On the evening of August 22, Hashflow team's founder and CEO Varun Kumar, Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer Andrew Saunders, and Vice President of Marketing Brian Lynn visited the Binance Chinese Community and shared the latest information about the Hashflow project. The following is a summary of the sharing!

team introduction

Before founding Hashflow, Varun worked as an aerospace engineer at the German Aerospace Center, Udacity, and NASA. He is also pursuing a PhD in aeronautics and astronautics at Stanford University in the United States, and is currently deferring this degree to work full-time at Hashflow. Before joining Hashflow, Andrew, Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer, served as Chief Marketing Officer at Arbitrum, Global Head of Entertainment and Culture at Amazon headquarters, and worked as an agent at Creative Artists Agency (CAA) in Hollywood for 10 years. Brian, Vice President of Marketing, was born in Hong Kong and his native language is Mandarin. Before joining Hashflow, he was the head of product marketing for developer products at Google and Twitter, and has also worked in several Silicon Valley startups supported by Tier 1 investors such as Softbank, Google Ventures, and Benchmark.

Project Introduction

Hashflow currently has a team of 22 people, including top talents from Web2 and Web3. In short, Hashflow is a decentralized exchange (DEX) that allows users to trade digital assets on top blockchains such as Ethereum, Arbitrum, Avalanche, BNB Chain, Optimism and Polygon in just seconds. Unlike automated market making mechanisms (AMMs), Hashflow adopts a request for quotation (RFQ) model to provide traders with guaranteed quotes directly from professional market makers (PMMs), eliminating the problems of slippage and MEV inefficiency that are prevalent in DeFi. Since its initial launch in April 2021, Hashflow has achieved a total trading volume of more than $15 billion, ranking among the top 10 DEXs. Earlier this year, we announced to the public Hashverse, a first-of-its-kind gamified decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) conceived in collaboration with Superconductor, which was founded by the creatives behind Hollywood's top global franchise films (including Marvel's The Avengers and Captain America, and Universal's Fast & Furious). Hashverse starts with a storyline, where players will create characters (either solo or on behalf of a group), complete quests/participate in battle royales to gain XP (experience points), and eventually receive HFT rewards. Hashverse is scheduled to be released this year, and we can’t wait to launch it to the public.

Q1: What is Hashflow’s Request for Quote (RFQ) model and why is it better than AMM?

Varun: I think before we talk about RFQs, maybe we should start with a brief history of how exchanges have evolved and the role of market makers and automated market making. Any exchange, centralized or decentralized, needs liquidity to function. If you are going to buy or sell any asset at any given time, you need some counterparty on the other side who is willing to sell or buy the asset from you. This is the job of many professional market makers who act as counterparties in every trade. This is how transactions are done in traditional finance, and as soon as cryptocurrencies emerged, exchanges like Coinbase and Binance adopted the centralized exchange model. During 2016 and 2017, we saw the downsides of this model, such as the demise of Mt. Gox, which led to a new trend of building order book exchanges on-chain, such as Ether Delta. Fast forward to 2019, Uniswap came onto the scene with the automated market maker (AMM) model, which was a novelty at the time and ignited the DeFi summer. The whole idea of ​​AMMs is to remove the traditional market makers in the middle and allow anyone to provide liquidity by passively depositing funds into smart contracts. The smart contract will then use a predetermined formula, called a bonding curve, to determine the price of the transaction.

Despite their importance, AMMs are not perfect. AMMs are often prone to slippage (the price difference between submitting a trade and executing it), MEV (maximum extractable value) attacks including front-running, sandwich attacks, etc., and cannot be used for cross-chain transactions without a cross-chain bridge. This is where the Request for Quote (RFQ) model comes in. Hashflow's RFQ model allows you to directly request a quote for a specific transaction (such as $1 ETH for $1 USDC) from a professional market maker (PMM). The quote is calculated off-chain, backed by cryptographic signatures, and guaranteed by the PMM. By moving the pricing function off-chain, traders on Hashflow can benefit from:

  • Better prices (Hashflow PMM prices your assets more efficiently)

  • Zero slippage = WYSIWYG

  • Comprehensive MEV protection

  • Cross-chain transactions can be performed in minutes without the use of external cross-chain bridges

Our goal is to build the best decentralized exchange experience, where anyone can trade any asset on any chain, but all the complexity is abstracted away. We're starting with RFQ, and we're excited to continue building all the fun stuff on our roadmap.

