Ascend Adds XRP Funding and Announces Protocol Stats

Ascend Market announced XRP funding for perpetual trading accounts and Ascend Protocol Stats in an October 5 update. The release adds a funding route and activity reporting to a platform that combines Midnight verification with a Cardano-based staking system.

A New Funding Option for Ascend Perpetuals

The team stated that users can fund their accounts with the newly supported asset and begin trading perpetual contracts within minutes. These contracts allow traders to take long or short positions without a fixed expiration date.

Ascend’s existing perpetuals guide describes USDC as the collateral and settlement asset, with funding routes from Ethereum and Solana. The new announcement leaves the deposit network and conversion mechanism unspecified.

Midnight Verification and Cardano Staking

Ascend’s documentation places verification and finalization of user actions on Midnight through zero-knowledge proofs. Its staking system uses a Cardano-native protocol token, which participants stake through signed transactions while keeping the tokens in their wallets.

The published fee schedule sets a 0.040% base taker rate, reduced to 0.024% with staking discounts. Maker orders carry no trading fee, and the protocol allocates 100% of taker fee revenue to stakers. Funding payments between long and short positions are handled separately.

Protocol Stats Follows the Mainnet Volume Milestone

In an October 3 update, Ascend’s team reported that mainnet trading volume had exceeded $10 million. The post supplied no reporting period or corresponding user and trade totals.

Protocol Stats is announced as a real-time view of trades, volumes, and users. Those measures extend the scope of the team’s volume update, although the launch announcement contained no initial dashboard figures or metric definitions.