DeFi by Design EP#128: Cross-Chain Perps, Blast L2, And Deep Onchain Liquidity

Transcript

welcome back to the rollup High Roller Community as always nothing on the rollup is to be construed as Financial advice we are just an Educators in the defi space toss us a quick like give us a share a repost send it to a friend who may want to watch this and finally give us a sub or a follow it means the world to help support credibly neutral educational content in def5 we're here to educate Empower and enrich you and let's jump in welcome to D5 by Design we talk all things blockchain and cryptocurrency while striving to educate Empower and enrich what's going on guys welcome back to the D5 by Design podcast here today in the rollup studio with Rob and his

hairy arms and our boy alwin who is the look look at those arms GM alwin's uh one of the co-founders of fex we had Darius on as well his sweet British accent two months ago or so now I've got the pleasure of meeting Allan who is co-founder like I said and also interestingly enough the youngest full-time hire from jump GM Allen how are you doing sir I'm doing okay um yeah just spend some time SL and yeah nice man nice how did you uh how did you meet Darius and like how did you

like what's your what's your origin story um yeah so for like meeting darus like I I used to like work on Tera um so I just met him through a mutual friend um and darus was looking to build something on Tera and I was also just like sort of in between things so um he just made the introduction and like we got along pretty well nice how you get into Tera like if you take us back further yeah so like um I got into crypto basically just by starting a jump um so I wanted to like you know trade futures or equities or something but like at the time it's like

2021 um crypto's like probably the most exciting thing going on um so I ended up on the crypto team at jump and um yeah I worked on some Terra stuff while I was there and then that's how I got like really familiar with the Terra ecosystem um yeah just got to know like a lot of the people who are high up there so it just like made a lot of sense as like a career move if I were to go leave and start something nice and how old were you when you got hired um yeah so I was 18 um for nice and and and you've got a a a programming background that's that was kind of what you were uh interested in Prior um yeah so like I I taught myself how to code when I was in high school

and then for college I went to West Point which was this like military school in the states and West just wasn't really that great of a fit I didn't really like it that much um and yeah I figured I could probably just drop out and just get a programming job and then yeah sort of just you know worked at like some no name places for a bit um ended up at jump and yeah the rest is just like degeneracy all the way through so at Le two of us I uh I had some friends who went who point and yeah man that's a that's an interesting environment also we are part of of the Dropout gang so uh good to have you Rob's got two degrees one in

math and one in um philosophy so I always say that robs makes up mine I'm sure there's some people on the team who also can make up yours do you do you use any of those degrees theoretically I use them every day not I'm not a math teacher but like there's plenty of math in analyzing the game theory of a lot of these mechanisms philosophy it's like well we all think so like that's all philosophy is I think every day so I think I use my degrees I just heard so much cat man

yeah I I heard I don't every day I think um I just gang the drop I was just hanging up with a guy who actually made it through well that was I couldn't make it I got my third degree in Cope I wasn't smart enough to make it through college so um yeah as fu yeah but now you're the uh now you're fully involved in perss which you thought was kind of um you know I call it a zero to one I'm like um in the stock market you can't really trade perp you can trade futures but they always have expirations on them and then binance and bitmex kind of launched these these these trading

platforms where they have funding rates and you can basically open leverage positions forever actually um and all those kind of strategies did you ever um see any of that uh those Arbitrage strategies on bit Max back in the day or was that a little bit before your time dude I was like 13 when that was a f was going to middle school man yeah sorry I was getting liquidated although I never traded on there because um I didn't have access to it anyways I think that burps are generally a zero to one thing and especially bringing them into the the decentralized landscape um yeah you know I'm I'm I'm curious kind of your perspective if if

if you agree or if you think that you know there's other use cases that are more impactful from you know specifically like like the financials and the the derivatives market like generally I think perss have just been like a massive um use case for people wanting to engage in trading in crypto uh yeah like like perss are just like a really Capital efficient a nice way if you want to like just gamble on some cryptocoin um it's like it's a lot less complicated than trading spot and you know if you're like a if you're like a firm that has like sort of custody and like regular requirements like a lot of times you can't like hold physical tokens so like like her is actually like

sort of nicer um in that respect so yeah I mean it opens a lot of doors um and like at least when you look at like what Financial products have market share at crypto like perss are just really really dominant for sure I remember reading I don't know if if you've ever had a gander at um devil take the HD most um but they you know it's a book about a tons of of uh stock market and speculative bubbles over the last 200 years and what's interesting about futurist contracts in the real world is they actually settle in real world Goods corn and um you know cows meat electricity different things right that

energy things that power the world Commodities basically and there's been times in those markets where legitimately the speculators have pushed prices so high on Futures Trading that caused Dynamics in those markets to be completely out of out of whack but in crypto since there's no physical settlement as as you're saying since perss don't require you to actually own the coin um you know that to me is kind of what the uh what the what the big uh key thing is so I agree with you on that front how yeah I mean like um I don't know if that's like uh like not requiring like fiscal settlement like on one hand like yeah does make like um the

life of a Speculator easier but it's also like you know at the end of all of those Futures products there's like you know real value that's like getting traded and like you know like a farmer is able to like hedge out like his crop yield or something like that um so like yeah I would say that like they both have like um their use cases it's just that like I don't know like in crypto like there's not really that like I'm a person who like has like an actual business that's producing value and I want to like um hedge out like my revenue or something like that I'm like that doesn't really exist and like so per are just like a much better like gambling mechanism but you can hedge your uh if if you're a team of who who is part of a

