Mace: Building a DEX Aggregator for Monad

0:00 And welcome back to the permissionless podcast brought to you by the team at Guardian. And as always, we're going deep with DeFi teams who are building on the edge with the most exciting technology. And of course, we are hitting on this exactly today with Mace, which is building on top of Monad, a aggregator for all of the DEXs in the Monad ecosystem.

0:23 And we got to talk with Harm from Mace about first of all their algorithm for DEX aggregation and everything that it takes to go into developing that algorithm as well as the DEX aggregation model in general and how this really works within the Monad ecosystem. And we even got to touch on a lot of the different projects and benefits of building in Monad.

0:46 And we got to touch a little bit on the timeline for the Monad release and hopefully what this ecosystem will look like in the future. So, we get a little glimpse into that side of things. But, of course, before we dive into all of these things and really much more about Mace and Harm's background in DeFi. My name is Owen and over three and a half years ago, I founded Guardian on the premise that DeFi would house trillions of dollars of assets and that really we would need a security solution that gives a stepwise increase in the level of confidence that we're able to have when we ship in that environment.

1:22 And I'm happy to say that today at Guardian, we have achieved the level of security necessary. We use not one but two competing audit teams in our model for every engagement accompanied by a lead security researcher and a dedicated fuzzing engineer for the entire scope. And we're able to gain so much confidence with this model that we put up our own funds as a bounty in a public contest for the contracts on behalf of the protocol team.

1:50 And this is able to really show our confidence in our model but also show the overall effectiveness of our approach in our audits. And so really at this point it is up to DeFi to catch up. But now of course without further ado let us get into this conversation with Harm from Mace. Well I mean first of all dude thank you so much for taking the time to hop on with us today.

2:18 And I mean really I'd love to start before we even get into what you guys are working on on Mace right now. How did you find your way into into DeFi into crypto and what got you in the space initially? For sure. Yeah. So my name is Harm. Been in the crypto space quite a long time. Got introduced to Bitcoin pretty early late middle school.

2:38 So been familiar with kind of a lot of the industry I guess from the early beginnings. Saw a lot of the evolutions and yeah went to school in Waterloo. So you know of course by nature was a fan of Vitalik and Ethereum. So I guess probably when I like started working in the space more you know hands-on and took a few years off and then around like you know COVID time 2020 that was when there was kind of like a global hackathon going on in the Solana ecosystem.

3:06 So also trying to learn Rust. So seemed like a good fit to kind of like you know put you know some usable skills to use and also kind of learn u by building which was definitely something I you know believed in quite strongly. So yeah went on to you know co-founded the team and we you know spent four years developing very novel like AMM infrastructure trading systems a few other things as well but yeah you know just generally you know as as you kind of grow realize you know you have different aspirations or different different goals.

3:36 So that was around the time where we were also you know learning about monad and that was very interesting. It was kind of very similar to what we liked about Solana you know fast and you know fast blog time and you know high throughput low gas fees etc. So it followed in line with you know what we kind of wanted to build as well.

3:56 So yeah, so we started developing on Monad a little over a year ago mostly kind of you know in concept at first given that there wasn't really any like code or any like you know feedback on kind of what to build but we just knew it was going to be EVM compatible. So so we kind of just used that in mind and then yeah just kind of went on to building from there and and over time we came to the realization that Dex aggregation is really where we want to you know have our focus.

4:25 So, you know, working with the Monad team and working with, you know, other validator and MEV teams, we, you know, created a really strong routing algorithm that is able to, you know, perform n number of simulations on all the trading pairs and come to a consensus on what effectively the best route is or the, you know, would yield you as a user the highest ERC20 balance, you know, at the end of the transaction or the swap and then we execute that and we've, you know, seen great performance and you know real recently also now have you know node access so we're able to further reduce latency for that as well.

5:02 So yeah overall it's been really great. We've had you know a spectacular time on the test net working with the Monad team and working with other ecosystem teams as well also kind of learning about the EVM space a little bit more as well now that you know we're focused here as well. So yeah, it's it's been great overall and a great learning experience for our team as well over the last year or so building.

5:25 Excellent. Okay. So there was a global Solana hackathon in in 2020. You start getting into you know developing with Rust and in the Solana ecosystem exploring some of the the DeFi there. I mean it sounds like you guys went pretty deep in the Solana ecosystem building like your own AMMs and stuff like this. So I mean I'm definitely interested to hear what your approach to AMMS in Solana were and I I think you I saw on your road map that that's even something that you guys are thinking of building in in the future for me.

5:56 So you have all the Solana experience. What was it that got you to move from Solana to Monad? Like why the impetus for that? So, you know, originally we, you know, were really fascinated by how AMMs worked and then kind of wanted to bring a little bit more like logic to the AMM cuz we realized that, you know, impermanent loss is kind of a problem.

6:16 So, we tried to develop like a single-sided liquidity solution which we thought, you know, would aim to kind of reduce this. But, of course, you know, nothing is actually, you know, perfect. So, everything difficult and, you know, things take time. But in doing so what we realized is that you know the market tended to move towards aggregation simply for the fact that over time there will be many AMMs many order books RFQ systems etc and you know it's not on the user and it's not a great user experience for them to figure out like where the best liquidity source is and we you know already do this with you know web two things like you know Google flights expedia you know all these different search mechanisms where they you know aggregate you know user you

6:59 Know results for users. So why not, you know, do that for the most basic thing that you'll probably do, you know, in in the crypto space, which is, you know, swapping. So, so we kind of wanted to make that very simple. And then what we realized is a lot of these aggregators end up kind of being like the front page or the first way that a user interacts with the chain.

