Our Guiding Principles

Everything we build - from the matching engine to our tokenised vaults is driven by a set of non-negotiable principles. These shape why we exist, what we ship, what we say no to, and how we iterate.

Extreme Performance

• Latency

  We design for the trader’s feel before anything else. Matching, risk checks, liquidations, and state updates must be as fast and predictable as possible, even during extreme volatility with the goal of all trading related actions be finalised within 40ms.

• Deterministic throughput

  We aim for guaranteed capacity under stress, not benchmark screenshots in perfect conditions. Architecture, infra, and feature scope are chosen to preserve consistent performance under load.

• Performance as a feature

  Speed and reliability are are core product features. If a design slows the trader down, we reconsider the design.

Privacy

• Trading without becoming the product

  No trade related data is exposed on public block explorers.

• Default-private by design

  New features are evaluated on their privacy impact by default, not as an afterthought. If we can design a more private version with similar UX, we choose that.

Permissionless, Fair & Verifiable

• Open access, no gatekeepers

  Anyone should be able to trade, provide liquidity, or integrate with Defx using public, documented interfaces – without asking for approval or “partnership status.”

• Same rules for everyone

  Core mechanics (fees, liquidations, funding, oracle updates, tokenization rules in DLE, etc.) are openly defined and applied uniformly. No backdoors, no god mode or negative margin accounts.

• Verifiable behavior

  Wherever feasible, critical flows should be verifiable onchain or through auditable proofs - from collateralization in DLE to PnL, funding, and liquidation logic.

• Maximize transparency

  Required admin controls (upgrades, parameter changes) are tightly scoped, transparent, and community governed.

Compose with DeFi, on Their Turf

• Meet users on their preferred chain

  Build to support the best ecosystems natively, be it EVM or Solana.

• Embrace DeFi

  Bring perp primitives to EVM and Solana, and be composable with credit markets, risk curators, and AMMs.