project you can hedge your allocations you can short assets that you think are overhyped so very much so agreeing in as far as the use case without the fiscal business would wouldn't go as far as as a say value creation but to reach their own um do you think there's a do you think there's use cases of blockchain and crypto Beyond speculation um like I think there's some um like but there's not like I think it's a lot less than like what sort of like made out to be right um like a lot of people want to project like oh this specific application of

blockchains like um The Next Big Thing because it's like in their interest um like I think that like just real world assets getting tokenized on chain um yeah I think that like that has like a genuine use case um I think in a lot of ways like crypto payment rails are like nicer than like traditional finance payment rails um but like I I think that like and there's also something to be said about like with uh with like Ai and like things being fake like things being fak really easily that makes that like you want like just this provable like

attestation of like what actually happened um like I think those things are real world use cases um that like aren't speculative I'll say that like most of what we're seeing right now like is speculative um but like yeah there's like some hope for sure are there are there uh particular are those the uh like the sectors and verticals that you're personally excited about outside of of course what you guys are doing at at vertex um so I I guess it's like those are just the things that I could think of off of the top of my head um yeah like I don't I don't know I'm not like super like up

to date on like the narratives and stuff um a lot of the stuff I'm excited about is like um just like pretty technical stuff like okay how can we do this and like you know learning about like some interesting way to like um make something faster or something like that um or like yeah as opposed to like um kind of like piece together narratives and stuff because they don't really impact my life that much um and like I'm pretty set like the current thing that I'm working on we say less sir we will uh we will dive into the vertex sequence some of the offchain and and onchain uh dynamics that you guys have may even Pok and PR about some centralization or

decentralization or try to find some edge cases um but before we jump into that um because we're gonna have to explain kind of what sequencers are and what op chain uh ordering and how you guys kind of do your entire um shabam but let's talk about vertex as a whole so you guys you and Darius got together um you decided that you know the the per landscape wasn't adequate for your uh liking that you guys could do better now you've got vertex one of the leading um per sexes in in the entire space um russing over I mean some days well over uh 500 million to a billion dollars in volume not more um you know I think notionally total maybe like 90 billion

since Inception so um some guys would call that push and P I'd say that that's pushing some weight but yeah man I would love to learn more about um you know what what uh challenges and flaws in the per de landscape that you guys saw that vertex now overcomes with some things like one-click trading and some um the other experiences and then happy to to dive into some more of the technicals uh with regards to the uh functioning and the things that you guys are doing to keep you know really low latency and high performance well like unfortunately we're only at like 50 billion so um no have it on the website I don't I

don't know like that's if it does say 87 then that's [ __ ] we're like 51 or something um but like um yeah I mean the like what we started vertex back in like I think 2022 um like the current iteration sort of came into Focus like like in the second half of 2022 so like at the time like the landscape was pretty uh it was just like it was not very like like you could you had like GMX um you had like stuff like there's even like a Perpetual protocol um with like VA mm and that was like like considered super Innovative at the time um like it really wasn't anything that was like close to

competitive with like centralized exchanges um like I think since then like the landscape has gone a lot better right um like ux has improved pretty dramatically across like um yeah a lot of different projects um across the Spectrum um specific to us like um like we're pretty like dead set on like sort of just pushing like the envelope of in terms of like performance so like we we'll make some trade-offs between like um performance and like decentralization right so decentralization is like a bit of a spectrum um so like on one end it's like you know have a centralized exchange and on the other end it's like you have something like Unis Swap and like we sort of just want to be um

somewhere in the middle where like our performances like equ could on to that of a centralized exchange but um like user still have like custody of their assets um we're not like too concerned about stuff like me or like um making sure that like the sequencer can't like you know cheese The Ordering of order placements and stuff like that um it's like one that's just like I think a like that's just a really hard problem to solve and B like I don't really think a solution is needed um so like what we're doing right now is just trying to push the envelope um going for like yeah just to correct like deals um on the biz side to be like competitive Sexes um yeah I

like seeing where that takes us why do you think your go to market strategy was able to amass much like volume relative to the entire per landscape like I mean like I don't think there's anything like too special about our Goa Market strategy to be honest like um I think we executed it like like it was okay it wasn't like crazy like obviously like and and like there's things I would have done differently um obviously like you know having incentives help a lot um being like just having like a really good product helps a lot and then like where we really shined was with like BD and like onboarding like institutions so I think like as a team

like our marketing is like quite weak but like we were just able to get like so many market makers on board so fast and we just had like very very deep books like um I don't have like specific numbers on this but like you can like compare across like different per Dees and like try and buy like I don't know a couple BTC perss or like like 100k F BTC and just see like how good execution you get um across different exchanges and like vertex is like incredibly competitive um I think even with like centralized exchanges yeah yeah I think the product speaks for itself in terms of um you know usability for somebody like a like

