Original | Odaily Planet Daily ( @OdailyChina )
Author | Fu Ruo ( @vincent31515173 )
In the wave of rapid global development of the crypto industry, blockchain technology is gradually breaking through the boundaries of traditional finance, attracting countless entrepreneurs and technology developers. As Bitcoin continues to set new historical highs, the heat of the crypto market is rising, and DeFi projects have become the focus of attention for investors and industry experts.
However, with the expansion of the market, the challenges faced by the DeFi field are also becoming increasingly apparent—how to stand out in a highly competitive environment and create truly innovative products that meet user needs has become a core issue for every entrepreneur.
In this context, Odaily Planet Daily had the honor to interview Caria, the founder and CEO of NuDEX, during the Devcon in Bangkok. Caria, as an entrepreneur with a strong technical background, has accumulated rich experience in the Metis team. With keen market insight and technological innovation capabilities, she successfully attracted heavyweight investors, including the founders of Metis. The investment from the founders of Metis not only represents a high recognition of Caria's personal abilities but also injects strong resources and confidence into the development of NuDEX.
As a new type of decentralized multi-chain trading platform, NuDEX is redefining the DeFi trading experience through a series of unique features:
● Seamless execution of multi-chain transactions: NuDEX supports one-step cross-chain transactions, allowing users to efficiently manage assets without complicated cross-chain bridge operations.
● Zero gas fee model: Whether on Layer 1 or Layer 2, the platform achieves zero gas fees, significantly reducing transaction costs.
● Complete asset control: As a non-custodial platform, NuDEX allows users to maintain complete control over their assets, eliminating centralized risks.
● Advanced automated trading features: Support for limit orders, stop-loss orders, and partial fills, providing flexible options for different types of users.
In addition, NuDEX has also introduced innovative mechanisms such as decentralized listing rights and single token liquidity provision, allowing the community and project parties to actively initiate trading pairs, lowering participation thresholds and enhancing the openness and activity of the platform ecosystem.
In this interview, we will explore Caria's entrepreneurial journey together, learn how she addresses pain points in the DeFi field through technological innovation, promotes the popularization and development of decentralized finance, and shares her insights and outlook on the future crypto market.
Caria's inseparable bond with crypto
Odaily Planet Daily: Please briefly introduce yourself.
Caria: My career began in the hardware industry. When I first encountered Bitcoin, I didn't understand it, so I missed the early opportunity. Later, I went to Canada for a working holiday and entered Schulich School of Business to pursue an MBA.
After much effort, I finally entered a top pharmaceutical company in Canada, but I was not satisfied with a 9-to-5 life, so I switched to the software industry, accumulating experience in cross-department communication and learning.
After that, I joined Metis as a product manager, starting from scratch to engage with blockchain, and I fell in love with this technology that can break the limitations of traditional industries.
Today, I am dedicated to entrepreneurship, hoping to integrate blockchain into everyone's life through our technology and truly realize the dream of changing the world.
Odaily Planet Daily: From LinkedIn, it appears that you have a very rich professional background and have held multiple positions, including project manager at Caseware, lecturer at York University, and director at Taiwan Credit Cooperative. Now focusing on NuDEX, how do you balance your time across these roles, and what are your future priorities in the Web3 industry?
Caria: I have always been called a "hardworking person" by outsiders. I find it hard to accept a state of doing nothing. Even if I am injured and lying in bed now, I feel uncomfortable and must maintain a working state. So despite juggling multiple roles, it is not difficult for me. This mainly relies on good time management and prioritization.
Moreover, I am very grateful for the many people who appreciate me and provide opportunities for me to accumulate experience and continue learning in different fields along the way. These experiences, whether in industry knowledge or practical work, have greatly helped me after entering the Web3 industry.
In the future, I hope to enhance the transparency and liquidity of the entire field through our unique DeFi technology, allowing blockchain technology to truly integrate into the daily lives of ordinary people and contribute more to the development of this industry.
