Gate Research Institute: Transparent Mechanism and Competitive Fees, Gate ETF Scale Effect Continues to Show

• Over the past two years, exchanges have significantly contracted and delisted ETF products; against the backdrop of fewer exchanges offering stable trading, Gate's continuous supply of ETF products for trading has become a scarce competitive advantage.

• Gate is not just offering ETFs; it has built it into a mature product line with scaled supply, transparent and explainable mechanisms, and a unified, low-cost fee structure.

• In 2025, Gate supported trading for 244 ETF leveraged tokens throughout the year, with cumulative users reaching approximately 200,000 and daily trading volume reaching hundreds of millions of USD.

1. Market Status

In the context of crypto trading, ETFs refer to Leveraged Tokens launched by exchanges. These are tokens that package perpetual contract positions into a form that can be directly bought and sold on the spot order book, allowing users to gain leveraged long or short exposure with a target multiple by simply "buying or selling a token." However, the supply of ETF leveraged tokens has significantly contracted on crypto exchanges in recent years. For instance, B** phased out leveraged token trading, subscriptions, redemptions, and ultimately discontinued support between February and April 2024. B** also announced the delisting of some leveraged tokens in 2024, halting spot trading, subscriptions, and redemptions, and continued to delist pairs like BTC and ETH leveraged tokens in 2025. K** issued intensive announcements in late 2025 to delist multiple batches of leveraged tokens in groups and implemented a phased wind-down for services related to BTC leveraged tokens, including trading, subscription, and redemption.

The delisting of ETF leveraged tokens by exchanges is not because users don't need leverage, but because leveraged tokens are highly structured products. Without sufficient mechanism disclosure, risk control systems, and user education, they are easily misused as fixed-multiple tools for long-term holding. This can lead to significant path dependency and volatility decay in choppy markets, triggering concentrated complaints and product disputes. Against the backdrop of industry compliance and declining risk appetite, many platforms have chosen to cut such complex product categories. Consequently, mainstream exchanges that can stably provide ETF leveraged token trading are becoming increasingly scarce.

Conversely, this also means that for platforms like Gate, which persist in and continuously iterate on this product category, the product supply itself is a scarce competitive advantage. Furthermore, as similar platforms decrease, users have fewer alternative entry points, making liquidity and trading users more likely to concentrate on Gate, which can accommodate more short-term leverage demand.

2. Product Form

The core design of Gate's ETF leveraged tokens is to map the underlying perpetual contract leveraged positions, via net asset value (NAV), into a tokenized product that can be directly bought and sold on the spot order book. For users, the trading experience is more akin to spot trading—no margin is required, and there's no need to manage margin and liquidation prices as with futures contracts. Additionally, costs are packaged at the "product layer." Gate clearly discloses that leveraged tokens charge a 0.1%/day management fee, which covers contract trading costs, funding rates, and slippage incurred from hedging.

Leveraged tokens are not meant to replace futures contracts but rather to transform leverage from a professional tool into a tactical one, particularly suitable for two typical needs:

• Trending Markets: When the market exhibits strong one-sided momentum, leveraged tokens amplify exposure and maintain the target leverage level through a rebalancing mechanism.

• Leveraged Participation Without Managing Liquidation: Users don't need to monitor margin, top up positions, or face liquidation risks as with futures contracts. Of course, this does not equate to being risk-free; it merely shifts the risk form from liquidation to NAV path dependency and rebalancing decay.

Overall, ETF leveraged tokens are suitable for short-term, strong-trend scenarios, not for long-term holding.

3. Mechanism Breakdown

The two most important variables for leveraged tokens are rebalancing and NAV path. Gate provides clear rule parameters in its mechanism disclosure, which itself is a significant signal of the product's maturity on the platform.

3.1 Rebalancing Timing and Trigger Rules

Gate's 3x/5x leveraged tokens have scheduled rebalancing at 00:00 daily (UTC+8).

Furthermore, Gate explicitly defines the leverage fluctuation range that "does not trigger rebalancing," which directly determines how frequently position adjustments and friction costs occur in volatile markets:

• 3x Long: If leverage is between 2.25x–4.125x, rebalancing is typically not performed; adjustments back to 3x occur if the range is exceeded or conditions are met.