a market maker is probably using algorithms and things but even just like your average Trader who's used to using trading on on binance when you enable One Clip trading it it becomes just as seamless and to kind of deposit from arbitrum into and even cross chain now and even into in into vertex and and then start to use um The Exchange let's kind of talk about the technicals with regards to how this works app chains become very popular R up as a service launcher on appic rollup vertex is almost similar there's some slight differences let's let's talk about kind of like the technical structure as to how uh we got here so um you know offchain order Brook but things are still happening onchain how

do you guys come to these decisions and kind of what is the structure um now um yeah I mean it's like it's not like particularly like uh it's not like a particular unique structure so it's like pretty similar to like dydx D3 or something like zero extra it where like trades settle on chain and then um yeah and like user deposits are stored on chain but like just the order match is completely off chained um like our reasoning for that structure was was sort of just like like we can go through like different spectrums of decentralization right and what we thought was most important

looking at FTX was like like the inability for your funds to be stolen so we thought that that as long as like like that was sort of all the decentralization we really need in my mind um because like as a user like I don't know if you would be like incredibly outraged if like the sequencer swaps your order with like another order um so like your order gets bumped by like a couple milliseconds as opposed to like all of your funds get stolen right so we're very much like let's do something that like maximizes like the safety of your funds and then once we have that just push the envelope of performance as far as it goes um so the first part part of that means like having security that like

ultimately set us to ethereum and then the second part of that is trying to do trying to move like as many components as you can off ch um and like like there's a lot of different like reasons as to why um I think that like that's sort of the best setup for performance um like if you were to have like a blockchain these nodes need to talk to each other um it takes like I don't know like 65 milliseconds for light to like travel Halfway Around the World You' have like a globally distributed set of nodes like for them to like coordinate and come to consensus on like just where your order is like by that point like you're already an order

of magnitude off from like being competitive with centralized exchanges um so we figured that like you know we'd push the envelope of decentralization in so far as protecting users and then like to not really bother with decentralization if it doesn't protect users um so that's sort of where we came to this current design and um yeah and was that the pitch to institutions like is that is that balance what resonated with market makers that they weren't getting at their centralized institutions they were worried about lost funds and then decentralized offerings at the at the time didn't have the type of performance and latency that they had come to expect

on centralized exchanges or was there something totally different that they enjoyed and they were they got them excited about vutex um I mean like there's a like so I mean the main reason why a market maker would trade on a venue is because it makes the money right so like obviously that's like the primary pitch which is like um you know trade on us um you'll make money but uh like being like you know very competitive with Sexes having the same exact models so like it's very easy for them to integrate um and like I guess it's lot like my question is more like why are they making money on vertex but not on some other exchange oh yeah I mean like the answer

for that like right now is just like incentives right so like um incentives like um yeah like make it that like there's friendly or taker flow and stuff um and then like you know as market makers get on board and like have really tight quoes there's more like um pretail users who actually like you know use vertex as like a place to execute and then you know market makers like you know they benefit from like um like that take or flow but like at the very start right obviously that pitches like like you know will incentivize you to come on make markets and then like we'll get you like this taker flow and then like you know you sort of have to bootstrap it

like unless unless you're doing like you know an FTX Alam type thing thing um where like you're running your own Market making firm it's like you just have to solve that chicken and egg problem with something like incentives have you ever uh programmed any sort of like automated or algorithmic trading um Bots or strategies which can be executed in the decentralized purpose landscape just capturing inefficiencies in the market or Market making or you know social sentiment or things like that um I mean I've made some rudimentary like um like Dex trading box but like um you like nothing particularly sophisticated just like

trying stuff out very humble humble way to say that he is Jared from subway. I'm just messing around um back to vertex though with regards to some of the technical components that you've been building out um obviously you know there's been upgrades in the past and one thing that stands out about vertex is particularly the the speed of listing new assets I'm curious like how much technical capability or what Dev um you know kind of tooling is required to list new assets on vertex um and then similarly how you guys go about finding and you know asking market makers or

kind of telling them and suggesting them to uh Market made on new pairs um yeah I mean so like in terms of the dev side like like the side isn't the bottle left it's like really easy to add something like the hard part is just what you the second part of your question which just like getting market makers to support um yeah unfortunately like you know we're not like an exchange plus a market making shop um so it's it's like it's pretty hard actually to like you know get new market makers on board new assets um like they uh like you know a market maker can have like regular trade requirements or something or like they don't want to trade a particular asset um but that's mainly like the hard part just like interfacing

with a lot of different market makers um I don't really like touch like that part that deeply that's like L be deep thing but like I would say like we've done okay at listing new stuff and like um staying on top of things but like obviously like when you're you know when you're dealing with like a lot of other parties who have like their own requirements and stuff like that um it does like make the situation more complicated gotcha interesting yeah it's quite it's quite fast that's the thing though that there's so many um new token launches right now that kind of tough to keep up but I know that some some per Sexes are kind of making their entire branding like oh we have the most assets available to trade on

chain yeah I mean strategy I think that's actually like I think it's a really good strategy man and I think that it works like uh like most of the volume is still BTC and eth right but like um like if you're like a new user you're like oh I'm really hyped up about this token like and then this is the only place where I can go trade that token bridge in you start trading and then like you're going to stay there to trade BTC and G to so like I think it's like a really sound strategy um I think that like for us to do it we would have to probably like start up our own Market making shop um and then like that sort of gets pretty close to like FTX Alam so we don't really want to touch

