3103: Building the Future of DeFi: Inside Zeta Markets' Innovations on Solana

[00:00:04] What does the future of decentralized finance look like? And how is it evolving to meet the demands of modern traders, especially now there's a lot of excitement back in the industry?

[00:00:15] Well, today we're going to explore how Zeta Markets is revolutionizing the DeFi space over on Solana.

[00:00:22] Doing that by leveraging its high throughput, low fees and near instant block times.

[00:00:27] And by doing so, they're able to create a trading experience that is rivaling traditional centralized exchanges.

[00:00:34] And with more than 15 billion in trading volume and a rapidly growing user base, the company is addressing critical challenges like scalability, market accessibility and the often overlooked derivatives market.

[00:00:50] So joining me today is Tristan, who's going to be sharing his insights on their journey, their launch of their layer two solution.

[00:00:58] And hopefully we'll also have time to unpack some of the strategies they're using to tackle MEV, their approach to community governance and what the future holds for DeFi perpetual trading.

[00:01:09] So whether you are a seasoned trader or just someone curious about the next phase of blockchain innovation, or maybe even if you're entirely new to this, we're going to try and talk about it in a language everyone can understand.

[00:01:21] So there is something for everyone to take away.

[00:01:24] So what are the biggest opportunities and challenges facing DeFi projects today?

[00:01:30] Let's find out right away by getting my guest on.

[00:01:34] So a massive warm welcome to the show.

[00:01:37] Can you tell everyone listening a little about who you are and what you do?

[00:01:42] Absolutely.

[00:01:42] Hi, everyone.

[00:01:43] My name is Tristan and I am one of the co-founders of Seda Markets.

[00:01:47] We're building a perpetual trading exchange built on DeFi.

[00:01:52] We've been building on the Solana blockchain for the last couple of years.

[00:01:55] My background is more in software programming and low latency systems.

[00:02:00] And we ended up starting a number of years ago and building up to where we are now,

[00:02:04] having processed over $15 billion worth of volume through our exchange and continuing with the next iteration of our exchange,

[00:02:11] which should even get even faster and more exciting than what we currently have.

[00:02:16] Awesome.

[00:02:17] And of course, for people inside this space, Solana has become a popular choice for DeFi perpetuals trading.

[00:02:23] But we will have people listening that are new to this or maybe they've been out of this space and coming back in because the excitement seems to be returning at the moment.

[00:02:32] But can you explain what it is or what it is about Solana's ecosystem that is particularly well suited for this purpose and how maybe it's high throughput and low fees benefit traders?

[00:02:43] But just for anybody listening outside of this space, how would you introduce them to this?

[00:02:49] Yeah, absolutely.

[00:02:50] So when I got started building in crypto, I've been in crypto since 2017, but I guess full time since 2021.

[00:02:56] We were looking to build essentially financial applications and especially things in the derivative space,

[00:03:02] which need slightly faster specifications, I would say, because prices move quicker.

[00:03:08] You have a more complicated margin system because you have the concept of leverage.

[00:03:12] It's a bit different to just holding an outright Bitcoin.

[00:03:16] And so Solana was a really good candidate for that.

[00:03:18] You know, we started in Ethereum and we realized that our platform wouldn't scale on the L1.

[00:03:22] And a lot of these L2s were actually just not in market yet and not live.

[00:03:26] And so we found Solana in the very early days.

[00:03:29] I was lucky enough to be introduced to Anatoly himself when they were looking for developers and teams to build on Solana.

[00:03:34] So we got started through one of the very early Solana hackathons, ended up winning.

[00:03:39] I think it was the second or third ever one.

[00:03:41] And then that got us our start.

[00:03:43] And what drew us to Solana in the early days was their promise of extremely high throughput,

[00:03:49] fairly low latency and reasonable fees and prices there that we thought would actually bring trading to the masses.

[00:03:56] I'd used a lot of Ethereum DeFi and I was used to gas prices being on the order of dollars or tens of dollars

[00:04:03] and spreads being extremely wide on some of these DeFi exchanges that I'd seen built.

[00:04:08] AMMs were kind of the de facto thing that had been out there.

[00:04:11] And so we kind of turned a lot of that on its head by building on Solana.

[00:04:15] We now had thousands of transactions per second at our doorstep.