7:19 So just given all of that in mind, we thought why not just build that and do that really well because another thing that we noticed coming from Solana to you know the EVM is that there are a lot of inefficiencies with how teams are going about this. A lot of them are doing a lot of things onchain, you know, very computationally intensive and you know you we're all like, you know, decentralized people.

7:44 So, so it's all great, but but at the end of the day, if you don't need to do something, you probably shouldn't, right? And and there's always a better solution. And and if and what we realize is like we can reduce gas spend for users by like a factor of 10 by just cutting out any of this math logic on on chain.

8:01 It's just unnecessary. Can handle all this in the back end. Do it better. do it faster and then just give the user you know the final execution information that they need that also then helps them in the case of like you know in case the transaction needs to partial revert or things like that. So effectively what we've almost been able to guarantee is like like no errors in transactions.

8:21 Like if you sign a transaction, you're going to get the swap. Like we've just effectively removed that, you know, completely. And that was just like a very basic thing that we thought users would want and apparently ended up being a super huge core improvement as well and something that other people aren't really doing which is odd. So yeah, things like that we noticed are very like low like lowhanging fruit that were you know great improvements all the way to like being able to guarantee you know simulations are actually what you get as a swap.

8:49 So of course like you know there always sometimes this like very small like you know difference there but in general you know if you go to many platforms today you'll see one quote by the time you execute get something else and there's really nothing you can do about it and you just have to wonder like what happened was I frontr run you know what were these other you know other things that happened and most likely yes but but there's really nothing you can do to prevent that and you know some some platforms are trying to prevent like guardrails but effectively not really you know that much different so what we realized is that like yeah we can actually improve on this a lot.

9:24 In fact we can also do dynamic routing. So rather than you know trying to just you know extinguish the first first liquidity and move on to the second whatever that doesn't necessarily mean that's going to yield the highest output right so we've you know been able to you know using rust and using faster you know language languages in the back end we've been able to like optimize and you know just you know guaranteed with a very high finality that this really is out of every possible like you know different you know route that you can think of this actually is the best one this is what you know we've executed for you we also charge zero fees so you know there's a lot of like interesting things I think users will appreciate and will feel

10:05 Very Solana-like for you know people that are used to like fast blockchains already but also for everyone that's used L2 and things like that they'll also see you know skills of improvement and they're like wow like I didn't even know this is possible maybe it was already cheap but now it's effectively free almost so that's kind of like our goal and then yeah we you know do have aspirations to build you know features as well not necessarily an AMM at this point but but yeah we we do have other things that we have planned that you know happy to share more details on as well absolutely dude it's funny how I think a lot of teams are going from EVM to Solana and Rust and it's like you guys are coming the other way

10:44 And and so it's interesting perspective there and I definitely do want to get into more about your your algorithm I think there's a lot to unpack there it sounds like it's pretty sophisticated at this point but I mean why why Monad? I think you mentioned that when you first interact with a chain a lot of times the user's first touch point is an aggregator.

11:05 Was the decision there to basically go build the first touch point for a new growing ecosystem? What was like the the deciding factor for that? Yeah, that that was definitely a primary, you know, like thought for for why we chose Monad. Like we saw that this ecosystem is obviously developing. there isn't really a native, you know, solution for this yet.

11:25 And even a lot of the teams from the other EVM space that were, you know, planning to migrate, you know, we thought that like a native first is is always a better approach for a community and and that was true. You know, we got from pretty much day one a lot of support from the community, the other teams as well.

11:41 So yeah, I think a lot of people respected that, you know, we did spend time on Solana four years, but we chose Monad like we just chose Monad like this is what we're going to now natively focus on for the next foreseeable future, you know, because this is what we believe in. We believe in the tech, we believe in the team, and we believe in the community.

12:00 And you know, those were really the the three like checklist items that we wanted to hit. And then yeah, of course, you know, being able to have that first mover given, you know, you know, we would be able to potentially, you know, have that market was was of course a huge selling point and and yeah, that's definitely what we've been focused on.

12:16 Yeah. Since the test and I'm interested, have you have you noticed anything? Is there anything notable about the difference between the Solana based development and EVM based development? Like I mean obviously Solana in some sense it's a lot more guarded in that you know when you have your PDA you have to like opt in to these features of like having token balances and stuff like this rather than EVM it's just like anything can happen you can you can get Ether into this address no matter what I mean well even if it doesn't accept Ether you can like self-destruct and get Ether there and there's not as many guard rails.

12:54 So is there anything that you guys notice? I mean obviously you're a lot more lightweight on the contract side but yeah I mean what what's the difference that you guys observe there? Yeah so what we like you know frankly speaking like yeah solidity is a great language for you know new people to kind of upstart you know learn things very quickly you know and and and kind of build fast.

13:16 However, you know, there's always trade-offs with security and and speed, right? So, with that, you know, I think probably over 90% of all the possible like contract exploits have ever happened are, you know, from EVM contracts, right? For that reason. So, so it's unfortunate and and that's why like, you know, we personally are lightweight like you said on the contract side just because we like the safety that rust provides, right?

13:41 So even with Solana development you know where they use you know effectively a framework you know on rust it protects you as a small startup that maybe doesn't have a huge team that doesn't have a large amount of resources from effectively you know like you know like hurting yourself very early on and especially if you're building you know you know things in DeFi right where you know user funds are at stake and different things like that of course nothing's perfect right it's still very difficult and that's one side of it but if you can understand, you know, how how the development works.

