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Cryptocurrency exchanges love to flaunt big volumes. But as every market microstructure study reminds us, what really shapes an exchange’s long‐term influence is price discovery—the capacity to incorporate fresh information faster than competitors. In the case of Bitcoin, recent evidence shows that perpetual swaps, despite high notional volumes,...

Introduction What happens when a single trader’s “galaxy-brain” exploit targets a decentralized exchange? On March 27, 2025, Hyperliquid found out the hard way. A manipulated short position on the JELLY token forced its USD 230 Million liquidity pool (HLP) into a USD 12 Million paper loss—nearly destabilizing the entire platform. This two-part ...

Why Explore “Bad” Ideas? In the world of high-throughput blockchain design—especially on Solana—people often focus on polished final solutions that “just work.” But that mindset can stifle creativity and blind us to alternative approaches. What if we took a fearless dive into the entire design space, including half-baked or experimental ideas? ...

Introduction - The Evolution of Automated Market Makers If you’ve ever traded on Uniswap, you might think of it as a decentralized vending machine for tokens—you put in token A, and it spits out token B. But this vending machine isn’t using fixed prices—it’s governed by a mathematical function that determines prices dynamically based on supply ...

Overview Fungible tokens form the backbone of modern blockchain ecosystems—fueling decentralized finance (DeFi), stablecoins, NFTs, gaming, and more. Yet how a chain handles the separation of state and code can have profound impacts on state growth, data management, and scalability. Two major token standards—Ethereum’s ERC-20 and Solana’s SPL—e...

TL;DR Data availability (DA) ensures that anyone can retrieve the necessary information (transactions) for verifying a blockchain or rollup. Posting all rollup data on Ethereum is secure but very expensive and limited by Ethereum’s throughput. Celestia, Polygon Avail, and EigenDA each tackle off-chain data availability differently, with ...

For those familiar with Uniswap, you know its power lies in its simplicity: liquidity pools governed by constant function market maker (CFMM) formulas. Recently, Uniswap V4 introduced Hooks which are smart contract “extensions” that inject custom logic into these pools. Imagine: dynamic fees adjusting to volatility, on-chain limit orders directl...

Introduction and Background Many Layer-2 (L2) blockchain systems today rely on a single, centralized sequencer to collect, order, and batch user transactions before submitting them to Layer 1 (L1). This design is popular because it’s straightforward to implement, offers high throughput, and provides a fast user experience. However, it also crea...