[00:04:19] We had extremely low gas fees as well, like fraction of a cent essentially,

[00:04:24] which made it much more accessible for the average user.

[00:04:26] And the block times are 400 milliseconds as opposed to multiple seconds.

[00:04:31] So that was really nice in terms of us building kind of a more real time kind of performant exchange.

[00:04:37] And yeah, we ended up taking this model instead of the automated market maker,

[00:04:42] which Uniswap and a bunch of other exchanges pioneered.

[00:04:44] We do the central limit order book model.

[00:04:47] If you're familiar with traditional exchanges or even Binance and some of these other centralized exchanges,

[00:04:52] that's kind of the model that they use.

[00:04:54] We think it gives the best price discovery and most efficient markets.

[00:04:58] And that's what we ended up building on chain.

[00:05:01] And one of the things I love doing on this podcast every day is busting a few myths and misconceptions.

[00:05:06] And so any cynical people listening outside of this space think,

[00:05:10] hey, it's a niche market or that world is not as strong as it once was.

[00:05:14] Zaya markets recently surpassed $1 billion in total transaction volume.

[00:05:20] And I've also expanded your user base to more than 50,000 active users.

[00:05:24] So I've got to ask, what are the key factors that are driving this growth?

[00:05:28] And how do you plan to sustain this momentum moving forward?

[00:05:33] Yeah, I'll correct you on that.

[00:05:35] Actually, we did $15 billion as opposed to $1 billion.

[00:05:37] So it's been going quite well.

[00:05:39] Yeah, yeah.

[00:05:40] It's actually cool to see that people are using DeFi in droves.

[00:05:44] And we've been trying to keep that up.

[00:05:45] A lot of it was kind of momentum earlier in the year.

[00:05:47] Lots of people just found out about Solana, I would say, at the start of 2024, which is really good to see.

[00:05:53] I think people had kind of given it a pass, given its history and the price being down and having gone through the whole FTX trauma.

[00:06:01] But then when people started to flood in, I guess the start of this year,

[00:06:05] we saw just like a massive uptick in the number of users that came through our protocol, which was great for us.

[00:06:10] It broke a bunch of our infra for like that week, but we managed to patch everything and everything like worked great.

[00:06:15] But it was great to kind of scale that.

[00:06:17] And I think people just fall in love with the experience.

[00:06:19] You start using an on-chain application.

[00:06:22] You're basically paying extremely low fees.

[00:06:24] The thing is pretty snappy.

[00:06:25] You know, other than some of the congestion issues we had throughout the middle of the year,

[00:06:29] I think it was quite a mind-blowing experience.

[00:06:31] And we had people coming to our Discord and just being like,

[00:06:33] hey, this doesn't feel like any other DeFi product that I've used.

[00:06:36] And that was kind of the magic moment for a lot of people coming into Solana.

[00:06:41] And the launch of SATAX, your new Layer 2 solution, also feels somewhat of an exciting development as of late.

[00:06:48] So what motivated the creation of this?

[00:06:50] And how do you envision it enhancing things like scalability and user experience within that ecosystem that you've created here?

[00:06:58] Yeah, fantastic question.

[00:07:00] So I guess some of the issues that we ran up against with the current model that I've outlined to you,

[00:07:05] which is this fully on-chain order book,

[00:07:08] mostly centers around some of the congestion issues that we kind of experienced with Solana.

[00:07:13] Because so many people are jumping on these like Pump.Fun and Jupiter

[00:07:17] and all this like crazy meme coin craze happening on Solana,

[00:07:20] the kind of usage of the network really skyrocketed.

[00:07:24] And despite this fee market structure that they have,

[00:07:27] it definitely does cause like some issues for DeFi applications that have to contend with the thousands,

[00:07:34] if not millions of transactions that are going through kind of every day.

[00:07:38] And so that kind of made problems for us.

[00:07:40] We're trying to build like a very high reliability exchange that has a lot of money put through it.

[00:07:46] And if you are not able to place transactions or close orders and do stuff like that,

[00:07:51] that's quite a scary experience.

[00:07:52] And we had to resolve some customer support issues there.

[00:07:55] Also, we kind of found that with the current specs of Solana,

[00:08:00] the 400 millisecond block times, although amazing,

[00:08:03] it means that we still can't quite compete with a Binance or some of these other exchanges.