14:12 If you can put in the time to learn, you know, all the different, you know, you know, applications of Rust and and and kind of how to to build and how to work with it, which of course is not as simple, you know, you'll be much better off. You know, you'll be able to realize that, you know, if there is, you know, some sort of a leak with the key or with an account or, you know, when you're sending funds or, you know, if you know, if there's some sort of mischeck that you could have had, you know, the compiler will tell you.

14:39 It will kind of scream in your face and it's frustrating at times but it does prevent you know a lot of these you know real issues of people losing funds and you know all of that so yeah to some degree like is it more difficult sure but is that better strictly speaking especially when you're dealing with funds I would say yes so yeah you know I I guess that's why like what I would say or how I would kind of like frame it and for us yeah that's another reason pretty much 90 plus% of our codebase is still in Rust It's because you know we like like you know like I mentioned we're we're a smaller team so you know we want to make sure that everything in the back end is secure you know

15:16 On the infra side is secure in the routing algorithm is actually correct and performant and we can address issues if need be you know and do all of this before it ever touches the solidity contract and then execute something right so and that just helps us sleep at night it also I think will be very comforting for users on the platform now of course like we're just aggregating So the worst thing that I guess you could experience is just like not the best swap.

15:42 But even that right is something that we take very seriously and you know we're always making sure that you know we're we're able to guarantee that and if we you know see you know different user behavior or you know you know transaction behavior you know we'll we'll optimize our algorithm to further you know support certain routes and maybe you know speed things up you know as we keep going.

16:03 But yeah, that's something that like you know like from a foundational perspective we we really believe in and it's kind of why it's been hard to grow our team because you really need someone that like understands kind of like you know Solana side of development but then wants to also build on the EVM which like you said is usually like one or the other but that's also why you know we you know we've done very well and you know our team is great is because we all like are you know very you know good in our ways but you know when we come together we have a very strong team and you know I don't really know if there are many teams that would be able to execute you know in the way that we

16:40 Are you know with everything else so yeah but it's been great and yeah you know we're we will also be like helping people as well so we're going to be publishing like educational resources maybe even like you know walkthrough guides and even some of our own code will be open sourcing over time as well to help people out just because we understand like it's difficult and you know if we didn't have all of these, you know, great people that we learned from and worked with and everything else and, you know, we wouldn't really be here today.

17:09 So, we're always happy to, you know, help other teams and, you know, help the space grow as well. Absolutely. Yeah. I think you remove a lot of the contract level risk by, like you said, just leaving only the rails that you absolutely need on the actual chain and then you've moved all of the actual business logic of the application up.

17:28 And then of course now the burden is just on how do we secure the the offchain and make sure obviously like we need to have no bugs in because I assume you guys are generating call data and then just passing that through to the contract. Well, whoever call controls the call data basically controls all the users assets at that point.

17:46 So yeah, so bottlenecking it, bringing it up into the offchain and then securing the crap out of that. I think also the nice a nice aspect of that is that it's not totally open and not anybody can call your offchain system and like see all the endpoints on it and see all the code and find like oh right there they made a mistake and then go and exploit that in some pernitious way.

18:10 So I I think there are there are definitely advantages to this and I do see more applications moving in that direction moving you know less keeping it you know very simple on chain and then having all of the business logic in the back end and then I think even with like ZK proofs this is becoming you know even more you can do a lot of computation and make it very simple on chain and then the changes becomes kind of like a proving layer or like a data availability layer in some depending on your application but Yeah, I definitely agree on that.

18:42 And I'm also interested because obviously so with an aggregator product your your product to the user is essentially so first of all obviously it's your algorithm but it's also all of the liquidity that you have access to and you can tap into with that algorithm. So it's kind of like a like algorithm times liquidity equals benefit for user.

19:04 So, I'm interested. Obviously, you guys are starting in in Monad and like the more liquidity that goes into Monad, the better swaps you guys will be able to provide. But have you guys thought at all about creating just a completely abstracted crosschain solution that allows users to whatever chain they're on, utilize the liquidity that's on Ethereum, that's on maybe even a Solana or, you know, something like this and be able to get the best execution across the entire ecosystem.

19:33 What are your your thoughts on that? Have you guys thought about that at all? Yeah. No, that's a really great question. yeah, we have thought about it and we will be working with partners to deliver like some sort of crosschain solution for that. it's a little out of scope for us to take that on. I mean, you know, we obviously could, but it's just like not really that beneficial.

19:52 But yeah, there are a lot of great teams like Wormhole, deBridge, etc. in the space. So yeah, we'll we'll definitely work with a handful of partners and then yeah provide you know some sort of aggregated crosschain swap solution that way yeah you know users will be able to you know like you mentioned you know either bring liquidity or still perform swaps while still you know being on you know that chain or using our user base.

20:17 So yeah that's definitely you know something we're going to be focusing on. we actually did propose working with partners to do that even in the test net environment and you know just showcasing like Sepolia and other you know arbitrum test net etc and performing swaps there. so we may even you know also push that out you know obviously ahead of mainnet so that's something we're also you know thinking about doing just to kind of like showcase how it would work and also you know let people play around different test tokens if that's something they want to do as well.

20:51 And then yeah likely we'll have something probably for day one given there is still enough time for for for that experience as well. Yeah I mean obviously it becomes a bit harder to give hard guarantees on like exactly the execution when you start having to cross networks. So I mean the experience has definitely degraded. I mean really depends on the underlying protocol.