that yeah um a followup to that is um what when you're talking or you know when the BD side is talking to to to market makers um and you you had mentioned this but I kind of want to pin it down even further so those who are listening it's it's a broad Trend across crypto especially in arbitrum right now with the stips but truly you can go on vertex you earn uh brtx every time you trade and arbitrum tokens right now as part of the sttip that I'm not sure what percentage it is it's a course proportional to uh your size and your volume but ultimately like that's that's just again another Edge that that can be um you know gathered rather than trading on a centralized

exchange I'm curious if when you talk to people who are relatively new to to perss from traditional finance and I would expect you and and darus and the BD team to have a lot more of these conversations as things get exciting in the market is like is that that something to them that is like the icing on the cake it's like the wow this is like this is just they they just they just look at it as like extra spread extra um kind of like you know incentive on top um yeah I mean it makes like like it makes it easier for people to like trade So like um and like if you're like an automated Trader for example who's like riding a taking strategy um because you're know you know that you're getting

incentives right you're like you're more likely to like take even if like like even if it's like you're not completely sure if that's like a good trade um if there the incentives weren't there and then like that also means that like um you know market makers are also more inclin to quote like like tighter to like get that like taker volume so it's like you know it's like a it's like a self-fulfilling cycle or something like that yeah I mean I always say it's like only in crypto do you get paid to trade in traditional markets you literally pay to trade like back in the day on Schwab and TD Mar trade it it was like $7 for a

trade now it's free right but it depends right well it depends right so like um you don't get paid to trade in trafy but like um like Jane Street does right so like um like they'll they'll pay like the big boys to like trade and like like for you to run into them um so I guess that's like one of the nice things about crypto which which is like these like incentive programs are like a bit more open to everyone um as opposed to being limited to just like a very small number of Institutions definitely what were some of the things that you learned while you were at jump like maybe one of them was like uh these

big boys get paid to trade like what what are some of those like tidbits that you picked up while you were there that maybe are misconceptions in the crypto world like to be honest with you I really learn that much about crypto um while I was at jump like I think when I was at Jump I was like sort of very Starry Eyed like going through white papers like um oh my God this [ __ ] is so cool um like I'd say that like most of my learnings are more like technical as opposed to like like these are the cynical truths about the world you know um yeah but like trafi like any trafi tidbits like that's how like market

makers get pay and incentives work in trafi and yeah I'll be honest with you like I learned most of that stuff like just outside of jump like um like during my's time after like while was at Jump I like very like sort of technical focused um and like keep in mind like I was on the crypto team at jump right so like you don't actually learn a lot about trashly while you're on the crypto team yeah fair enough um you know curious about some learning as well um as far as the the kind of uh next steps for vertex on the technical side what are you uh what are you coding these days um yeah I mean like the main thing

is our cross chain buildout right um so like to give some context like I I think one of the reasons why like our cross chain design is a bit unique is because like we're sort of value additive to um every chain that we're on so for example like um most other per orderbook perp exchanges work in a manner where it's like this is where the exchange settles you bridge your funds over everything happens on this layer and then like when you withdraw like it just sends you the funds on that base chain um so like the way we're doing cross chain like sort of settles on every single chain so like the trades hit every chain um so like just getting that to work um was what I

was working on over the like past month or so um not and how does that work how do you settle a trade on one chain and then it settles across all connected ones uh yeah so like I guess like the the way I would do this analogy would be like just um Pretend We're just dealing with two centralized exchanges so like binance and buybit right um like how do I match orders like an order on binance with like an order on bit um and like the answer to that that is sort of like um orders on binance and buy bit like kind of already match each other all the time just like indirectly right CU you have

like trading firms in the middle like doing Arbitrage between those two exchanges um so what we're almost doing is like simulating like a like a perfect Market maker right so like if you have an order on B sorry if you have an order on like let's say blast and then like add an order on arbitrum and then um you want to match those two you you just create like two matches um so it's as if a market maker like matched with this order on blast and then the same Market maker like also matched with this order on arbitrum um so you just have two trades against a market maker and that that market maker is sort of responsible for like rebalancing funds um so we've sort of just built that into the system um where like you have like this perfect

Market maker that has no incentive to make profit um and all it's responsible for doing is just like unifying all these books yeah I was going to say so that doesn't lead to any fragmentation you guys use some like there's no like assets from one chain areen necessarily transferred to another or it's just a matter of the market makers on each chain uh through some sort of inoperability layer or protocol or system can then basically interact with each other to to order to match each other's orders but that all happens off chain or uh what am I missing I mean so like I I guess the market maker analogy was sort of like um

yeah trying to explain how like um like liquidity from one venue sort of bleeds into like another venue um when like a market maker is active on both venues and like Mak an Arbitrage traes so what we're sort of taking that is like we have these two venues almost right we have like this venue on blast and then this venue on arbitrum and what we're doing is like we're having the system act in a way that's similar to like a market maker would on binance or buybit and then because like you know this system runs everything um it's like perfect in the way that it causes the liquidity to like you know bleed into each other and like at that point it's just like one book so um to step through

an example like say like you have a resting order that's placed by a user on arbitrum and then you have like a taker um that's trying to take on blast so that blast order should match with that order on arbitr um so what we're going to do is we're going to have um the market market maker but it's actually just the system um like place an order on blast and then that order is going to hit that market maker at the exact same level that um the order on arbitrum would have been at and then at the same time the market maker is also going to like place a taker order on arbitrum um so happens is that market maker delta neutral right like it just gained some position um blast that a lost some position on