[00:08:08] Those guys have about 20 milliseconds.

[00:08:10] And we found working with these professional traders,

[00:08:12] they were really looking for that speed edge so they can provide even more reliable,

[00:08:17] even tighter liquidity.

[00:08:19] And so that's kind of what prompted us to build this L2 and go a bit more down the application specific route,

[00:08:25] as opposed to building on a fully general purpose blockchain.

[00:08:28] So we made, I guess, the somewhat at the time controversial decision to build a roll up,

[00:08:34] or as the Solana crew loved to call it, a network extension on Solana.

[00:08:39] And it's really nice that we can kind of bring both worlds together, the modular and the monolithic.

[00:08:44] And so the way it works is we can run basically an order book off-chain.

[00:08:49] This is all ZK proven, so you can kind of do all the correct fraud proofs

[00:08:53] and figure out what computation is being done off-chain and verify that.

[00:08:57] But it allows us to essentially like 100x our throughput.

[00:09:01] We can do instead of a couple of hundred orders a second,

[00:09:04] we can start batching them and doing thousands of orders.

[00:09:06] And then we can also get our latency down really, really fast

[00:09:10] because we have this essentially this sequencer which runs our order book.

[00:09:14] So we can get down to five milliseconds is what we're shooting at.

[00:09:16] We're currently at 50 milliseconds, but we can get down to five.

[00:09:19] And so that actually puts us on a really level playing ground

[00:09:22] with some of the bigger exchanges out there, DYDX, Hyperliquid, Binance.

[00:09:26] We think that's like a big unlock.

[00:09:29] It also lets us do a lot of cool things on the usability side.

[00:09:32] So we can start to abstract away gas fees.

[00:09:34] So say you're a new user and you don't want the friction

[00:09:37] of having to have Solana in your wallet and pay for things.

[00:09:40] We can basically abstract that away.

[00:09:41] So new users come in there.

[00:09:43] They don't have to worry about these kind of additional hoops.

[00:09:46] And so these were a lot of the decisions that went into it.

[00:09:48] We basically want to make DeFi a first-class citizen.

[00:09:51] We want to make this thing compete with existing exchanges

[00:09:54] and give people the benefits not only of security and transparency,

[00:09:58] but also not compromise on the usability and convenience.

[00:10:02] And when researching you online, one of the things that really stood out

[00:10:06] was the community that you've got here and the passion and excitement

[00:10:09] for the token generation event, TGE.

[00:10:12] So what strategic importance does an event like that hold for Zeta Market?

[00:10:18] And how do you expect it to impact that broader DeFi sector on Solana?

[00:10:23] Yeah, definitely.

[00:10:24] So I think we've seen a lot of tokens launch on Solana,

[00:10:27] which has been great to see.

[00:10:28] There weren't many throughout the bear market,

[00:10:30] but it's good to see now these protocols have matured quite a lot.

[00:10:33] And that was a big milestone for us getting that out.

[00:10:36] It's a lot of work to kind of launch these things.

[00:10:39] And we had to do just a lot of thinking and calculations

[00:10:43] and talking to the community on how to do it properly.

[00:10:46] So that kind of is all done now, which is great.

[00:10:49] That's the reason why we got so much success

[00:10:52] and so many people coming to the platform.

[00:10:53] I think people are excited for the launch

[00:10:55] and it was a good way to kind of get them over the edge

[00:10:57] and start using the platform.

[00:10:59] And so we kind of conducted that.

[00:11:00] I believe we got out to almost 20,000 stakers,

[00:11:04] which is really nice.

[00:11:05] So we have a pretty good core user group of people

[00:11:08] kind of staking and participating in our token there.

[00:11:11] And then I guess some of the next steps is

[00:11:13] we're going to roll out governance.

[00:11:14] So people getting more active share

[00:11:17] in the kind of future direction of the product

[00:11:20] and where we kind of take some of our decisions

[00:11:23] on things like new market listings

[00:11:24] or kind of future plans.

[00:11:28] And then we also use the token for other things,

[00:11:30] incentives for trading,

[00:11:31] which I think is really good to kind of sustain

[00:11:33] the flywheel that we were talking about

[00:11:35] for people to use it.

[00:11:36] Like we just rolled out staking rewards.

