About

Hegic is an on-chain protocol enabling peer-to-peer options trading on Ethereum powered by liquidity pools and hedge contracts.

History

Hegic was created by an anonymous developer going by the name of Molly Wintermute. The protocol was first released on February 20, 2020, with the goal of abstracting away the complexities of options trading, allowing users to seamlessly use it on a daily basis.

The protocol is an Options trading platform giving traders the opportunity to buy or sell WBTC and ETH options or directly participate as liquidity providers to earn settlement fees. All the contracts are created, maintained, and settled on-chain without the need for intermediaries.

Hegic got off to a rough start. A few hours after the v1.0 mainnet launch, a bug in the contract’s code locked up nearly $30,000 worth of user’s funds. The bug prevented writers from being able to unlock their funds when hedge contracts expired without being exercised by the holder. Wintermute refunded all lost funds to those affected by the code with support from the early contributors of the project. In May, Wintermute released a new audited version of the protocol, and the platform has been running without known problems since then.

HEGIC is the native ERC-20 token of the protocol. It listed September 9, 2020, on a bonding curve contract, which was the main liquidity venue during the first 4 weeks after launch. Holders can stake their tokens to receive settlement fees or use them for on-chain governance.