mantle or something like that um and then both of those people sorry the order on blast is filled the order on arbitrum is filled um so it's like that like trade sort of just pass through the market maker um in like a delta neutral way so that's sort of like that system is just like we using to like merge all of these books into one and like any cross chain trade is just represented as two trades um one trade on arbitrum and trade on plus as you combine these books and and books here are the networks so as you com as you integrate new networks and and further expand vertex's book does the

pricing on vertex get sharper and therefore better pricing to end users um I don't I think that like um like every we we hope that like it just looks like one book um so like I think like we're not really combining books at that stage um and what what I do think though is like you know as we get more users and um as we like open up to like a lot of different chains um like there's going to be more incentive to like quote like Tighter and deeper so like I I hope the pricing gets better and the plan is for it to get better got it yeah and does this scale does this Tech or does this concept of

this Market um interacting cross chain does this scale to like three chains five 10 12 is it for optimistic rollups does it scale to ZK does it scale to l1s like what's the capacity here any like restrictions yeah so right now it can scale to any number of evm chains um yeah um and then like if we really wanted to like if like a non evm chain really took off like we could build like a contra TR end point for that chain like it wouldn't be like it would be kind of hard to integrate a non evm chain but like not impossible gotcha gotcha and then with regards to the blast launch um well first uh why blast and then also I'm

curious about like the like The Branding and the idea behind that um yeah I mean like I guess like um like why blast is not like that's not like a decision that um I like like scrutinized super heavily um like in general like I think blast is like probably going to make it I think their team is like um yeah very sharp and um that's like just one of the reasons why we think that I mean I don't mean to that negative way sorry to interject I I I put it this way why blast rather than optimism oh um I think like so blast is like a new chain and they have like a

lot of eyes on them and um one of the things we learned on arbitrum was like you can like during the ARB airdrop thing like we were we were like one of the latecomers ARB right um so even though like we're one of the largest projects on like ARP now um I think like for the airdrop we got zero um and like going through like the whole STI process it was like pretty difficult like getting votes right because just had like no actual power on that chain like despite what happened so like um in so far as like star on a new chain like um it just makes a lot of sense if you think that someone's like going to make it you're like going on the ground floor

and you want to be like at that like OG table so to speak so yeah like on arbit Trump that would be like I don't know like GMX Camelot and the other right and like you know they run that chain they've done a really good job um so like like one of the big learnings from that was like yeah there's like a lot of politics behind the scenes and like you know no matter what like we could talk about product all day but like you know playing politics is still important anywhere yeah D governance is uh interesting beast and then so you guys AR so you know most teams go cross Shain and their strategy is let's take our brand verx Sushi you name it you

Swap and let's bring our brand to all these different chains because they will recognize us and you know we'll get that name share we have that mind share you guys kind of went against the grain a bit and you're you're launching under a different name um which I'm forgetting but you certainly know that I have a that I think is a more retail oriented Vibe it's got a more fun feel to it I think perhaps one could say and and I think it could be more sticky and catch on to blast um users and to just general uh ethereum users so perhaps I've answered my own question a bit but curious to to hear about more of your learnings with regards to cross Shen branding and strategy and why you guys chose to go in

this direction um and you know actually what the name of of the new brand is there I forgot F yeah it's called Blitz but uh that's honestly kind of bearish we might we might have to rename it if it's not very memorable um why are you fting Andy why the F yes yeah well that's Blitz I mean hey Blast Off Blitz blast on dude I thought it was a good name but dude apparently it's just no one no one cares but uh um so uh like a lot of people disagree on with me on this too like a lot of like you know we had like some fun and stuff like that um and like we've you know

spent a lot of time talking to like um yeah a lot of of stakeholders and stuff to figure out like um the best way to conduct a blast sorry like a cross chain launch um specific to blast like um blast like they're they care a lot about like curating like a certain Vibe for their chain um and they care a lot about like projects being blast native right so um yeah like it it makes sense like in the sense that like you know we could like launch vertex blast and just call a vertex and like take our existing brand over um but just in terms of like the preferences of like you know the L1 team

and like how we thought like you know what would make like a stronger impression um in that competition and also like for users um yeah we thought that like just like a new brand just made a lot more sense um like the way we ultimately thought about it was like it would be better to like you know Fork the marketing a bit than to like not do well on blast at all well they can't Fork your market makers they can't Fork your sequence sir maybe they can't Fork everything that's happening off chain the team and and all of this but with this strategy is very interesting where you saw Unis swap V2