[00:11:38] People also get fee discounts

[00:11:40] and other kind of benefits there.

[00:11:41] We're still kind of developing the nature

[00:11:44] and the purpose of the token

[00:11:45] within the whole kind of roll-up infrastructure as well.

[00:11:48] So that will be coming shortly.

[00:11:51] And MEV or maximal extractable value

[00:11:54] is also a growing concern in the DeFi space.

[00:11:57] So how do you at Zeta Markets

[00:11:59] address that MEV issue on Solana?

[00:12:01] And are there any measures that are in place

[00:12:03] to protect traders from any potential exploitation?

[00:12:06] Anything you can share around there?

[00:12:08] Yeah, so that's definitely been somewhat of a problem

[00:12:11] on Solana, at least historically.

[00:12:14] So like back running on a bunch of these exchanges,

[00:12:17] people just run these like arbitrage bots

[00:12:19] and are able to back run people,

[00:12:21] which is somewhat toxic,

[00:12:23] but I guess they also can keep prices in line.

[00:12:25] It's definitely an issue that we've found on the perp side.

[00:12:29] There is a lot of arbitrage flow

[00:12:31] on some of these exchanges.

[00:12:32] And we definitely have it on ours to a degree.

[00:12:35] It helps in a way because it keeps prices in line

[00:12:38] with the rest of the market.

[00:12:40] But sometimes I guess that can be difficult

[00:12:43] for market makers to provide liquidity

[00:12:45] when they're just getting picked off.

[00:12:46] So this was like a big thing that we heard

[00:12:49] from some of the existing market makers

[00:12:51] that we work with

[00:12:52] and something that we wanted to address on ZetaX,

[00:12:54] which is our kind of roll-up exchange

[00:12:56] based on the roll-up.

[00:12:57] And so what we did there

[00:12:59] is we're rolling out

[00:13:00] what we call like an opinionated sequencing scheme.

[00:13:03] So typically market makers provide liquidity.

[00:13:06] So a bid and an ask,

[00:13:08] that's kind of your market

[00:13:09] and people can buy off that.

[00:13:11] The problem is,

[00:13:12] I guess if your prices,

[00:13:14] if you update your quotes too slow,

[00:13:16] people can come in there

[00:13:17] and they say,

[00:13:17] hey, you were quoting Solana

[00:13:19] at maybe $100,

[00:13:21] you know, give or take.

[00:13:22] Now the price has moved up to $105.

[00:13:24] They can suddenly basically lift your bids

[00:13:27] and then you will essentially like mark to market

[00:13:30] have lost a bunch of money there

[00:13:32] through your P&L.

[00:13:33] And so if you're not fast enough to update,

[00:13:35] that's kind of like a loss leader

[00:13:37] for these market makers.

[00:13:39] And so things you can do there,

[00:13:41] one is obviously to increase speed.

[00:13:43] The other thing we can do

[00:13:44] is kind of give this preferential ordering.

[00:13:45] So something that's really nice in our new model,

[00:13:48] like I was alluding to,

[00:13:50] is we let a lot of these market makers,

[00:13:52] actually when you place a maker cancel

[00:13:55] and you want to basically move your orders out of the way,

[00:13:57] you want to cancel them,

[00:13:58] you will get kind of priority within that block,

[00:14:00] which is really nice.

[00:14:01] So people who are spamming

[00:14:02] and trying to take your orders,

[00:14:04] if they're a bit too slow,

[00:14:05] you'll be able to get out of the way

[00:14:07] and not get completely run over.

[00:14:08] So I think that's like a really nice thing

[00:14:10] that we've done.

[00:14:10] And I think that will basically allow

[00:14:13] these makers to come in

[00:14:15] and quote,

[00:14:15] really,

[00:14:16] really tight,

[00:14:16] knowing that they can change their prices at a whim

[00:14:18] and not be basically held up by congestion.

[00:14:21] And that means really tight spreads,

[00:14:23] really good prices for anyone

[00:14:24] that comes in and trades on the exchange.

[00:14:26] So I think it's a win-win for all.

[00:14:29] And the last time I checked,

[00:14:31] AMR keys had listed more than 15 new trading pairs

[00:14:34] to expand user options.

