On a blog post published on January 18, cryptocurrency exchange Gate.io reported the launch of ‘Perpetual Contract Trading’ for two new assets, XMR and XLM.

According to the post, perpetual contracts grant investors the ability to profit off of selling digital assets either short or long, similar to futures contracts. Unlike futures contracts, however, perpetual contracts have no expiration date.

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At the moment, the maximum deposit for each investor is just 1 BTC. However, “it can be raised according to the market risk and rank of the investor in the future,” the post explained.

Perpetual contracts were launched on Gate.io’s Android app earlier this week on January 16, offering options in BTC, ETH, EOS, XRP, BCH, BSV, LTC, ADA, and TRX.

A similar product was launched on Shanghai-based cryptocurrency exchange OKEx in December. “Perpetual Swap works similarly to futures contracts. However, there is no expiry and settlement occurs daily, allowing traders to withdraw their profits on a daily basis,” Finance Magnates reported at the time.

Gate.io Recovers from Recent Loss of Funds in Ethereum Classic Network Attack

The addition of the new assets into Gate.io’s perpetual contracts is positive news for the exchange after what has been a rather rough month. On January 7, the exchange published a report saying that the 51% attack that had hit the Ethereum Classic network had taken a heavy toll. The exchange lost more than $271,000 as a result of the attack.

Then, a week later, Gate.io published news that $100,000 of the missing funds had allegedly been returned by the hacker to the exchange.

The recent ETC 51% hacker has returned $100k worth of ETC back to https://t.co/8kWqgDWNXb on the 10th of January. We have raised the ETC confirmation number to 4000 and launched a strict 51% detection for enhanced protection.

See details: https://t.co/xX8cVIWdC2 pic.twitter.com/MUQX3hpMPV

— gate.io Exchange (@gate_io) January 12, 2019

The reason behind the alleged return remains unclear. “We were trying to contact the attacker but we haven’t got any reply until now,” the post said. “We still don’t know the reason. If the attacker didn’t run it for profit, he might be a white [hat] hacker who wanted to remind people [of] the risks in blockchain consensus and hashing power security.”