Odaily Planet Daily: Your experience in transitioning between different industries and positions is very rich. What experiences led you to cross over to Web3, and how do you think your previous cross-domain experience has helped you in your work in Web3?
Caria: My cross-industry experience has given me a unique perspective in the Web3 space. Although Web3 is an emerging industry, this circle is small, and the views and ideas of insiders often converge, making it easy to overlook the needs of external users. This has also led to one of the biggest challenges of Web3—external users find it difficult to truly integrate because they do not understand what the industry is doing.
My advantage lies in the fact that I was once a part of the hardware industry and was also someone who did not believe in Web3, even thinking it was just a scam. I understand the doubts and perspectives of external users, while also being well aware of the logic and operation methods within the industry.
Today, as a member of Web3, this dual identity allows me to make decisions from the user's perspective, balancing the needs inside and outside the circle, truly addressing user pain points. I believe this is the key to developing successful products and is a necessary direction for the widespread adoption of Web3.
Odaily Planet Daily: You have worked at Metis for over two years; which business area were you responsible for? What unique challenges have left a deep impression on you?
Caria: When I joined Metis, it was still in the relatively early stages as a participant in Ethereum's Layer 2 solutions. At that time, there were not many L2 solutions on the market, but competition was already fierce, as everyone was vying to become the first project to effectively solve the pain points of the Ethereum mainnet. Our core task was to improve transaction speed, ensure transactions could be completed within seconds, and reduce gas fees to below $0.1.
To achieve this goal, we have invested a lot of energy with the development team, continuously researching and developing breakthrough technologies, and ultimately successfully optimizing performance. Although I won't detail the technical aspects, I learned a key point: in any field, the success of a startup or project lies in solving the pain points of users.
The success of Metis stems from its precise solution to Ethereum's speed and cost issues, and the concepts I learned during this experience are still being applied to my new project NuDEX, where we are also dedicated to solving the pain points in the DeFi field, such as transaction speed, ease of use, and security.
Odaily Planet Daily: Why switch from Ethereum L2 to build DeFi products on Bitcoin L2? From your experience, there seems to be no prior DeFi or exchange experience; what was your starting point for creating a DEX? What difficulties and challenges did you encounter in this process? How did you solve these issues?
Caria: The switch from Ethereum L2 to Bitcoin L2 is because Bitcoin's decentralization and security characteristics align better with my vision for blockchain development. Although I had no prior DeFi or exchange experience, my understanding of technology and insight into industry needs allowed me to design practical solutions.
Our starting point is to create an exchange that can truly be decentralized, addressing the common centralization issues present in current DEXs. I am well aware of the pain points of decentralized exchanges, especially in terms of security and user experience, so we focused on technological innovation and optimization from the very beginning.
For example, adopting the cross-chain technology of GOAT Network enables our platform to support multiple assets, not limited to a single chain, greatly reducing the learning barrier for users and improving the convenience of transactions. Although we encountered some technical difficulties along the way, we gradually overcame these challenges through the team's efforts and continuous adjustments.
Odaily Planet Daily: What milestones do you think NuDEX will achieve in the future? How will your role change in this?
Caria: Our goal is to achieve complete decentralization of NuDEX; a decentralized exchange cannot be centralized at the management level. That would be wrong. I believe many DEXs currently claim to be decentralized, but in reality, the project parties still have significant control.
In the future, NuDEX will specifically establish a DAO, where community members will make decisions. Our goal is for NuDEX to become a new standard for decentralized exchanges, hoping that one day we can change and rebuild the standards for decentralized exchanges. Once we grow to a certain extent, my role will shift to serving community members and helping to connect more international resources to promote the rapid expansion of NuDEX.
When the market is booming, how do you view the future development of the crypto industry?