[00:14:36] And on behalf of every crypto fan out there,

[00:14:40] I've got to ask,

[00:14:41] I'd love to find out more how you do this.

[00:14:42] How do you determine which pairs to list?

[00:14:45] Because I'm sure you get bombarded requests

[00:14:46] all the time from different communities.

[00:14:49] And also,

[00:14:49] what role does that feedback play

[00:14:51] in shaping the platform's offerings?

[00:14:53] Is it a case of if the most passionate community

[00:14:56] will bombard you with requests you will do that?

[00:15:00] Or is there something else going on there?

[00:15:02] Yeah, it's a good question.

[00:15:04] So all of our main listings to start,

[00:15:06] at least,

[00:15:06] which is listing majors.

[00:15:07] I think that's kind of the bread and butter

[00:15:08] of perpetuals exchanges.

[00:15:10] But we've tried to go more down the route

[00:15:12] of listing kind of these Solana native assets,

[00:15:15] which I think is like where a lot of the demand is.

[00:15:18] Like if you're looking between

[00:15:20] decentralized and centralized exchange,

[00:15:21] largely there's a lot of the same major assets.

[00:15:24] But I think where the edge is,

[00:15:25] we were very fast to listing stuff like

[00:15:28] Jupiter,

[00:15:29] Jito,

[00:15:30] Bonk,

[00:15:30] and a bunch of these other

[00:15:32] really good Solana native coins.

[00:15:34] I think that's where our edge is

[00:15:36] and will continue to be

[00:15:37] because we can kind of list things pretty fast.

[00:15:39] And so a lot of it comes down to the community.

[00:15:41] I guess we put out polls

[00:15:42] and we talk to community

[00:15:43] and gauge the sentiment.

[00:15:44] You know,

[00:15:44] eventually we do want to put that up

[00:15:46] to like a governance vote

[00:15:47] and have people kind of chip in

[00:15:48] and put their money where their mouth is,

[00:15:50] which I think is pretty cool.

[00:15:52] But that's what we've been focusing on.

[00:15:53] I think new listings are great.

[00:15:54] People want to trade these new markets.

[00:15:58] And so that's something

[00:15:59] that we're also improving

[00:16:00] in the new version of our exchange.

[00:16:02] Currently,

[00:16:02] like you mentioned,

[00:16:03] we actually have roughly 25 markets

[00:16:06] on our exchange

[00:16:07] that are kind of limited

[00:16:08] by I guess some of the limitations

[00:16:11] and account sizes

[00:16:12] in the Solana virtual machine.

[00:16:14] But once we start going

[00:16:16] to this roll-up architecture,

[00:16:17] we can actually list hundreds of markets,

[00:16:19] which I'm super excited by

[00:16:20] because I think that's where

[00:16:22] a lot of the opportunity is

[00:16:23] for these kind of tail-end markets.

[00:16:26] And as you continue to grow

[00:16:28] and continue to innovate

[00:16:30] and that excitement returns to the space,

[00:16:32] what do you see as the biggest challenges

[00:16:34] and equally opportunities

[00:16:35] in the deep fire space,

[00:16:36] particularly on Solana?

[00:16:38] And how are you positioning yourself

[00:16:40] to maybe lead

[00:16:41] in this evolving environment?

[00:16:42] And things seem to be moving

[00:16:43] at such a rapid pace right now.

[00:16:46] Yeah, at least the last couple of weeks,

[00:16:47] things have been moving incredibly fast,

[00:16:50] which is both a blessing and a curse.

[00:16:52] You know,

[00:16:52] I kind of wish I had a bit more time

[00:16:53] to work on things

[00:16:54] and less shiny object stuff

[00:16:56] kind of distracted me.

[00:16:57] But yeah,

[00:16:58] it's a good question.

[00:16:59] I think where we fit into the picture

[00:17:01] and where I've really doubled

[00:17:02] or tripled down on my conviction

[00:17:04] is building in this derivative space.

[00:17:06] I think perps are a really good product

[00:17:08] and something that hasn't

[00:17:10] really fully taken off in DeFi just yet,

[00:17:14] especially on Solana.

[00:17:15] Like on Solana,

[00:17:16] you see a lot of the trading volume

[00:17:17] is this kind of a spot trading.