21:13 Think there are some that specialize in like really fast low latency crosschain token bridges and then maybe even swaps built into it like like an across. But yeah, I think we'll definitely start to see more aggregators that try and tap into like the entire liquidity of the ecosystem and just completely abstract that away from users. And I I know you guys also had like a generalized like RFQ sort of system.

21:40 So, I mean, maybe this could even fit into that, but that was more specialized for like centralized exchange liquidity. What What does that process look like? Is it kind of like an intense based thing and then the market makers just come in and fill all the orders on chain? What What does that actually look like? Yeah. Yeah.

21:58 So, we'll be working with FastLane actually to to deliver the RFQ solution. So, they're a really strong team. really great to work with and yeah, it's effectively yeah, you can just think of it as like another source of liquidity that we would aggregate and yeah, it would be open to you know, a handful of market makers in the network and they would be able to bid on that on that flow, right?

22:23 And and and if that order is higher than a user would get on a decentralized u pool or you know solution then you know we would we would route to the you know the market maker through the RFQ and you know if we've you know taken a look at statistics on like mainnet activities for you know the leading chains we have seen that for the most liquid pairs like you know SOL/USDC ETH USDC etc they tend to have more liquidity through the market makers through the RFQ just given that they're able to quote you know faster and more accurately.

23:00 So we do you know want to heavily focus on not only bringing the onchain liquidity which you know we're we're actively working on by integrating all the available solutions but also tapping into RFQ and even in test net you know being able to demonstrate you know like how how much that might actually impact users for swap. So yeah, our goal is always to deliver the best you know liquidity and swap for the user and yeah, we would not really be able to you know truthfully say that if we weren't also incorporating offchain through RFQ.

23:36 Yeah, currently we'll be working with FastLane on that. and yeah, that's that's our and and we should also have that out in the next couple months here as well. Okay, sweet. And and how does that work with the algorithm? like how do you how do you so obviously there's the onchain opportunities and liquidity pools how do you also factor in these like RFQ opportunities in ALGO yeah so with RFQ like you can kind of think of it kind of like an order book right so like different market makers will bid at different price levels so we just you know take each of those and you know consider that you know a potential route or option and then we'll then still run our simulations with all the decentralized pools ETA and let's say you know a

24:19 Quote for yeah I don't know like mine or something is like a dollar on like a decentralized platform but a marker m a market maker through the RFQ would pay a dollar and a cent or something we would route them and vice versa right so so whatever they're all bidding we would effectively take like a snapshot at the time where a user submitted transaction consider all of those prices that we've received and then you know do our dynamic routing and then you know determine a best route and you know it it might even potentially possible that you know it it is a mix of the two right but generally speaking that is how our algorithm thinks of it it's just another liquidity source and then we just take those prices and kind of perform the

25:03 Same operations. I see. Yeah. And then in terms of like further improving the algorithm like what are you guys working on right now? What's like the bottleneck for getting you know even better? How do you how do you make the algorithm even better than it is today? It's really just coming down to like the number of simulations we can do at a given time.

25:23 So, you know, initially, you know, there weren't really that many tokens. Now there's, you know, thousands of tokens and that just kind of like, you know, obviously adds up and becomes more complex over time. So, we're just figuring out ways to kind of optimize like what that looks like. We we in some early research and analysis we even identified that there were some like orphan pools or orphan pairs where you couldn't really trade with them.

25:49 So we started effectively like removing those you know from our lists which you know obviously provided some optimization. So yeah, effectively like as the number of tokens and the number of routes you know grows we'll we'll effectively yeah just keep like you know optimizing in in those specific areas. Obviously you know the problem is like dynamic continues to grow and change over time.

26:15 So yeah there is a lot to it. but but yeah, that's definitely like what I would say our primary focus is. And I I would I would say that it's probably something that we'll be constantly working on. I don't really see a time where maybe it's at some steady state where we can kind of just hands off.

26:33 I think, you know, given how markets change and all the everything else, I think we'll like constantly need to, you know, adjust. But that's fine. you know we've we've done well so far and we have a pretty good grasp on you know how to how to handle scaling as well. So we're not we're not really too worried about it but yeah definitely like a bottleneck and and things that like were somewhat worrisome.

26:56 We're just not having that like node access which was hurting on latency and things like that. So all of that has now been resolved. episode. So, yeah, a majority of the issues we were worried about last week no longer exist and I guess we'll figure out what problems we got to worry about this week, but yeah, it's definitely you know, always have fun times figuring that out.

27:18 Yeah, it's like you never see a problem ahead of time and then all of a sudden it just kind of hits you in the head. It's like, okay, well, this is like now a big problem that we never would have thought was going to be an issue and then it's you solve that and then it's like on to the next one.

27:33 Absolutely. And with relation to like other aggregators, do you see any of them as competing with you guys? Do you guys see Monad as like kind of an ecosystem you guys are already leading in the aggregator space or like what what are the dynamics there? Yeah, there there are a few other aggregator teams as well. yeah, it's we're pretty like friendly with everybody.

27:57 They're all great teams as well doing great things. and since everything's on the test net you know I guess there hasn't really been like a true leader yet. So everyone's just kind of been working towards the same goals and you know so far like you know working with our teams is fine as well. A lot of us are also planning on you know aggregating you know other aggregators as well.

28:18 So you know there's there's definitely like a lot of collaboration still I think you know in even in the aggregation space and you know some teams have like different philosophies right with like you know like what they think about in terms of like what they want to pull as a liquidity source etc. So yeah, I mean, you know, I think it'll come down to like what the user prefers to to to that end, but yeah, like the goals that we're striving for, you know, providing the best swap you know, really fast, you know, zero fee and and and you know, obviously working with all the different teams to integrate and, you know, you know, be be like one of the top teams in that to that regard.