Forks be deployed on Avalanche like pen Golan and you saw aushi go and but then but then specifically you saw these native ones on each all L1 Phantom had like spooky swap so they forked the code and changed the brand which hits in a sense of like being native but it's still kind of like ah you know it's just a fork whereas what you guys could theoretically deploy a new brand on each chain that is applicable to each of those chains Vibes using the same cross chain Market making that you guys have and almost have like a native brand that is uh aligned with each Chain's overall po like if you think about these like as

like uh States um population that really would jive with them and potentially like have a strong product Market fit or strong Vibe fit but still get all the best of the vertex product under and and the market making which is uh it's pretty bullish man well yeah I appreciate that um but like it's still a very like Case by case thing per chain um so like I think blast in particular the calculist made sense to like go like it's still a lot of effort to spin up like a new brand right so for blast um given how much they care about like you know being native like I think it like made a lot of sense for like other chains are probably just going to do vertex um but like it's just a case by case basis um like we we try to think

really hard about it and like um figure out like what's going to be like you know most value additive to like vertex at the end of the day um but yeah we'll trying to figure it out without like creating too much fractory I think the last is going live in I mean it should be a couple days no pretty sure it's this is not this week here something's this week oh the competition uh I think the results come out like next week um and then they're gonna go live like the week after that so it's like it's very quick so this pod will probably be out just shortly after that um and so will you guys at that at this time speaking the future here will will will Blitz be live day one on blast

that is that is it plan so the problem is like like if I say yes I can't like retroactively edit this you know that's the problem um so like um that's like I'm gonna try my hardest man um that's that's why I mov in with my parents so we'll see but like like no no no promises like I think that so far like you know we have the cross chain buildout fully um working on testet in ter terms of the backend components um front design is ready to go so like you know I'm I'm crossing my fingers but like you know we could run into a bug or something but like overall looking good great progress all around do your parents have any idea

what you do uh dude I don't like I think they just know that like I work with computers um like I try not to talk about it too much uh yeah like yeah just like you like we talked how like at the start of this thing I was like Asian right it's like yes I was gonna say Asian cure yeah it's not us yeah like they they wanted to meet me to be like a doctor or something it's not it's not work they're very dis for sure he dropped out yeah know yeah the guy that got me into crypto was an Asian guy he's in Premed now or he's in med school now and and and I'm just completely dropped down just talking to him the other day he was

like dude I haven't touched crypto since we got liquidated on bitm which never actually happened because we weren't able to do that but it was a it was a crazy uh anyway last um so glas goes live do you know if they're planning to have uh the token live immediately on launch or do you know any details about kind of how like that their incentives are planning that you can share uh I actually like I have no idea right now um I know that like one thing they're going to do is allow like um projects to like P pass through incentives to like um like their users so like you know how we're doing like blast points for like TV and stuff just like a way of like

funds are parked in the smart contract to like pass that on to like the users of the protocols um so but that's really all I know like um I'm sure that like I could find out more but I haven't been like like that interested honestly de poys on blast not very interested in incentives dude like if we if we get the incentives great man but like it's we gotta like build it first oh yeah so is Blitz gonna have a a separate token other than vertex um I don't actually know yet so like um we've been like there's like a lot of pros and cons right um so like if you have a blitz token I think you

appear more native um on the other hand like it sort of fractures like the valid capture of the decks and like you'll proba upset a lot of like existing stakeholders and stuff um obviously like some of that can be mitigated if you did like a really big airdrop of B to VTX but like it's like a pretty complicated situation um like for us like I think it's just good to like um like we're still thinking about it we don't need to like pull the trigger on anything and like blast is sort of like a situation that's evolving rapidly right like no one really knows where it's going to go just yet like I'm pretty optimistic but like I don't know for sure um so like we just just sort of want to keep like like the options open um obviously this means that like you know everyone's jumping to

conclusions about this or that um and yeah that's what that is but like I don't know yet um we're still figuring out we're gonna like try to make them right call like um will has to that was a better answer than I expected okay your expectations were that low huh all I mean I don't know is better than a just a hard know gar Gar can give you some hope okay I think Rob had something yeah before Andy asked when token I was gonna ask uh like what are some of the more interesting

technical like questions or problems that that you're trying to solve or that like you find yourself thinking about um yeah I mean so like the uh like the cross bit was like the uh the part that like like that's like the main part of that build out from Tech side like the stuff that I'm personally very excited about and I've been spending a lot of time reading about is just like um just making our performance much better um so like right now like our performance is like I don't know it's like I don't know like maybe between like five and 10 milliseconds or something like that um to like place an order um like we have some ideas I think realistically like we can get a d like 800 micros so like just learning a lot

about like high performance computes and like you know going like really deep into the weeds of like how to push like a computer to like the absolute limits that's been like really fascinating to me um obviously like that sort of thing is not as not as like useful to like the success of the company compared to like um I don't know like figuring out how to do like an incentive program perfectly but that's the thing that I've been really excited about yeah what do you think uh I could argue on it on on multiple like you know just that it is important to the company to reduce latency you

know for the sake of the users to to get better execution um like and sorry go ahead no no please I was going to say that like um like it starts getting like very theoretical once you go all the way down right so like from like 100 milliseconds down to like 10 probably helps a lot um going from like 10 to 800 micros I don't know how much that helps um certainly cool certainly fun um but like like you know our books are already like really [ __ ] like like they're like very thick at this point and like um spreads are very tight so like I don't know how

much like minus 9% does for us um but it would be cool to like get our TPS from like I don't know like 100k to like 10 million or something yeah yep thick books and tight spreads baby is there a are yeah you're turning Andy on with tight tight spreads BS thick book give my the deepest liquidity possible with my point one e 20x size I don't know if you can handle that out dude I'm I handled that all the time yeah my down to

zero are you guys experimenting at all with like like different kind of like pricing mechanisms like like as you kind of like amass more order flow you guys looking at like order flow auctions or like any of these any of these like intense these types of pays like simore iio Sim iio they have a cool intense thing Goa yeah I mean like I'm going to be honest with you like uh like financial markets have been going on for like a really really long time and like they all sort of converged to like um you know Centra limit order books being like um yeah the way like transactions happen so like I don't like it gets really theoretical like what sorts of