[00:17:19] So you're actually trading

[00:17:20] the underlying asset itself,

[00:17:22] whether that be Bitcoin,

[00:17:23] Solana or Ethereum.

[00:17:25] But there's some downsides to that.

[00:17:27] One is you basically can't get leverage.

[00:17:29] So it means that,

[00:17:30] you know,

[00:17:31] if you have one Bitcoin,

[00:17:32] that's basically all the exposure

[00:17:33] that you can get.

[00:17:35] Likewise,

[00:17:36] you're not able to short assets.

[00:17:38] So if you think a certain altcoin

[00:17:40] or meme coin is overvalued,

[00:17:41] there's no way to actually

[00:17:42] kind of express an interest

[00:17:44] that that might go down.

[00:17:45] And so that's why I think perps are great.

[00:17:47] You can both long and short

[00:17:50] different cryptocurrencies.

[00:17:52] And you can also get

[00:17:53] this leverage essentially.

[00:17:55] So if you have, say,

[00:17:56] a thousand USDC

[00:17:57] in your margin account,

[00:17:58] you can actually lever that 10x

[00:18:00] or we're hoping to offer

[00:18:01] 100x at some point.

[00:18:03] And so you can actually take on

[00:18:04] $10,000 of exposure.

[00:18:05] So kind of,

[00:18:06] you know,

[00:18:07] 10 times more than you would

[00:18:08] with the spot market.

[00:18:10] So that's really good

[00:18:10] for capital efficiency.

[00:18:12] It means that

[00:18:12] even with a small amount of money,

[00:18:14] you can put that to work

[00:18:15] and you can kind of

[00:18:15] take pretty big price opinions.

[00:18:17] There is obviously

[00:18:18] some risk to mitigate there.

[00:18:20] There is kind of liquidation risk.

[00:18:21] So people have to trade responsibly

[00:18:23] and use kind of

[00:18:24] reasonable leverage there

[00:18:26] and know how to kind of manage

[00:18:27] their upside and their downside.

[00:18:29] But yeah,

[00:18:30] we've definitely seen perps taking off.

[00:18:32] It's really the de facto

[00:18:33] instrument for trading

[00:18:35] that we've seen

[00:18:36] on centralized exchanges.

[00:18:37] It's where a lot of these contracts

[00:18:39] are most liquid

[00:18:39] on centralized exchanges.

[00:18:41] You know,

[00:18:41] you look at Bitcoin and Solana

[00:18:42] and it's the perps markets

[00:18:43] that are where

[00:18:45] price discovery happens.

[00:18:46] This is similar

[00:18:46] to traditional markets

[00:18:48] where the derivatives market

[00:18:50] is probably an order of magnitude,

[00:18:51] if not too greater

[00:18:52] than the kind of equities market.

[00:18:55] And yeah,

[00:18:55] we just like haven't seen

[00:18:56] quite the same level of volume

[00:18:58] flow into derivatives

[00:18:59] on Solana

[00:18:59] as we have on the kind of spot side,

[00:19:03] you know,

[00:19:03] via mostly meme coins.

[00:19:04] And so that's where we fit into it.

[00:19:06] I think we're building

[00:19:07] a really exciting platform

[00:19:08] and I think we're going to build

[00:19:09] this kind of first class

[00:19:10] citizen derivatives exchange

[00:19:11] that will exist natively on Solana.

[00:19:14] Well,

[00:19:15] thankfully we've moved on

[00:19:16] from the days in 2017

[00:19:18] of saying,

[00:19:19] when's your website ready?

[00:19:20] When's your roadmap

[00:19:22] for next year?

[00:19:23] What partnerships do you have?

[00:19:25] And when moved?

[00:19:26] And all those kind of questions

[00:19:27] that were asked about that.

[00:19:28] But we're now entering 2025

[00:19:30] and I appreciate you can't share too much,

[00:19:33] but if there are any members

[00:19:34] of your community

[00:19:35] that are listening today,

[00:19:36] looking for a teaser

[00:19:37] or anything

[00:19:39] that would excite them,

[00:19:40] what excites you

[00:19:42] about the road ahead?

[00:19:42] What can we expect in 2025?

[00:19:45] Yeah, definitely.

[00:19:46] Like I mentioned,

[00:19:46] we're launching the new version

[00:19:47] of our exchange.

[00:19:48] It's actually gone basically to testnet.