• 3x Short: The range is 1.5x–5.25x.

• 5x: No position adjustment when leverage is within the 3.5x–7x range.

• Additionally, Gate may perform share consolidation or splits when the price of certain ETFs is too low, affecting trading precision. This changes the holding quantity and unit NAV but not the total holding value.

These parameters are technical, but they are precisely what professional users care about: a narrower range and more frequent triggers usually mean more noticeable decay in choppy markets; a more reasonable range and transparent disclosure allow users to treat the product as a calculable, predictable tool.

3.2 Management Fee and Trading Costs

Gate consolidates cost items into a unified 0.1%/day management fee, the lowest rate among mainstream exchanges. This fee structure already includes all costs, covering funding rates, trading fees, and potential slippage during contract hedging.

For users, Gate's clear, unified, explainable, and low-cost fee structure significantly enhances cost visibility. It maps trading costs—which originally occurred in dispersed forms like funding rates, slippage, and rebalancing friction at the contract layer—more centrally into NAV changes, reducing attribution bias in returns caused by hidden costs.

4. Gate ETF Advantages

While the industry chooses to reduce complex product categories, Gate continues to develop ETF leveraged tokens into a scaled, systematic, and explainable product line. It uses more transparent mechanism disclosure to reduce misuse costs, thereby transforming scarce supply into liquidity and user stickiness.

4.1 Scale and Supply

For Gate, ETF leveraged tokens are not just a feature but one of its core segments.

According to Gate's 2025 Annual Report:

• Gate supports trading for 244 leveraged ETF tokens and continues to list and cover more assets, making it one of the exchanges with the most supported leveraged tokens.

• Gate ETF attracted approximately 200,000 trading users throughout 2025, with daily trading volume reaching hundreds of millions of USD.

• Gate ETF continues to iterate at the product functionality level, having launched modules like multi-dimensional data dashboards, rebalancing record displays, and beginner education to help users get started quickly, continuously optimizing user decision-making efficiency and overall trading experience.

While B** stopped leveraged token trading, and exchanges like B** and K** continued to delist similar products, Gate has instead expanded and deepened its variety and trading activity, forming a clear structural advantage. In the future, Gate plans to launch products like portfolio ETFs and low-leverage inverse ETFs, continuously using technological optimization to reduce costs and explore more stable forms of leverage expression.

4.2 Clear Mechanism Disclosure and Explainability

The long-term viability of leveraged tokens depends not entirely on how many assets are listed but on whether the product can be explained—this is the fundamental threshold for daring to scale. Gate provides granular disclosure on rebalancing timing, trigger ranges, and items covered by the management fee. By maintaining more transparent rule disclosure, Gate transforms a high-controversy product into a calculable tool. This kind of explainability is precisely the most scarce capability during a market downturn.

4.3 Compressing Complexity for the Platform, Leaving Trading Certainty for Users

Gate consolidates costs into a 0.1%/day management fee and clearly states it covers hedging-related expenses. This is what Gate is doing: the platform, with its professional expertise, takes on the heavier complexity of trading and hedging execution, in exchange for lower operational barriers and more consistent cost expectations for users. At a time when the industry generally seeks to reduce the supply of complex products, this product philosophy—keeping complexity on the platform and delivering certainty to users—is a crucial value orientation for continuously expanding market share.

5. Summary

The reason leveraged tokens in the industry have shifted from widespread supply to supply contraction is not that users don't need leverage, but that platforms struggle to simultaneously satisfy three things: explainable rules, a unified cost structure, and sustainable risk control and post-trade handling. Gate's advantage lies precisely in systematically addressing these three aspects during the market downturn: using clear rebalancing thresholds and NAV anchoring disclosure to reduce misuse potential; adopting a unified 0.1%/day management fee structure and absorbing cost gaps, keeping complexity on the platform and certainty for users; coupled with scaled variety coverage and mature delisting/buyback processes. This makes Gate ETF not just a feature point, but a leveraged product system capable of long-term operation.

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Disclaimer

Investing in the cryptocurrency market involves high risks. Users are advised to conduct independent research and fully understand the nature of the assets and products they purchase before making any investment decisions. Gate shall not be liable for any loss or damage arising from such investment decisions.