28:58 Yeah, we're we're focused on our mission. So you know but but other than that yeah like we love competition so makes us work a little harder and faster as well and you know I think everyone benefits from that as well. So yeah overall I think you know so far it's been great. but obviously it is test net so I do assume things will change a little bit over time but yeah currently yeah it seems like everyone's pretty collaborative and you know we're all just working for the same goal.

29:25 Absolutely. Well I mean I 100% agree. I mean at the end of the day aggregation is kind of a product of competition where you know all of these liquidity sources are competing to get the best price for the user. So it it it definitely serves a purpose in in that regard. And in terms of the like how you guys are approaching gaining users, building like brand recognition, I think that's a big part of these aggregators is like do you have a good brand in the space and do you have users that are you know loyal to this this a particular aggregator like I think you know for example matcha comes to mind like they have a great brand they have a lot of users that will just go and use matcha just because first of

30:11 All they know of the brand and they they trust it. I think that's a big thing is like if I'm going to use a provider for something, it's I want it to be, you know, the provider. I don't want to go to some like no-name aggregator that just spun up and the team might be a non or whatever.

30:30 But obviously you guys are you know, very standing out with your with your work, but like what's what's your approach to gaining users and building a brand and and gaining that loyalty to get trust from users and and have them coming back? Yeah, that's a that's a really great question. we kind of have this philosophy on the team of like trying to get, you know, one new net user a day.

30:54 And then just kind of like letting them you know you know second third order effects kind of take over from there. So yeah, we've been, you know, since early on very active with our community. always ask for feedback even in like our, you know, private test net that we launched ahead of the Monad test net. that's a funny story as well.

31:14 And so, you know, we've been very open to criticism like if you know, things are broken, you know, we mentioned why and, you know, how we're going to fix it and a timeline and updates and everything forward cuz yeah, we we definitely believe in building like in the open as well. and you know letting people know like you know what's going on and and everything like that because you know as someone that will end up using the platform and using their capital and whatnot trusting us like you mentioned with brand we definitely want to be as transparent as possible cuz you know we're working really hard and you know there isn't really great communication there then you know other people can create a narrative and stuff like that so we want to own our own

31:55 Narrative and you know we are very like proud that we're not anonymous, you know, to, you know, like more than we need to be, I guess. you know, we go to events, we speak with users, you know, in person with other teams in person. you know, we we love doing engagements like this. where we can speak to communities as well.

32:15 And then yeah, we of course like have our own like Discord town halls and you know, we do spaces and stuff as well. So, yeah, we we try to like, you know, hear back as much as we can and and make improvements. it's helped us a lot as well. because yeah, you know, that feedback has definitely you know, gotten us where we are and you know, we're going to continue to use that to grow and you know, as we deliver more features like points, program and other stuff.

32:40 We definitely want that feedback and you know, know how we can best you know, handle all this from mainnet as well. because we really think you know the best way to have a good project is if you have a strong community that gives you like critical feedback and helps you improve and makes it you know great for the next person right and in terms of like how we're doing this like aside from that like yeah definitely mentioned like you know being you know doing things in person yeah I guess like connecting with them and then also I think like Twitter is really great for for growing your community.

33:14 So, you know, we've been really active on Twitter. we created like a like a Mace Man character. People people seem to like it a lot. we did like an NFT you know, on on test net with Magic Eden that went over really well. We'll be delivering like unique beta features for users with that as well. So, it's just like a great way for us to figure out like who cares a lot, who wants to like help us, you know, fix things that, you know, need to be fixed.

33:43 Who's also going to you know be very supportive and and vocal on Twitter and you know help us out and you know help us kind of get to that prominence and so far like you know we've been very lucky and everyone that we work with has been really great at that and I would say most of the time if people mention monad or a list of projects we're usually on that list or you know mentioned or you know spoken highly of and you know of course we're you know very thankful for that and we work really hard to maintain that make that happen but yeah I think being active is very great and and those are also things that Keone and Eunice and and James speak a lot about at like some of the Monad

34:21 Founder lounge events that you know they host where where they speak about like struggles that they faced, how they overcame them, how it was you know speaking with with users and and and other you know parties that you know are you know invested and stuff like that. and and we you know we we we learned a lot from them and are still learning a lot from them.

34:42 So, but but yeah, I think being active on the socials, letting people know like what's going on, as soon as you can and kind of helping them kind of create your product with them, I think is also, great cuz people like that, you know, if they mention something and and we actually push it into production, they, you know, they feel involved and they can say like, oh yeah, like I helped with that and, you know, they can mention that to our friends and stuff.

35:05 So, I think I think it's great. the more, you know, collaborative and the more you can involve the community. Yeah, absolutely. And you mentioned the the points program a couple times. So I guess a couple questions like one, how can anyone, you know, watching this get involved with that? And two, kind of what are the dynamics of it?

35:20 How does it, you know, play into the Mace ecosystem? Yeah. No, it's a great question. So it's not live yet. It's going to come you know, in the near future once we push some of these stability up upgrades and then also a few more of the integrations just so there's like a wider set of tokens that we can work with during that event.

35:37 But yeah, we'll be releasing a points program. I think it's going to be really interesting for a lot of people, especially if you played like video games in the past. we're kind of bringing a lot of that type of feel to the points program. So, there'll be, you know, levels and badges and different things like that, that you'll be able to obtain.