[00:19:50] We're doing a closed rollout

[00:19:51] this month

[00:19:52] and people have been pretty excited

[00:19:54] playing around.

[00:19:54] It is very fast

[00:19:56] and kind of fun

[00:19:57] to play around with.

[00:19:58] You look at the order books

[00:19:58] and they're updating,

[00:19:59] you know,

[00:20:00] like at least 10 times a second,

[00:20:01] which I think is pretty cool.

[00:20:03] And so that's kind of,

[00:20:04] you know,

[00:20:04] a lot of bugs to fix

[00:20:05] and a lot of things

[00:20:07] to iron out to make it better.

[00:20:08] But I think we have something

[00:20:10] that is really going to

[00:20:11] blow people's minds.

[00:20:12] And so we're working super hard

[00:20:13] over the next couple of months

[00:20:14] to get this on mainnet.

[00:20:15] So trying to line up,

[00:20:17] you know,

[00:20:18] audits and get the rest

[00:20:19] of things done

[00:20:20] so it's production ready.

[00:20:21] And we're kind of looking

[00:20:22] to target Q1 of next year,

[00:20:24] working very eagerly

[00:20:25] to get that out there

[00:20:26] because the markets

[00:20:27] are definitely heating up.

[00:20:28] So we're going to be

[00:20:30] slowly rolling that out.

[00:20:31] So people who are out there

[00:20:32] in the audience,

[00:20:33] we'd encourage people

[00:20:34] to come and try out the testnet

[00:20:35] once we start opening that up.

[00:20:37] And then hopefully

[00:20:37] once mainnet comes around,

[00:20:42] traders in there.

[00:20:43] So anyone with a really good

[00:20:44] trading background

[00:20:45] or that's passionate about DeFi,

[00:20:47] we'd love to connect with them,

[00:20:48] work with them

[00:20:48] and see how we can build

[00:20:50] the best product together.

[00:20:52] Well, you had me at

[00:20:53] we want to blow people's minds.

[00:20:55] So I'm going to have to

[00:20:56] get you back on next year,

[00:20:57] see how things

[00:20:58] are continuing to evolve.

[00:21:00] But a big thank you

[00:21:02] for taking the time

[00:21:03] to sit down with me today,

[00:21:04] share your insights

[00:21:05] in this space.

[00:21:05] And before I let you go,

[00:21:06] I'm going to ask you

[00:21:07] to leave one final gift.

[00:21:08] I have an Amazon wishlist

[00:21:10] of books that the guests

[00:21:11] recommend that listeners

[00:21:12] check out.

[00:21:13] What book would you like

[00:21:14] to add to that list and why?

[00:21:17] My favourite book is

[00:21:18] Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman.

[00:21:21] That's something I read

[00:21:23] about two years ago.

[00:21:24] And I guess where that came from

[00:21:26] is I actually studied physics

[00:21:28] in undergrad.

[00:21:28] And I think it really encourages

[00:21:30] this first principles way

[00:21:32] of viewing the world

[00:21:33] and thinking about problems.

[00:21:35] And so that book,

[00:21:37] when I read it,

[00:21:37] I think it's quite amazing

[00:21:39] to read what is actually

[00:21:41] quite a humorous

[00:21:41] kind of biography

[00:21:43] of this man's life.

[00:21:45] As a Nobel Prize winner,

[00:21:47] he goes through,

[00:21:47] you know,

[00:21:48] his scientific journey,

[00:21:51] some of his discoveries

[00:21:52] and work there.

[00:21:54] And I think the way

[00:21:54] that he thinks about the world,

[00:21:55] I think for me,

[00:21:56] was quite inspiring,

[00:21:57] especially working

[00:21:58] in an industry

[00:21:59] like crypto and DeFi

[00:22:01] where things are quite novel

[00:22:02] and you have to push

[00:22:03] the boundaries.

[00:22:04] And it's quite a humorous book.

[00:22:06] A lot of these scientists

[00:22:07] I think sometimes

[00:22:08] people can think

[00:22:09] are quite dry,

[00:22:10] but I think he really

[00:22:11] has a good sense of humor

[00:22:12] and I think there's

[00:22:13] a lot to learn there.

[00:22:14] Well, I got added straight

[00:22:16] to our Amazon wishlist.