Market structure like benefits like which stakeholders um I I I personally I think that like Central limit order books are going to be what wins that at the end of the day and a lot of like um a lot of the stuff around like you know like frequent batch options and stuff like that like and like arguing why they're super good I think it's almost like cope around like you know Central limit order books not like they don't really work on top of blockchains you sort of have to have like a centralized sequencer right like if you are like a blockch with like block times and stuff like you sort of have to go like yeah no frequent batch auctions are like really good um and like they're great but I don't really

think so and I think that's like a function of just what's like what's buildable on that piece of infrastructure as opposed to like what's actually good um for users and like the scheme of the design of financial markets yeah it it makes sense the point you make about like built-in latency via block times um and how that attributes or or like applies to certain Market structures um that are more efficient for that design but why Financial Market participants don't really care about that part of the design um because it it it doesn't really benefit them you would have to adapt and change things to like kind of like make it work for the end user whereas the

existing Solutions already work um yeah meme of decentralization it's like I don't know yeah I mean I think that like if if frequent batch auctions and like um these other methods were better I think that like trapfly would have adopted it at some point to be honest like um like dude I think that Trad is pretty smart like and they've come up with a lot of cool [ __ ] they keep the world running um I'm not going to act like I can just like code for like a week and come up with something like radically better because like I know what a smart contract is yeah that might be that might be a hot take but like it I mean the fact that

trafi is actually not that bad like we'll we'll see how much hate that gets I think it's I think it's pretty consistent with the way the world works at the moment we'll see I can't wait just I hope I don't know hopefully like a lot of you know I'm gonna get like a bunch of trafi like SOS in my Twitter so that's the goal nah it's the the negativity comes from the connotation with regards to like all the all of the um the the kind of stuff that happens behind the scenes you know a bit we're just speaking at with regards to how these mechanisms work in real time from a a computer perspective I think we can all agree that the Shady self is is

actually it is a uh a consequence of over centralization which vertex and many other perex is solve by having self- custody and then blockchains then Sol further with verification on chain and things so um kind of curious if uh any other thoughts on that and I kind of want to ask you about some of these scaling solutions that we're seeing today and what what your thoughts are um maybe on like this like monolithic versus modular ongoing charade as well as um salana um and other kind of itps blockchains um yeah sure I mean like I think that like I think that modular

like you know I think it makes a lot of sense um at the same time though like um I I think I'm I probably lean more towards like um just something like salana um because like you can't like you can always build the best like like you can't like in order to like actually push the envelope as to how good like your product can be you really have to own the full stack um so I think salana like does a really good job of that like no one is as performing as salana in production um yeah like they've absolutely crushed that it's like an

incredible um piece of technology um and yeah I think that like it's just really incredible um and I think that like the whole like da layer is is nice in so far as like it makes it easy for someone to like um you know build a rollup or something like that but like if you're talking about like your goal is to provide as much cheap block space as possible to the world that's like reasonably decentralized um something Mi a lot is the answer yep nice good take I think uh hide CPS chains lexon say Etc will

dominate user onboarding and then I think the more modular ones once chain abstraction and different things kind of come online end up having a lot more growth in the coming years um sonon will have will face different issues with tokenomics and scaling and bigger blocks and things but ultimately I think it's the best ux on chain right now um by orders of magnitude really do you think that like uh like do you think that we need more High TPS chains though so like um like I kind of feel like there's almost like enough block space already if people are trying to build like a like I don't know like there's not we don't need like that many meme coins to gamble on you

know yeah I just think like similar to to vertex how you guys have set up a structure wherein you kind of own your execution environment by having offchain um ordering through your own sequencer I think that we don't necessarily need more general purpose block space but I think that every app that wants to scale to actually be like something usable by millions of millions of people or have a potential to be like uh a significant app that has longevity I think that they need to own their own blog space like you say own the stack and kind of control the stack so that's why I think like this like launch your own rollup or app specific chain is is like almost like launch your own salana and then hopefully you know it gets faster and better over time with different

improvements um generally I I don't think that we need more optimism general purpose chains I don't think that we need another defi r chain like probably don't need another ZK chain but like more apps going to app specific chains that already have community and users I think is like the next step and then figuring out how to put them all together and like interrupt Solutions under it which um seems seamless to the user where you could click in between browser tabs from different apps on their own execution environment I'm getting into like the dreams here but and you can interact with all of them without lean to bridge that would take us quite a that would be like a a good next step for the space I think mid 2025

or so so you think that every single app that's like reasonably successful is going to become its own blockchain or it's all real most of them I think a lot of them will which uh don't heavily rely on the underlying base chains Network effects um dramatically which of course you can make the argument that a lot of them do um but but I think that the trend will be increasing yeah Goa like actually like we we've like spent some time thinking about that vertex rout So like um one of the things about our design is like we push every trait to arbitr and because that like we do have like um yeah we do have like like sort of technical constraints right