35:57 If you also hold the NFT, there'll be, you know, some perks for that as well. So, we're going to make it kind of fun to some degree as well because this test net, right? So, you know, you kind of have to like make it kind of a little bit more fun and playful as well to kind of have users engaged and stuff like that.

36:13 So, so our goal is to make it fun. and then we're also going to be working with a handful of teams to, you know, do like campaigns with other teams and maybe do boosts and stuff like that. So, there'll be a lot of fun stuff, I think, coming once we, you know, release more information and obviously you know, the the program itself.

36:32 We will obviously give access to the NFT passholders first. So if you do currently hold the NFT or you know if you want to you know use this beta ahead of time and probably earn some extra points maybe I would definitely recommend maybe getting one of those NFTs ahead of time cuz that's definitely going to be your first access to the pro program.

36:55 And then yeah, we'll of course roll that out to to the general public and and kind of kick that off with with you know some of the stuff I mentioned. But yeah, generally you know you'll you'll earn points by you know performing different actions on on the on the platform. So it could be you know swaps, it could be volume, it could be certain tokens, could be you know just number of interactions etc.

37:15 So we'll keep it fun and make it easy for you know different people and different schedules and stuff like that. So someone wants to sit there all day and kind of farm they can do that and if someone you know has like a job and you know they're doing things they can also still benefit. so so yeah, we're going to we're going to kind of try to bridge all of that as well.

37:35 But yeah, it should be fun. And yeah, I guess we'll release more details in the Discord and on Twitter about that. So yeah, if you guys follow our socials, I guess that'll be another, you know, early way to to to learn about that and and start from the beginning. For sure. Nice. Yeah, we'll be sure to link those at the bottom of the episode for socials.

37:52 And you mentioned some launch partners too with the points program. You know, obviously you're pretty deepseated in the in the monad ecosystem. What are some other projects you see, you know, building right now that you think are are interesting in the Monad ecosystem? Yeah. Yeah. like I mentioned, FastLane's a great team to work with. Curvance is really great, too.

38:13 Kuru Exchange has been doing really well with their order book. so yeah, there's a lot of like other strong teams that, you know, we we work with as well and you know, they're they're great to to bounce ideas off of and collaborate and, their communities are really strong and their products are really great. so so yeah, I would say like overall like Monad has catered to like a stronger set of team or a more mature team.

38:39 So generally a lot of the teams that you do see have been doing this for a while. they've put in a lot of thought and effort into like why they're building on Monad and what they can bring to Monad. so yeah, I would say generally, you know, feel free to try different applications. they're they're all pretty great.

38:57 And yeah, and those are some of the partners that we do work with and and and and we've, you know, we we like their apps and everything else. So but yeah, generally ecosystem's great feels very similar to Solana because, you know, that's kind of like what we were aiming for as well. So similar to how you know there's a lot of strong teams, a lot of projects and you know a lot of them are now dominating in in their specific verticals on you know on all chains yeah we we you know like working in this ecosystem and and we see a similar path forward for for our ecosystem as well.

39:29 Yeah totally and I think Monad might be like one of the most anticipated L1 launches like people have been waiting on it for a while. Is there any alpha or like any insight you can share on when you think you know we'll hit mainnet? no like true alpha, right? Like I I personally don't know. you know, I'm I'm assuming we'll get like, you know, some small heads up because, you know, we're we're an app and we would need to obviously migrate and stuff like that, but generally speaking, no.

39:55 Like I can speculate. I I I would say I'm pretty confident that it will be, you know, end of this year for sure. probably somewhere like September, October is like my guess and what we're like speculating on the team, you know, but but we we have no knowledge. We personally don't really even bother you know the Monad team about it just because you know it's probably not going to lead to anything and probably be more counterproductive.

40:18 But we know they're working extremely hard. There's a lot a lot of you know problems and challenges that they're you know that they're solving that will of course lead to a quicker release for mainnet. So yeah, we're very confident in them and their ability to deliver. So that's our current like target. that's where we're building around and that's when you know you know we're expecting some some news but beyond that you know we're we're unsure there may be some delays push backs you never know but end of this year I would say is is a pretty pretty solid guess.

40:53 Are you guys already in a state where like let's say even if monad went went live tomorrow mainnet would you guys be ready to just port over and and start aggregating day one? Yeah. Yeah. Like currently our deployment would be able to migrate over very quickly would you know we could probably add that up same day. Of course there are still things we are working on like including you know additional integrations RFQ and stuff like that.

41:15 So there would still be work that we would you know obviously add in after the fact but yeah if monad went to mainnet tomorrow like we would we would be live and we would be you know aggregating and generating volume. would that be the final product? no. But yeah, like it would it would be live for sure.

41:33 Right. So until then, just adding on more features, working on like that RFQ process. I think you guys I don't know, do you guys already have support for like limit orders and stuff like that? Yeah. So those will all come in shortly after like this next set of integrations and improvements. So we're working with like order books like Kuru Exchange, Clober.

41:54 So so you know we'll we'll be able to effectively you know have limit order functionality you know through through their order books. so yeah that's something that is on our list. and and won't take that long after we we push that next update. but yeah I I don't think we we'll be able to fit it in with the time like schedule like right away, but it'll definitely be shortly after.

42:19 But yeah, that's definitely next on the list. and then potentially like a a larger feature that will also take some time but I think users will appreciate as well. Yeah, I'm interested with that limit order feature specifically. How does that work under the hood? Is it stored on chain and then executed by let's say the the same offchain system just like you guys have that stored in your kind of like order book or something like this like what's the setup for the limit orders?

