Websea's Third Anniversary: Adjustments and Choices of a Medium-Sized Exchange During the Industry Restructuring Period

Author: Mona, ChainCatcher

The exchange industry in 2026 is presenting 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 becoming wider; on the other hand, established exchanges like BitMart and BitMEX 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 demand, but it does not mean that the platform can naturally achieve long-term growth. Liquidity, compliance, security, risk management product iteration, customer acquisition costs, and user retention—any one of these factors losing momentum can affect the platform's short-term or even medium-term operational performance.

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

In the past month, Websea has focused on launching or upgrading contract insurance, copy trading, VIP services, gold and silver CFDs, and proof of reserves, and co-hosted the global RWA summit in Almaty. According to Websea's third-anniversary announcement, the platform disclosed that it has over 1.5 million registered users globally, and according to CMC data, its daily trading volume recently reached $5 billion.

From these actions, it can be seen that Websea's recent product adjustments are mainly focused on risk management, multi-asset trading, and asset transparency.

Starting from the Aftermath of the Bear Market, Entering a New Competitive Stage After Three Years

Websea was established in 2023, at a time when the industry was still in the aftermath of the previous round of deleveraging. Subsequently, the Bitcoin spot ETF, halving cycle, and institutional funds drove market recovery, allowing exchanges to enjoy the industry dividends brought by the rebound in trading volume. As we enter 2026, competition has begun to differentiate: leading platforms are competing for global liquidity and compliance entry points, on-chain trading is eating into some long-tail asset demand, and medium-sized platforms must find their position among product features, regional markets, and user operations.

This is also a context for understanding Websea's third-anniversary data. The user scale and trading volume disclosed by Websea can 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 activities 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 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 its withdrawal services and subsequently stated that it would conduct asset verification and follow-up recovery arrangements. For platforms that have gone through this phase, how to continuously improve asset transparency, risk management, and user trust has also become an important test for their subsequent business development.

From recent actions, Websea is making product adjustments around several directions: contract insurance and copy trading products mainly target risk management needs in derivative trading; TradFi and CFDs expand the range of trading targets; PoR provides users with a way to verify the platform's reserve situation; RWA points more towards regional industrial resources and potential asset cooperation.

These directions correspond to different issues currently faced by exchanges, but whether they can ultimately form stable commercial value still needs to be verified by subsequent trading data, user feedback, and business implementation.

Risk Management Products, Can They Form Long-Term Competitiveness?

Spot trading, 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 new users brought in by fee subsidies and activity rewards are also difficult to retain naturally.

Websea has adjusted key products like "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 understanding and usage threshold for users participating in related products for the first time.

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

From the product mechanism perspective, Websea is trying to combine new user incentives, copy trading, risk management, and VIP benefits. Users first familiarize themselves with the product mechanisms through experience limits offered to new users on the platform, then participate in actual trading, and operate in conjunction with features like take profit and stop loss, position management, and contract insurance. Compared to one-time user acquisition activities, this mechanism focuses more on connecting user incentives with subsequent trading experiences.

However, risk management products also have clear boundaries. They do not mean that users can obtain guaranteed returns, and contract insurance does not mean that all losses from leveraged trading can be covered. Whether the protection conditions are easy to understand, whether the insurance pool funds are sustainable, and whether the compensation and withdrawal 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 relevant data can be continuously disclosed.

TradFi Heating Up, Exchanges Competing for Users' Asset Time

The expansion of TradFi by crypto exchanges has an intuitive business rationale: when the crypto market lacks a main storyline, there are still trading opportunities in gold, US stocks, indices, foreign exchange, and commodities. By providing more asset categories, platforms can increase user dwell time and smooth the impact of single market fluctuations on trading volume.

According to CoinGecko data, in the first half of 2026, the perpetual trading volume handled by crypto exchanges for TradFi has exceeded $14.5 trillion, with perpetual contracts accounting for 98.5%. The data indicates that at this stage, users are still more familiar with trading traditional asset price exposures, while on-chain holding of real assets involves more complex processes such as issuance, custody, valuation, and redemption.

