Today we have the chance to welcome Martin, Founder of DeXian protocol. Together with him, we will go through what DeXian is about, who is the team behind the protocol, how they met, what makes DeXian unique on the liquid staking market, and many more. Let’s get started.
[SurferInvestor] Could you please summarise briefly what DeXian Protocol is about?
[Martin] DeXian Staking Earning (DSE) is a liquid staking protocol based on Radix, which provides a one-stop solution to the problem of Fast stake and even Faster unstake.
[Martin] The DSE allows users to rapidly JOIN the liquid staking pool, and earn stable proceeds through the DeXian service. Especially, users can immediately REDEEM their XRD invested without waiting for the approximately 10 to 15 days unstaking delay of the Radix network, which greatly improves the liquidity of XRD and brings users convenience.
[Martin] The DSE protocol will use algorithms to ensure that XRD staked by users will not be concentrated on a few validators, increasing the decentralization, stability and robustness of the Radix network.
[SurferInvestor] Where do the XRD go that users “JOIN”? How does DSE select the validator?
[Martin] The XRD that users join through DSE are staked on Radix validators. DSE will select the validators based on algorithms which consider multiple factors (ranking, fees, recent uptime, etc), and as DSE is currently an MVP and focuses on functional integrity, it simply selects KaiYuan Epoch.
[SurferInvestor] Where do the funds in the current DSE funding pool come from? Does the pool support unlimited fast redemptions?
[Martin] In the current MVP phase, the funds of the pool are actively prepared by DeXian community members. When users select the fast redemption option, the buffer pool will release a number of funds for immediate payment to the user who requested the fast redemption, which is also the reason why a fee is charged for this service.
[Martin] However, when the requested amount for fast redemption exceeds the pool balance, the user will not be able to use the fast redemption service and DSE will only support the normal redemption service at this point, which we have also explained in detail at the redemption interface.
[SurferInvestor] Could you please introduce the founding team? How many people are on the team? What is their background and what makes them the right team to run DeXian Protocol?
[Martin] DeXian has two main founders and five members in total, all from the computer technology and finance fields.
DeXian Founders:
- Dust: Early BTC enthusiast and investor, has over 10 years of experience in software development, business system iteration development in the financial field, and is familiar with smart contract. Dust has worked deeply with MakerDAO and founded several projects, which effectively lowered the entry barrier for early DeFi users and made certain contributions to the ETH ecosystem, being an early pioneer of staking service. He also founded the KMFrog Quantitative Fund, which ranks among the top in the industry in terms of the scale of funds served.
- Martin: MSc in Finance, King’s College London, Chartered Financial Analyst L1. Over three years of experience in the cryptocurrency and blockchain space. Early participant and contributor in the Radix ecosystem, former DOGI investment project researcher, responsible for research and analysis of early-stage potential projects in the Radix ecosystem. Former developer advocate at a decentralised storage technology company, responsible for the design and analysis of the DeFi module of the staking platform and the build & operation of overseas media.
Other core team members:
[Martin] Benny Xu, Peng Yue and Haochu Qu are all early adopters of blockchain and cryptocurrency. Benny graduated from Peking University with a degree in Computer Science and Technology and holds patents on inventions related to the DEX. He has founded several enterprises including e-commerce platforms and mobile internet game platform and served as Vice President.
We also have Yue and Qu as senior back-end engineers:
- Yue has many years of experience in cryptocurrency and blockchain technology development and has independently led the construction of various dApps and smart contract-based services, and has been deeply involved in MakerDAO collaborative projects.
- Qu has over 10 years of experience in developing large and medium-sized complete projects and products, and has worked on various blockchain projects involving BTC and ETH.
[Martin] The DeXian team has extensive experience in the development, operation and financial trading of both CEX and DEX, with a deep understanding of the key aspects and core requirements of the trading process, and has provided excellent solutions.
[Martin] FTX has said “For trader by trader”, and we share this philosophy. The DeXian Staking Earning & fast unstake service is a great example of how DSE is able to think and solve problems from the perspective of the customer, while enriching and improving the Radix ecosystem, making for a win-win situation.
[SurferInvestor] How did the idea of DeXian Protocol came to life?
[Martin] Staking as an asset management method for a portion of digital asset clients is still inherently complex.
[Martin] Especially for highly volatile cryptocurrencies, where users may be exposed to price fluctuations during the lock-up period, the time cost is high and therefore efficiency is essential, making the fast unstake service provided by DSE extremely valuable and necessary.
[Martin] In addition, there are numerous factors that need to be considered when selecting a validator, such as Yield, Recent uptime, Fee % and contribution to the community, all of which require a lot of effort to be invested in research. If a dedicated team can be responsible for maintenance and management, it will make the whole investment process more secure and efficient, which is also the way for the asset management industry to move towards professionalism.
[SurferInvestor] What motivated you to build on Radix?
[Martin] As the growth of the early DeFi market has been constrained by current technical conditions, Radix aims to reshape the DeFi foundation by building a next-generation Layer 1 protocol that eliminates the technical barriers that limit the scalability of DeFi on four levels.
[Martin] By using the Rust-based and asset-oriented programming language Scrypto (running on the Radix Engine), Radix reduces the risk of hacking, exploits and execution failures, allowing developers to build secure DeFi dApps quickly and easily, which provides a significant security and efficiency advantage over Ethereum. By creating the “Developer Royalty System”, combined with the Radix Component, all contributors, even those who have not built a complete DeFi application, will be rewarded for their contribution to the network and the ecosystem, which will facilitate the accumulation of quality modules and enable developers to be more focused on their greatest areas of expertise.
[Martin] The early-stage projects and developers also have a certain first-mover advantage, so we should act fast and combine our brilliant ideas with the powerful features of Radix to build even better DeFi dApps.