42:46 Yeah, so effectively a user will submit a limit order. what we'll do with that limit order is we'll you know send that to one of the order books or you know that we're aggregating and then yeah when that price is reached we then route that that order through our aggregator. So so yeah when when it's created it becomes like a potential route and once you know it it's it's in the queue and you know based on your position in the queue it'll execute if there is available liquidity.

43:17 So that's that's effectively the current logic. we may like you know improve or you know adjust it to some degree but that's like high level how it would work. Yeah. It starts to get really interesting if you guys start to get a ton of volume on the on the limit order side where you could even match those orders against inbound flow that you guys have to the aggregator itself.

43:38 And potentially that would give you an even better execution. But that's probably a little bit more involved than what you guys want to start out with. Yeah. Exactly. Like for us, you know, we definitely don't want to like run before we can walk. So, definitely doing things, you know, in sequence. like even with our algorithm, we started with like a very basic one with like, you know, very few tokens and you know, just kind of like went from there.

44:03 Because if we like identified any like small logic errors or things like that, they just become very hard to debug and identify when you know you're working with something very complicated. and also was great for like our team to kind of like learn as as they were building it as well. So so yeah all all these things I think for us benefited us from like you know from like a first principles perspective anyway and and yeah you know as time has gone on you know we've you know figured out you know better ways to do things and smarter ways and so so yeah I think that's kind of like was a good approach for us and we'll we'll continue to you know use that like as we build you know additional functionality on the application

44:48 Itself as well because Yeah, you know, as you guys know, anytime you, you know, make some changes, there will be breaking changes. So, you know, we definitely don't want to have too many, you know, moving parts where, you know, we have to do a lot of reverts and, you know, it just becomes like wasted dev time and, that's not something that, you know, we really like have on the team because we're pretty efficient.

45:10 Like, I mean, we pretty much all developers on the team. So, it's it's pretty pretty smooth, but but yeah, knowing that, you know, we wouldn't make it any more difficult than it needs to be for for anybody. So, yeah, I would say also with the fact that mainnet is, you know, months away, absolutely makes sense to just go live with like a very standard set of features and not like try to not try to get too fancy right off the bat until you've gotten some like production test.

45:38 And then you can actually get some feedback and see what users actually want to have. Like maybe users like they don't even care about that. But yeah, obviously there's got to be more iteration up front and that will save you a lot of time in the dev process which it sounds like you guys are well familiar with with that whole pipeline already.

45:57 But I mean there's there's a few other interesting things. I'm not sure if you guys have already implemented this. I mean obviously it's not live because the monad mainnet is not live but you guys talk about like staking rewards and getting that from like me generated from the platform. What does that actually look like? How are those how's that yield actually generated and then so users will just get a share of it?

46:21 Like what does that look like? Yeah, for sure. So yeah, when we're performing swaps you know given that when you submit a transaction the amount of gas that you input is usually kind of like blind auction or you know effectively just pay enough that you you know hope the transaction doesn't fail. You know there's always going to be like some amount of gas spend or etc that you know that that will exist.

46:48 And you know and and just kind of like using that logic you know there will be you know you know and also you know potentially fees from you know other aspects of the platform like lary whatnot as well. So all of this in aggregate you know we will have like a surplus of you know end tokens you know from different pairs and trading etc.

47:09 And yeah you know we could optionally just keep all of that and and just call that a day and you know add it to treasury. consider that platform revenue. however, you know, because we do want to, you know, share that with the user, make it something that, you know, if you're using the platform, you're kind of, you know, earning to some degree with that platform and and you know, we want you know, offer, you know, like you know, users that are loyal and stick with us like some benefit for that.

47:39 So yeah, we we do plan to share that revenue and all of that with the user. So we'll of course be you know sharing more details on that as well as the token how that plays a part and everything else over time closer to mainnet but but yeah for sure like you know we we definitely feel that you know some obligation there to of course share you know share the upside there with our users.

48:04 Absolutely. I think this also it creates a huge flywheel for you guys and it kind of solves that problem of having a good brand having loyal users. it it sort of fits in and and creates how do we keep people coming back and how do we actually get them aligned with the platform and then I mean if you really get it right then that becomes the thing that you know you get you know your first mass of users maybe you know just a couple dozen users and then if you get them really bought in then it starts to become something much much bigger but yeah if if you get the right incentives and the right model there then absolutely it could be huge and I think they would even get reduced fees in general just

48:44 Using the aggregator. Well, I mean, of course, we we'll see what you guys finally end up structuring, but like I I think it's a great offer and obviously somebody who's planning on being a user of the aggregator long term and using it and coming back, it just makes sense to to come and and buy the token and stake it and then get a little bit of the fees that you generate and other people generate and then also reduce the fees yourself.

49:08 And it makes you guys like once somebody has staked, it's kind of like why would they go to any other aggregator because they're they're not going to get the fee reduction. You guys are going to be able to offer them the best prices far and away since since they've got that discount. So yeah, it is kind of like locking in your users and it does add like a a decent moat around if you can grab up enough users and and get them in there to to begin with.

49:32 So yeah, I I think that that incentive definitely makes sense to me. And then I mean let's talk about some of the stuff that you guys have planned even after that because I think you mentioned a few things. I mean obviously you guys have been in the AMM game for for a while before this and it might be something that you guys are looking into again going forward.

49:55 What's what's on the road map after like let's say we get staking, we get limit orders, we get all this stuff out. what what's like the the next big feature protocol that would come after that? We do have one in mind. We are kind of keeping it a little bit closer to our chest right now just because it is like quite far out and you know we we don't really want to kind of like put that out there you know just you know in case it does bring any like you know ne negative attention or anything.