Odaily Planet Daily: Bitcoin is currently breaking new highs, but the rise of Bitcoin is more driven by policy expectations and traditional financial institutions, which do not represent the typical target users of BTCFi or even DeFi. As the founder and CEO of NuDEX, how do you think DEX can expand the incremental market instead of being caught in a competition within the existing market?
Caria: We believe that although there are many emerging market currencies and services in the Bitcoin market, such as inscription services, we will not adopt traditional competition models to directly confront large exchanges.
Our strategy is to collaborate with emerging or developing projects, utilizing the window period before they partner with large exchanges to help them go to market. Through this cooperation, we can provide some special trading opportunities, such as issuing meme coins, helping project parties grow while offering more choices to our users. This strategy not only avoids competition in the existing market but also helps us expand the incremental market.
Currently, we are deeply collaborating with some emerging projects, providing them with technical support and market guidance, helping these projects acquire users and accelerate market expansion, further expanding the incremental market. At the same time, we are cooperating with major chains to promote the further development of decentralized finance and other decentralized application scenarios, thereby expanding the application scenarios and market space of Bitcoin in the decentralized finance ecosystem.
Odaily Planet Daily: I noticed that you gave an excellent presentation at the MEMEWonder conference; as an entrepreneur in the DeFi industry, what are your thoughts on the future development of the DeFi sector?
Caria: I believe that in the future, the boundaries between centralized and decentralized exchanges will become increasingly blurred, and a phenomenon of integration will begin to appear between the two. Decentralized exchanges will gradually combine with traditional financial products and tools.
For example, traditional financial markets can now purchase cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum through the stock market. If we cannot timely integrate DeFi with financial tools in real life, we may be marginalized.
In the future, DeFi will move in this direction, gradually integrating with financial tools from the real world to enhance its popularity and influence. I was very pleased with the sharing at the MEMEWonder conference, which was supported by Binance, presenting DeFi in a way that is closer to the public, demonstrating that it is not as distant as it seems, which is crucial for its acceptance in the mainstream market.
Odaily Planet Daily: Where is the real pain point of DEX?
Caria: I believe the biggest pain point of DEXs currently is that they often rely on the ecological development of a single chain. Each DEX has its own chain, which forces users to be loyal to a specific chain in order to use the services of that DEX. For ordinary users, learning how to enter this ecosystem is a very complicated process, creating a significant barrier to usage.
This is also why we chose to build our DEX on the GOAT Network, through which we can connect multiple chains and various assets, thus solving the limitation problem.
Odaily Planet Daily: Currently, the BTC ecological projects that are relatively easy to attract important investors are often concentrated in L2, staking, etc. We chose the DEX direction, have you gained any insights from the VCs you have interacted with, such as the core competitiveness and innovation direction of BTC L2 DEX?
Caria: The inherent decentralization, robustness, and wide influence of Bitcoin are the core reasons we chose it as the underlying asset. As Bitcoin continues to appreciate, more and more people see it as a store of value, while we hope to provide more DeFi innovative services through DEX to further explore Bitcoin's potential.
However, the smart contract functionality of Bitcoin is still not as complete as that of public chains like Ethereum, which is currently the biggest pain point in ecological development. We are investing more resources and technical capabilities to address these shortcomings and promote the construction of the Bitcoin DeFi ecosystem.
From the perspective of venture capitalists, they are more concerned about the profitability and liquidity of assets. We chose the GOAT Network as our infrastructure precisely because it has clear advantages in addressing these two points.
At the same time, NuDEX also has two core technologies:
● NIP-20 protocol: With NIP-20 technology, we achieve offline matching and online settlement, processing over 10,000 transactions per second.
● TSS (Threshold Signature Scheme): With TSS technology, we have become a truly fully decentralized exchange for processing transactions, from deposits, withdrawals, trading to the listing and delisting of tokens, all stages are decentralized. All records on all chains are completely transparent.
With these technological innovations and clear market positioning, we have attracted the attention of multiple institutions and large investors, and we are currently actively negotiating partnerships.