Q2: How does Hashflow achieve zero slippage trading?

Varun: Before we dive into Hashflow, let’s first understand what slippage is. Slippage is essentially the price difference between when you submit a trade on an exchange and when it’s actually executed. You end up getting less or more from a trade than you expected. Traders on centralized exchanges don’t generally need to worry about slippage, but it’s a common problem in DeFi. Unlike AMMs, Hashflow doesn’t use bonding curves, which can cause imbalances in liquidity pools, and price slippage usually occurs when liquidity pools are imbalanced. The quotes on Hashflow are pre-agreed, guaranteed, and cryptographically signed by PMMs. This way, you can exchange without any slippage (or MEV vulnerabilities like front-running and sandwich attacks). The price you see is the price you get.

Q3: What is MEV? How does Hashflow defend against MEV?

Varun: I will talk about MEV (Maximum Extractable Value) from a transaction perspective. Simple and straightforward, without going into the details of how blockchain works:

1. When you trade on a DEX, your transaction is recorded on the blockchain by validators, who help ensure the security of networks such as Ethereum.

2. Your transaction is recorded in a "block" that includes other transactions made by other users in the network.

3. Validators do not have to follow the order of transactions, they can rearrange the order of transactions for their own benefit. This is MEV.

Since AMMs calculate quotes on-chain, all exchanges on AMMs are vulnerable to MEV exploits. Hashflow provides you with comprehensive MEV protection through the RFQ model, where PMM uses its proprietary method to calculate off-chain quotes. When you make an exchange on Hashflow, PMM provides you with guaranteed, cryptographically signed quotes. This prevents validators and MEV robots from profiting from your exchange, as your trades will always be executed at the previously agreed-upon price.

Q4: What makes Hashverse unique in the Web3 world?

Varun: If we look at the strongest communities that exist on the internet, we typically find that gaming communities are at the top. So our philosophy is that games or gamification is a way to build a really strong community while leveraging the ethos of blockchain. The beauty of launching a cryptocurrency project is that we are essentially creating a “nation”: first the product, then the community behind the product, and finally the culture. People have a real sense of ownership and they want to be involved in everything that happens in the project. I think games are a way to foster all of this, and if we leverage NFTs in the right way, we can create such experiences. This is the core philosophy behind why we founded Hashverse.

At the heart of Hashverse is its story metaverse, where you’ll earn XP (experience points) by casting your own characters (you can be a solo player or represent your collective), completing missions/joining battle royales, and ultimately earning HFT rewards through participation and contributions to the protocol. Our goal for Hashverse is to enable all Web3 communities to participate in governance, so that anyone can participate and earn benefits, whether they are a DeFi degen, an NFT fan, or a GameFi fan. Anyone with any skill can be a part of Hashverse. You don’t have to be a trader, someone who understands smart contracts, or a big player who knows how to move funds to be a part of this ecosystem. This is the overall idea of ​​Hashverse and one of the elements that makes it unique.

Andrew: Another unique aspect of Hashverse is that it will bring the Web3 community together through a team competition called Battle Royale. Here are some initial introductions to how Battle Royale will work - you will first choose your avatar from a large number of unique characters and signal your "team" on and off the battlefield (for the first season, we have carefully selected the strongest Web3 communities in the ecosystem to participate). You will then join other warriors on your team to compete for experience points by combining your trading skills with unique NFT weapons, armor, and consumables. You can attack other teams, protect your collective from attacks, and improve your team's score with power-ups. By climbing the personal and team experience point leaderboards, you will win HFTs, rare NFT artifacts, and other surprise rewards. Even if you are not a trader, you can win experience points and NFT artifacts for yourself and your team while learning about DeFi through single-player missions. You will be able to upgrade your trading skills and show your prowess on the battlefield.