[00:22:17] And as I've said a few times,

[00:22:18] one of the things

[00:22:19] that makes you guys

[00:22:19] stand out

[00:22:20] is your passionate community.

[00:22:21] And there might be

[00:22:22] a few potential

[00:22:23] new members

[00:22:23] listening here.

[00:22:24] So where would you

[00:22:26] like to point anyone

[00:22:26] listening that want

[00:22:27] to join your community,

[00:22:28] find out more information,

[00:22:29] keep up to speed

[00:22:30] with some of those

[00:22:31] big announcements?

[00:22:32] Where would you like

[00:22:32] to point everyone?

[00:22:34] Yeah, sounds good.

[00:22:35] The places that I'm

[00:22:36] probably most active

[00:22:37] are on Twitter.

[00:22:38] So you can find me

[00:22:39] at Tristan0x

[00:22:41] or you can follow

[00:22:42] at ZetaMarkets

[00:22:42] on Twitter as well.

[00:22:44] We also have Telegram,

[00:22:45] which we're fairly active in

[00:22:46] and try and grow

[00:22:47] the community there

[00:22:47] as well as a Discord.

[00:22:49] So you can find us

[00:22:49] on all these social channels.

[00:22:51] Well, we've covered

[00:22:52] so much there

[00:22:53] from the development goals,

[00:22:55] implications of your

[00:22:56] Layer 2 solution

[00:22:57] and enhancing scalability

[00:22:59] and user experience.

[00:23:00] A lot of exciting

[00:23:01] stuff happening

[00:23:02] and also addressing

[00:23:03] the MEV issue

[00:23:04] on Solana as well.

[00:23:05] So many big takeaways.

[00:23:07] I'd love to hear

[00:23:07] what people listening

[00:23:08] think of today's conversation.

[00:23:10] But more than anything,

[00:23:11] thank you for joining me

[00:23:12] and sharing your insights

[00:23:13] and a few updates.

[00:23:14] We'll have to get you

[00:23:15] back on next year,

[00:23:15] but thanks for joining me today.

[00:23:17] Yeah, thanks so much

[00:23:18] for having me.

[00:23:19] I think as we wrap up

[00:23:20] today's discussion,

[00:23:21] it's clear that ZetaMarkets

[00:23:23] is not just adapting

[00:23:24] to the evolving

[00:23:26] DeFi landscape,

[00:23:27] they're helping shape it.

[00:23:28] Whether that be

[00:23:29] leveraging Solana's

[00:23:30] unique strengths

[00:23:31] to launching this

[00:23:33] Layer 2 solution,

[00:23:34] I think Tristan has highlighted

[00:23:36] how innovation

[00:23:37] and user-centric design

[00:23:38] can ultimately redefine

[00:23:41] that trading experience.

[00:23:42] And if you're ready

[00:23:43] to dip your toes

[00:23:44] in the water of that world,

[00:23:46] if you've been sitting

[00:23:46] on the sidelines

[00:23:47] since 2016

[00:23:48] and finally the curiosity

[00:23:50] is getting the better of you,

[00:23:52] I urge you to check them out.

[00:23:53] But for everyone listening,

[00:23:55] if you're,

[00:23:55] and for everyone else listening

[00:23:56] that are deep into this space,

[00:23:58] we'll stood out for you

[00:23:59] in today's conversation.

[00:24:01] Please,

[00:24:01] share your thoughts with me.

[00:24:03] Don't forget to connect

[00:24:03] with Tristan.

[00:24:05] Remember,

[00:24:05] you can email me

[00:24:07] techblogwriteroutlook.com,

[00:24:08] x,

[00:24:09] LinkedIn,

[00:24:10] Instagram,

[00:24:10] just at Neil C. Hughes.

[00:24:11] Love to hear your thoughts

[00:24:12] on this.

[00:24:13] But that is it for today.

[00:24:14] I'm afraid we're out of time.

[00:24:16] I'll be back again

[00:24:17] bright and early tomorrow,

[00:24:18] but thank you for listening

[00:24:19] as always,

[00:24:20] and I will speak with you

[00:24:21] again tomorrow.

[00:24:21] The

[00:24:25] peak

[00:24:25] of

[00:24:26] Charles

[00:24:27] Wing

[00:24:28] Prime