The CoinGecko "2026 RWA Report" also stated that the market capitalization of tokenized RWA has increased from $5.42 billion at the beginning of 2025 to $19.32 billion at the end of the first quarter of 2026, with government bonds and commodities making up the majority, and stocks and ETFs also beginning to appear at scale. Derivative trading and asset tokenization are heating up simultaneously, providing exchanges with two types of opportunities: undertaking price trading and connecting liquidity demands after asset on-chain.

Figure: Market capitalization changes of various asset categories of tokenized RWA; Source: CoinGecko "2026 RWA Report", data as of March 31, 2026.

With TradFi continuing to heat up, Websea launched gold and silver CFDs on August 11, having previously covered categories such as US stocks, global indices, ETFs, foreign exchange, and commodities, allowing users to trade different markets within their USDT accounts.

It is necessary to distinguish product attributes here. CFDs provide price exposure to relevant targets, and users do not directly hold stocks, gold, or other underlying assets. Thus, exchanges gain new trading scenarios but must also handle price sources, liquidity, funding costs, market closure periods, and extreme market risk control. Whether TradFi can become Websea's second growth curve still needs time to verify.

PoR and RWA, Two Different Competitive Strategies

On August 18, Websea launched its first proof of reserves. The platform disclosed that the reserve ratios for USDT, BTC, ETH, and WBS are 111%, 100%, 102%, and 174%, respectively. Users can verify whether their personal assets are included in the statistics through a Merkle tree, and can also download wallet addresses, user asset files, and open-source tools for verification.

Figure: Websea's proof of reserves officially launched; Source: Websea official poster

PoR can provide a public verification entry for asset transparency of centralized platforms, but a single disclosure can only provide a snapshot in time. Its reference value also needs to be considered in conjunction with update frequency, address coverage, liability scope, and continuity of historical reports. Websea CMO Herbert R. Sim has stated, "The platform will regularly publish data and historical reports."

On the same day, the global RWA summit held in Almaty may reveal another expansion strategy. The summit involved industries such as mining, agriculture, real estate, and green energy, connecting industrial and investment participants from China, Kazakhstan, and other markets. Central Asia has energy, mineral, agricultural, and cross-border trade scenarios, providing a real asset basis for RWA, as well as specific issues such as asset confirmation, compliance, custody, valuation, and cross-border settlement.

Figure: On-site of the RWA summit in Almaty; Source: Websea official poster

From a business logic perspective, regional activities like the summit can become a channel for Websea to connect with local asset sides and cooperation networks. However, there are still many steps to go before RWA products can be traded, verified, and sustainably operated.

Of course, whether this route is ultimately effective needs to be observed in terms of project implementation, partner structure, asset cash flow, and legal arrangements. Overall, regional activities provide an entry point, while business results determine how far it can go.

What Does Websea Need to Prove After Three Years?

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

In the early days, the focus was on the speed of listing coins and the number of trading pairs; during the bull market phase, the focus shifted to traffic and contract depth; as the industry matured, transparency, risk management, global assets, and regional services have been pushed to more important positions.

Websea's recent layout has basically unfolded along this change. Contract insurance and copy trading address user risk perception, TradFi expands the range of tradable assets, PoR establishes a public verification entry, and Central Asia RWA cooperation extends the regional resource network.

These actions cover several important competitive dimensions currently faced by exchanges, but for Websea, what is truly worth observing next may not be how many more products can be added, but whether these layouts can translate into sustained data performance that withstands user scrutiny.

The competition in the exchange industry continues. Changes at BitMart and BitMEX remind the industry that past scale and notoriety cannot be permanently exchanged for a seat at the table.

For Websea, the three-year milestone highlights 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 need to provide answers.

This article is based on publicly available information and platform disclosures for industry analysis. Websea's user scale, trading volume, reserve ratios, and product parameters are all sourced from platform disclosures, and relevant information is subject to published announcements and product pages. The media has not independently audited or guaranteed the related data. The analysis of the platform's business development in this article represents industry observation and does not constitute a recommendation or investment advice for any trading platform, financial product, or digital asset.