Q5: What is the most exciting thing about Hashflow recently?

Brian: I’d love to answer that question! We recently updated our 2023 roadmap and previewed our direction for 2024. For the rest of 2023, Hashflow will focus on launching Hashverse and expanding the Hashflow DEX product. The future is multi-chain, and we plan to add support for the first non-EVM chain, enhance the ability to support cross-chain collateral transfers on Aave V3, and enable cross-chain NFT trading through our API for the NFT market.

In terms of user experience, we plan to enhance the trading terminal on Hashflow, adding features such as price charts, advanced data, and more. At the same time, we will continue to work with new and existing market makers to ensure liquidity and availability of asset pairs, and integrate more market makers and aggregators into the Hashflow ecosystem. As we continue to build in 2023, we will also plan new features and functions, and prioritize preparations for next year. This includes an order book exchange, where we will build a limit order book, allowing professional traders to trade seamlessly and efficiently without counterparty risk. At the same time, limit order support will enable users to buy and sell assets at pre-specified prices, giving users much more control over prices. We recently deployed and open-sourced new smart contracts to support these future plans. There are more in development!

Community Question 1: What are Hashflow's main competitors? What are its advantages or disadvantages compared to its competitors?

Brian: We don’t usually focus too much on competitors, but rather prefer to focus on users and making Hashflow better and better every day. That said, Hashflow is in the same space as automated market makers (AMMs) like Uniswap, Sushi, etc. As Varun mentioned before, there are some issues with DeFi and DEXs in general, such as slippage, MEV vulnerabilities, etc… We launched Hashflow to solve these challenges. As we follow our roadmap to achieve our vision, including support for non-EVM chains, advanced trading tools, order book exchanges, and more… I believe Hashflow can eventually become the industry standard: the most seamless decentralized trading experience with self-custody.

Community Question 2: When users choose to use DEX, they are always concerned about the cost issue. So what are the fees for Hashflow to compete with other DEXs?

Brian: Since there is no slippage or MEV loopholes on Hashflow, these costs are automatically avoided when you trade. In terms of network fees, Hashflow has the lowest gas fees among the top 10 DEXs. Because price quotes are calculated off-chain by PMMs, gas fees on Ethereum are about 50% lower (and are generally lower on L2 networks).

Community question 3: I see that Hashflow currently only supports a small number of tokens. Even if you enter the address of the token, you cannot trade it. What is the reason for this?

Brian: The tokens available on Hashflow depend on whether current PMMs are making markets for those assets, as we use an RFQ architecture. One of our focuses in 2023 is to continue working with new and existing PMMs to ensure liquidity and availability across asset pairs and price levels to meet user needs. In addition, we plan to add more market makers and liquidity to the Hashflow ecosystem.

Community Question 4: Will the introduction of off-chain market makers expose users to new trading risks? For example, are there risks of losing orders when users trade with off-chain market makers?

Brian: In our RFQ model, your trades are not at risk of being dropped. Your price quotes on Hashflow are guaranteed and cryptographically signed by PMMs, and once you submit your trade, our smart contract automatically executes your trade. This is one of the advantages of the RFQ model over AMM, where you need to deal with issues like gas fee settings, slippage tolerance, etc.

Community Question 5: What is the main development direction of HFT in the future? Is it marketing? Or product and technology development? Or both?

Andrew: As Varun and Brian mentioned when talking about the product roadmap, Hashflow has the potential to become an industry benchmark, providing users with the most seamless decentralized trading experience and self-custody. The first non-EVM chain support, advanced trading tools, order book exchange, etc., these efforts may eventually converge into the first top product in the industry. In order to achieve our roadmap goals, we have expanded the team size in the past few months, increasing engineers by 300% and marketing by 400%. I am very excited to join Hashflow and drive our marketing, development, and communication efforts globally. I am extremely excited about the Hashflow story we will tell, showcasing the Hashverse, and growing the Hashflow community globally.

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