because like we're still dealing with like non- infinite block space like if we fully transition to like a ZK rollup or something like that um we could like crank like the scalability all the way up um but like actually I think like the network effects are super valuable for us um and like like I think that like the the main benefit of like sort of having your own like chain is like like just being like valued on like um like the cultural significance of your chain like I feel like once you're like you're on L1 it's it's not really about like economic value anymore it's about like

making memes and like having Community um and like once you like superimpose an app on top of that like you sort of actually like lose all the magic um and like speaking more to like our experience as at vertex right like one of the reasons why our BD has been like pretty successful and we've been able to get like um deals it's just cuz like we're value additive um to the underlying blockchain um that we're on right so like um like I I don't know if I can like speak like I can't talk about like specific dos like they're still in the works but like um we're different in that sense from something like a dox

right because like at most like you can deposit into dox and withdraw from dox we actually like generate activity um on the underlying chain and like having that Alliance is like actually really beneficial to us um yeah and then like I don't know how bullish I am on like the acchain hypothesis um like I'm still try to think through it like part of what I think makes crypto valuable is the fact that like it's a community um and like it's just like a bunch of like just the fact that's degenerates on the internet creating culture and like um sort of having their own like Sovereign like State and

cyberspace um is what's valuable and like once you decide to make an app chain like you sort of almost strip all of that away yeah yeah interesting takes I mean just to counterpart real quick rub what you guys could uh consider as well as something that is still additive to arbitrum is they've got obviously arbitrum orbit now which has a ton a ton of advantages from a block space perspective for example if there aren't if if you don't um process a bunch of trades on vertex down to the uh L2 because effectively you you need be your own specific L2 or an L3 settling to arbitrum arbitrum one um you you don't have to pay for Block space if you guys

don't use blocks you know one two block three blocks you don't have to expense there um so that's like one advantage of like doing it and so you get all the flexibility and uh hide CPS without you know all the expenses and then still your your value added to arbitrum um but obviously not to the same extent when you're not what when you're posting just batch transactions versus how how you guys are approaching it now with regards to the value created but perhaps it's still quite similar otherwise man I agree with what did your your points and it's okay to disagree and I think we'll see this path of like some people doing app specific and then once these teams

go app app specific with with one app like vertex they're going to go the osmosis route which is that then they're going to B build vertically and then it's like well now you're a general purpose chain again but you just own all of these apps on this absis roll and then some teams will just stay on general purpose train and then um you know until things change so it's going to be interesting but Rob I interrupted you um I just had to offer that uh feedback yeah I think it's I I think it's uh it's productive because um like you're saying you either you either get closer to the settlement

chain or you get further away from it I think as you get further away from it you start to get morphed into your category of your the category of your own ecosystem some projects are choosing to take that route because then they're priced against other ecosystems and I were talking about this before is like you look at the comparables for any L1 or or like even even a layer two and all of a sudden your the fdv is like 10x uh what you would be if you were just the app without the chain part and if your goal is to raise your your valuation as high as you can like that's one route to take and so I see why why projects are taking that route but you lose all the network effects you

lose all the composability a lot of the composability early man it's like Community not enough interrupt sorry no no I was gonna add the that like the interrupt between app specific a and ab specific A through Z times a thousand is just not there for bridging in things and then yeah like the community as well what what did you say on the be chain pod rob you should tell Allen um about the validators the the validators I think you'll like I think like I that was smoking the bear that was saying that each of the members of his community are social validators I think that's that's relevant too because

you look at like a main chain and if you're going there it's like you're kind of like losing like those those Community validators when you go launch your own chain um and it's in a sense like you're losing that composability so I think a lot of those Network effects you speak of are offchain um they're like the community validation they're like the like the memes like that's what you're losing by launching your own ecosystem but you're gaining an e e system valuation and it's like it's like a making a trade and I think there's like timing there's all the things that you would you would consider when you would make that trade well to pose that as a question then alen do you think that the vertex and if you can't speak on this that's

fine do you think that the vertex token lose it is losing value comparatively or is is there are there's liquidity that rather they're betting on vertex it's it would bet on ARB it I don't I don't really think so like um I I think they're just very separate like I think I I think people like invest in like a specific um I don't know like people want to invest in like a narrative right um I don't really see how like someone would have like one narrative and like ARB and vrtx are like competing um yeah within that um i' say that like we're we

probably compete on some level with like capital on ARB with like other dexes and then like um just dexas in general um but like yeah I don't really see our like us as like um competitiv with like our native ARB token so do you think do you think buying ARB is somehow a beta or somehow a bet on verx at the same time I don't like given like our given like like our uh our cross chain plans I don't like I don't know how deep that like correlation would be and like I don't yeah like I'm not like that familiar with arbs tokenomics right but like my understanding was like um it

doesn't really have that much value capture from like the activity on ARB so like my real answer is like I don't know um I'm sure that like there's some way which it would be correlated because like I don't know we create hype and then hype boosts token value or something like that yeah there was no right answer I don't think you know easy to see a lot of sides here but um would like to just thank you for uh coming on Owen um and sharing some insights with us it's been a pleasure to to have you in your mom's basement as you're coding for 18 hours a day getting ready for blast Blitz gonna blast him

um and yeah I appreciate you insights oh yeah thanks for thanks for having me on this was a very nice conversation appreciate your time all is well