[SurferInvestor] How would you pitch Radix to an Ethereum maxi?
[Martin] As we mentioned before, the asset-oriented features of Radix bring security and innovation to DeFi, providing developers with an easy way to create and interact with assets, which makes assets and their intuitive behaviour a native feature, greatly improving both security and efficiency. But compared to the growing ecosystem on Ethereum, Radix still has a long way to go in terms of ecosystem, but isn’t that an opportunity in itself? If you have built successful eco-projects on Ethereum, then I believe you can be just as successful, if not better, on Radix.
[SurferInvestor] DeXian reminds me a lot of Lido or Stride for example. Is there something you do differently?
[Martin] In general understanding, DSE and Lido are similar in that they are both designed to solve problems in the stake cycle regarding the staking router, staking rewards distribution, and how to improve liquidity and capital efficiency.
[Martin] But due to the differences between Radix and ETH in terms of network mechanisms, stake participation scope and thresholds, there are significant differences between DSE and Lido & Stride in solving these problems. The DSE also differs from Lido & Stride in terms of the wide range of application scenarios.
- Node routing: We have both solved the node routing problem. The purpose of Lido node routing is to balance and coordinate the interest binding relationship with the node operation providers, in fact they are acting in concert. The DSE node routing is designed to maximise the interests of the stakers. There is no interest relationship between the DSE and the nodes, which is more neutral and contributes to making the Radix network more decentralised, secure and robust.
- Proceeds distribution: Lido will take 10% of the stake rewards as its Ops costs, while the DSE is supported by the proceeds generated from staking return on Radix validators, ALL of which are currently shared by DSExrd holders.
- Fast redemption: Normally there is an lock-up period of about 10-15 days for Radix network protocol redemptions, but DSE will offer holders the option of immediate redemption, which is the critical service offered by DSE, and the fast redemption of Lido may take a few hours.
[Martin] The Stride is a similar Cosmos solution to Lido.
[SurferInvestor] What item in the roadmap gets you the most excited?
[Martin] Of the DeXian roadmap, the usage scenarios for DSExrd are the most exciting for us.
[Martin] DSExrd will enable multi-purpose scenarios, both for transfers, C2C transactions, swap, lending and online store consumption on the many platforms that DeXian will subsequently launch, as well as by setting up liquid pools on DEX such as Ociswap, which fully demonstrates the liquidity and value of DSExrd, and staking rewards are not affected while DSExrd is in liquidity or ownership transfer.
[SurferInvestor] What is the roadmap for DSE once Babylon and the native liquid stake go live?
[Martin] Once Babylon and the native liquid stake go live, DSE will also be re-implemented using Scrypto, allowing any user to provide liquidity to the pool through the DSE protocol, while the interest rate for fast redemption will be market-based and dynamically adjusted based on supply and demand, and the liquidity provider will share the interest rate gains.
DeXian will also further extend and integrate the funding pool with Lending Protocol to diversify the DeFi ecosystem and practical application scenarios of XRD.
[SurferInvestor] In an ideal world, how would DeXian Protocol look in 5 years?
[Martin] DeFi is also known as “Cryptocurrency Lego” and its highly scalable setting gives DeFi lasting vitality.
[Martin] Five years is not a short time for a project in the crypto field and we expect DSE to be a highly open, composable, flexible, stable, secure and reliable infrastructure that serves as a standard DeFi Lego block and becomes the primary choice for users in Stake, Unstake and Lending.
[SurferInvestor] What has the DeXian team done previously in the Radix ecosystem？
[Martin] DeXian Stake Earning was developed by the technical team of KaiYuan Epoch Validator, which is currently a Radix Top 40 validator worldwide. The DeXian team has been following the Radix since 2018, participating in the early Betanet test network in 2021, and operating validators on Olympia and Alexandria.
[Martin] We also contributed to a series of Radix Scrypto-Challenges and translated white papers including Radix DeFi and Cerberus consensus (A Parallelized BFT Consensus Protocol for Radix) into Chinese, which played an important role in the promotion of Radix in the Chinese community.
[SurferInvestor] What is the development blueprint for the DeXian?
[Martin] As a pioneering milestone of the DeXian team, DSE has brought great convenience to users.
[Martin] In the future, DeXian will continue to take root in Radix and explore the DeFi world, combining Lego modules such as Swap, DEXC2C, Lending Protocol and Online Store to build more truly secure and efficient decentralised financial projects with sound mechanisms.
[Martin] Meanwhile, we will also continue to contribute to the Radix community, expanding Radix’s influence in China and Asia, and assisting Radix in realising its ultimate goal of building a truly global, decentralized DeFi network.
[SurferInvestor] For people who wanna jump in, how to get started?
[Martin] The DeXian Staking Earning Protocol has been launched at the end of March and users can directly access here to experience “Fast Stake and Faster Unstake” service.
[Martin] If you’re not familiar with DSE, I believe this document will answer your questions and we will be updating this documentation regularly. In the meantime, the DeXian team will announce the latest information on Twitter and Telegram, and if you have any questions, please contact or reply to us directly on Twitter and ask questions on Telegram.
[SurferInvestor] Are you recruiting at the moment?
[Martin] We welcome international talents in product, development, business, marketing and operations with an extremely wide-open posture. We will airdrop and issue Tokens in the future to truly share the growth dividends of the project with our members, so feel free to get in touch!
[Martin] For instance, if you are familiar with Radix, good at operating and promoting the Radix community, and also interested in DeXian, please contact us now, the DeXian team is looking forward to having you on board!
Thank you so much Martin, for taking the time to teach us about the secrets of DeXian that make this noteworthy project unique in this highly competitive market. With the incredible team you have, we wish you all the best for the launch and would be delighted to have you back with us for follow-up after a few months.
