Hello,
If DeFi is to truly rival traditional finance, offering open, permissionless, and efficient markets, it needs to improve upon the legacy infrastructure. That’s where DefinitiveFi comes in.
When you place a trading order on an exchange like Coinbase, you get access to liquidity on Coinbase alone. But institutional clients using Coinbase Prime receive preferential treatment—their orders tap into liquidity across multiple venues simultaneously, resulting in vastly superior execution.
I sat down with Jai Prasad, co-founder of DefinitiveFi, who witnessed this disparity firsthand while at Coinbase. He saw how this imbalance tilts the playing field in favour of institutions, while retail traders remain restricted to limited liquidity pools and basic execution tools.
DefinitiveFi's mission cuts straight to this inequality: bringing the same institutional-grade trading efficiency to anyone with a wallet.
The platform has scaled from handling $20-30 million in monthly volume at launch in early 2024 to mid-nine figures by December. This growth stems from solving DeFi’s core problems: gas-abstracted trading, advanced order types, MEV protection, and execution that rivals centralised exchanges—all without compromising self-custody.
Imagine placing a $2 million order for a token like VIRTUAL or ARK without moving the market. You can place one order and let the algorithm execute it through dozens of venues using DefinitiveFi’s T-WAP (Time-Weighted Average Price, where a large trade is split into smaller chunks executed over a specified timeframe) functionality. It also hides the footprint that would normally trigger front-running. This kind of infrastructure could be a game-changer for institutional capital, injecting much-needed liquidity into DeFi and making it more resilient for all participants.
DeFi is still young, and the right infrastructure will dictate how far it can go. As I explored in my ‘DeFi met AI’ article, AI can meaningfully improve the retail DeFi experience. Combine this with execution infrastructure like DefinitiveFi, and we take a significant step toward what could become an on-chain-first financial ecosystem.
I hope you enjoy the conversation.
Exploring the Sonic ecosystem,
Saurabh Deshpande
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