I loved FTX,the platform was ahead of its time and traders knew it. I'd like to highlight some reasons why the platform was so successful in the first place in the wake of its demise. Many of its features have not been replicated by other exchanges years afterwards.
To start, I want to provide some insight as to why people trusted Sam. I myself, with my small following (<5000) and even smaller trading stack, received personal attention from Sam himself. He would answer any questions I had, and was personable about it. He even took some of the feedback my friends and I had for FTX. That personal touch distinguished the platform for me personally, because all the other exchanges were very impersonal to me. Sure Arthur Hayes existed, more as a benevolent dictator than anything. Ben Bybit? Who? He's a bot account for all I know. CZ is notoriously closed and impossible to contact. But Sam wasn't.
Next up, I want to describe the trading innovations made by FTX as a whole, most notably their new products such as MOVE, SHIT, and prediction markets. The idea of baskets of alts is not a new one, nor is it particularly innovative, but FTX created a liquid perpetual futures product that was actually usable and auto rebalanced. SHIT and ALTS were fantastic products, both of which haven't been implemented elsewhere. I didn't like the leveraged tokens, much like how I don't like leveraged ETFs in tradFi, but the fact you could redeem them was pretty great, meaning you could avoid getting slipped altogether.
Additionally, the MOVE contracts were similarly innovative and great. They offered exposure to volatility without needed to create straddles or other complicated strategies yourself on the other illiquid options exchanges. You could easily trade, daily, weekly, and quarterly volatility products, which were easy as hell to understand and even simpler to trade. It was a wonderful product, and I applaud Sam for creating them. Too bad nobody else has replicated it.
Likewise, FTX prediction markets, in my opinion, differ strongly from sports betting. The house takes practically no cut, and it is expressed in odds that are simpler for traders to understand. For those unfamiliar, if the condition was fufilled, each future would expire to $1, else it would expire to nothing. It was fantastically innovative, and I dream of the day it is implemented in a DeFi market. Imagine being able to bet on practically anything, without the house taking a large cut. You could gain exposure to the most random things. Yet FTX did it, and they did it well.
Cross collateral allowed you to trade perps and futures using whatever assets you had as collateral. In my opinion, this was fantastic as you didn't need to trade spot every damn time and you could hold your ETH or BTC and USDT and use that as collateral for every single trade. As far as I know, no other platform has done something similar, but I could be wrong as I haven't traded much in years.
Additionally, I want to touch on trading competitions. FTX offered so many damn competitions, both solo and team competitions. It was wonderful, even though the prize pool was not large, it was great for having some fun with friends. You could easily move money into your subaccount, and compete in their many tournaments. I don't recall any other platforms offering so many recurring competitions, with the exception of that one dedicated competition exchange that I can't remember name of. Regardless, that platform struggled with liquidity and was pretty awful. MajinSayan was a prolific user of it, if that helps.
Lastly, I quite liked the UI of FTX. I preferred Bitmex's over all, but perhaps that is just nostagia and what I'm used to. I think Binance has a garbage UI, and the oversaturated colors quite bothered me to say the least. FTX did a great job with their UI, I can't name specifics but my god was it eye candy.
To me, it's a tragedy that Sam turned out to be a thief and their businesses frauds. But the exchange ushered in new innovation into the space, which I hope others will continue to innovate on. I doubt it though, most of the new exchanges are copy paste perpetual futures exchanges, adding absolutely nothing except for higher referral link payouts.