarantee of reward.
100% of Points to RISEx Users
The program carries a claim no competing venue can make: 100% of RISE points are allocated to RISEx users — traders, LPs, and builder code integrators alike. RISE is an exchange chain, and RISEx is its product. Rather than splitting rewards across a diffuse ecosystem, the entire network’s incentive weight routes through the venue where activity actually happens.
 
The launch arrives amid a structural shift in crypto derivatives, with decentralized perpetuals rapidly taking market share from centralized venues. Following the successful live deployment of its core exchange infrastructure — including cross-asset netted margining and native Real-World Asset (RWA) trading — the public opening of RISEx’s rewards system marks the platform’s formal transition into global scale and growth mode.
Ecosystem Traction: By the Numbers
Prior to opening public rewards, the RISEx closed beta cultivated institutional-grade liquidity and deep user engagement over three months:
$3 billion+ in cumulative trading volume processed since genesis; $26 million+ in Open Interest; $15 million+ in Total Value Locked; 15,000+ registered users, accumulated entirely through a merit-based referral network.
Source: Dune
Product First, Incentives Second
“Much to the frustration of our growth team, I was adamant that we would not launch an incentives program until our core exchange engine reached absolute stability,” said Sam Battenally, CEO and co-founder of RISE Labs. “Too often, points programs are deployed prematurely to mask unfinished infrastructure or buy empty, temporary volume. We spent the last few months doing the hard engineering work instead — stabilizing core features like reduce-only GTC and bootstrapping deep, quality liquidity. If you are fueling the engine, it has to perform. Now that our core architecture is fully live, optimized, and performing at a world-class level, we are ready to scale.”
Ignite Season 1: Structure and Timeline
Ignite runs according to a product roadmap rather than a marketing calendar. As the exchange ships and reaches milestones, the season moves with it. AutoYield, Permissionless Portfolio Margin, and equity listings are all part of a larger vision to bring full-scale composable finance on-chain.
This is a deliberate design choice. Rewards should track real product progress — not a fixed schedule that forces a program to overspend early or thin out rewards later, penalizing the early contributors and active traders who showed up first.
Live since: Week 1 of Ignite began Monday, July 20, 2026, at 00:00 UTC Public distribution: 200,000 points per week, settled every Tuesday, with the first weekly distribution on July 28, 2026, at 14:00 UTC Season length: Expected to conclude no later than Q2 2027 Allocation: 100% of RISE points to RISEx users.
Inside the Ignite Mechanics
Ignite is engineered to reward genuine, long-term ecosystem participation over Sybil farming and artificial wash trading — evaluating user contribution across multiple health metrics rather than volume alone.
Multi-layered earning: Qualifying activity spans higher-order activity, total costs including fees, slippage and negative markouts, trading volume, and open interest and hold time.
Referral rewards: Referrers earn an additional 10% of their referee’s points.
Undisclosed weightings: The exact methodology and weightings are not published — a deliberate measure to protect the program from being gamed.
Affiliate program: Qualifying participants gain access to additional incentives including fee rebates, point boosts, and more.
Institutional-Grade Architecture
RISEx achieves centralized-exchange execution speeds with full self-custody by building on RISE Chain — an EVM-compatible Layer 2 delivering 5 Ggas/s throughput and 1-millisecond latency. Because the exchange and the underlying blockchain share the same state, users benefit from a fully on-chain orderbook where collateral and interconnected DeFi positions exist within a single, atomic execution environment.
With the core perpetual exchange engine stabilized, the platform’s mid-term roadmap shifts toward native EVM Spot trading, AutoYield, and Permissionless Portfolio Margin.
Traders can clear the gate, check their retroactive allocations, and begin earning Season 1 points at rise.trade.
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