# 👋Introduction Leverage is a financial tool that allows a trader to get a bigger market exposure with a small amount of initial capital. When trading with leverage a trader funds only a portion of a trading position and borrows the rest from external liquidity providers. Although a trader owns only a portion of the leveraged position, the trader’s profit or loss will be based on the total value of the position. Therefore, by trading with leverage a trader can receive a multiplied profit or loss. Not so long time ago leverage trading was an exclusive domain of highly-trained investment professionals. Crypto has changed this forever — currently, all major cryptocurrency exchanges offer margin trading accounts. On centralized stock and cryptocurrency exchanges traders borrow addition capital from brokers and exchange operators who decide on lending rates, fees and procedures for liquidating risky leveraged positions. However, on centralized trading platforms their operators have full control over leveraged trading rules, including decisions on capital lending rates, assets, available for leveraged trading, and liquidation procedures. ![WOWswap app launched on April 12, 2021](https://3431135529-files.gitbook.io/~/files/v0/b/gitbook-legacy-files/o/assets%2F-MYhYcw9WN6xTQqOD_-A%2F-MYiScDjboSEaaE7Uq34%2F-MYiThoLVFK0dNa1oHII%2Fimage.png?alt=media\&token=c2deeb4d-0cd8-4724-ac74-4189cbdeb952) WOWswap democratizes leveraged trading further by giving all power to the community. With WOW protocol liquidity providers can create and operate common liquidity pools, and traders can borrow these funds for their leveraged trades according to the rules collectively established by WOW token holders. In decentralized finance (DeFi) leveraged trading also should be decentralized: community needs to be able to create and operate common liquidity pools and decide on leverage trading rules. WOWswap is a community-run protocol for leveraged trading on decentralized cryptocurrency exchanges. Using WOWswap’s smart-contracts individual liquidity providers operate common liquidity pools, and traders use these funds to finance their leveraged trades on decentralized AMMs such as Uniswap and Pancakeswap. All critical protocol’s parameters such as tokens approved for leveraged trading, liquidation margins, insurance fees, liquidation rewards, lending rates, fees for traders and liquidity providers are collectively decided by holders of WOW token – the protocol’s governance token. --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://docs.wowswap.io/master.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.