50:24 But but yeah there is a feature other other aggregators have also have this feature. So I guess I'll hint I'll give leave that as a hint for for some people but but yeah it's definitely on our on our road map currently and and we do plan to start working on this feature once we you know have kind of the swap and all these other features rolled out in the next couple months.

50:47 And and yeah, it will probably take us all the time before mainnet to to have that, you know, working. we'll we probably won't launch that on mainnet during day one. Like probably more of like we'll launch that on test net during that time. and then once we've you know figured out any bugs and stuff like that, we'll we'll of course have like a mainnet release for that probably by the end of the year as well.

51:10 But but yeah, I think it'll be great. it also will provide, you know, yield opportunity and and some other fun stuff as well for even like passive users, people that don't even interact with, the specific feature itself. and I think it will, you know, increase kind of like that paradigm and, you know, activity in the DeFi space.

51:35 At least that's our goal. So but yeah, we'll we'll we'll definitely release more information in the future, but for now until we kind of start building it probably not not even worth mentioning is kind of our take. so yeah, so for now like it is the aggregator it's improving it with the feature set like limit order and stuff like that.

51:59 Points you know and other other you know user request to that degree and then yeah anything regarding another feature once we've you know put some boots on the ground there I think we'll we'll we'll start you know making some some mention of it. Absolutely. Yeah, fair enough. You mentioned earlier you have, you know, a really capable team.

52:19 You know, you've got expertise in your domain, but for anyone watching this, like are there any roles you still have open, you know, people you're looking to hire? and also just like what's the hiring process been like in general? Yeah. No, we're always hiring because it it usually takes like usually around like 6 months or so to actually find like someone qualified to actually join the team.

52:40 So, we are always hiring. So yeah, if you you know are the things I mentioned like someone that understands distributed systems you know has some you know knowledge of Rust especially kind of in a web 2 context to be honest and and and you know maybe has some you know smart contract or some concept of how blockchains work.

53:00 That's definitely something we're looking for. usually like the backend roles are you know more more common for us to like have open. but yeah, if you are like talented in another engineering domain, front end, infra DevOps, you know, quality assurance is another one that we're actually hiring for at the moment. So someone to kind of like, you know, test things and you know, make sure things are going great between releases and stuff like that.

53:29 So, so that's another thing that we're hiring for. but yeah, currently it is only the engineering roles. we also do have great marketing guys that are doing their job and you know other other community management is taken care of. but yeah on the developer side if any of those you know are you definitely reach out we we are hiring and to speak to our like hiring process I would say pretty standard compared to other teams.

53:56 So we kind of have like a you know behavioral type of like call right interview kind of feel you out see if you kind of have the right kind of mindset for for like a startup and also our our specific team and then if everything goes well we kind of give you like a take-home technical assignment I won't share what details you know for that for obvious reasons but but yeah there's a technical assignment usually custom fit for like the specific role so there are usually still different But you know generally the same and if everything is good there then yeah you're all set.

54:31 We're we're happy to to make you a reasonable offer and you know add you to the team. it's pretty pretty straightforward. our team is as mentioned all developers. So it's pretty much as GitHub and Discord. So it should be pretty easy and and and you know I would say laid-back and fun for most most individuals. So the company culture is great.

54:51 Like everyone kind of just does their work and we have a couple standups and that's kind of what we need. so yeah, if if that's you know something that you know you want reach out. But yeah, that's that's pretty much our process. Absolutely. And we we've got a a decent amount of technical folks in in our audience.

55:08 So of course if if they do have that experience in Rust or they want to get more into building on an aggregator system you know getting into these algorithms definitely they can go over and check out I think it's mace.ag is that right? Yep. Mace.ag is a domain and yeah you can reach out on Twitter or my personal Twitter as well or just join our Discord and and and you know submit a ticket or something or just message me.

55:35 We're pretty active in all those fronts. So, yeah, always happy to chat with with anyone that's interested in joining the team. Excellent. Yeah, we we'll definitely be sure to put your socials down below if anybody wants to reach out if they're interested in in the role they think that they might be a good fit for the team.

55:51 And I mean, beyond that, is there anything else that we can push folks towards like obviously really waiting on the Monad mainnet release, but anything in the meantime? I know obviously with the points program that we can push them towards. I I think we covered most of it. I definitely appreciate you guys bringing us on and giving us the time and, you know, everything.

56:13 Yeah, definitely, you know, just follow the socials, join the Discord, you know, if you have the NFT, that already, you know, guarantees you early access to everything that I've mentioned. So, you know, I think those are great, you know, points to start with. and then, yeah, beyond that, you know, we'll be, you know, rolling out things on a weekly basis.

56:29 So, you know, feel free to check it out and, you know, start early. And yeah, the points you know, hasn't been released yet, but we are still considering current activity as well. So, you know, definitely still worthwhile to interact and and and you know, yeah, try everything out you know, ahead of time as well. But yeah, appreciate you guys you know, bringing us on and you know, sh letting us share all these details.

56:52 Yeah. No, absolutely. I feel like we covered pretty much everything. I'm excited for obviously the launch of of Monad and to see you guys day one aggregating on there and and some of the features. I mean, it sounds like you guys are going to be like pretty pretty feature complete by the time that you guys get to Monad launch.

57:10 So, exciting times and and obviously just grinding away right now leading up to it. But yeah, dude, looking forward to it and and thanks so much for taking the time to to hop on and and discuss everything with us. Yeah, thanks, man.