The Vision of United Defi I Sergej Kunz

[Music] So, first I want to invite Sergey here who's the co-founder of 1 in and he's going to talk about the vision of United DeFi. So, let's get Sergey here and uh have him kick things off. Sergey, excited to have you.

Hi, Carter. Hi, everyone. Nice nice to be here.

We're excited. All right, we'll let you get started and uh let's take it away.

Let's go.

So, uh hi everyone. So, my name is Ser Kun. I'm co-ounder of 1 in. And now I'm going to speak about our vision of United Defi building the infrastructure for the next billion users. So the current default landscape uh looks like that we have a three-year high with 138 billions US dollars of uh D5 TVL and annual DAX volume volume is around 3 trillion that's huge and we see more than 617 millions of global crypto users.

So if you compare the internet adoption and crypto adoption uh from the beginning of of the technology uh we are right now if you compare crypto with internet we are in the year 1997. So we are in the internet's moment of 1997. Back into 1997 internet adoption was at 147 million users. We have in 2025 already 670 million users. We are we have four times more users than internet.

We have growing by 100 percentages annually again compared against uh eight percentages for traditional payments. And we are on track uh by on boarding uh more people and reaching 1 billion users by 2026 already. And we see instit institutionals adoptions as well. We see GP more already working to offer cryptobacked plots. We see Bitcoin ETF holding already 3 percentages of total supply.

Soon maybe more. We have we have seen some sales activities from early uh Bitcoin developers and that's great. So we get more liquidity in the space. We see major banks building on deeper infrastructure. There are some Swiss banks for example, Signal Bank uh who adopting crypto very well and offering trading crypto, investing crypto, staking directly in the bank interface and we reached already almost four three something like 3.

8 trillion of US dollars of crypto market capitalization. So and we will will see and we will see uh the next decade 10 times maybe more growth but only if we solve the fragmentation. So if you're looking into the fragmentation of of crypto, it became already huge. So back in 2019 when we started 1 in, we had just Ethereum blockchain with the smart contracts. But nowadays we see other blockchains, other layer ones, layer 2s.

What appeared uh competing with Ethereum, we we have seen layer twos popping up. Everyone's bullying on layer 2. We have seen base. We have seen uni chain who also incentivize people to bring more liquins in uni chain and try to remove like something from Ethereum and um it it makes everything not super efficient. So every chain is kind of an island with limited limited um liquidity and like own your own own user experience on interfaces own applications.

See

if you look if you zoom out you you recognize that defi is actually a small part of the whole crypto space. We have also Bitcoin with a huge amount of liquidity. Of course, Bitcoin partially is also in D5 through wrapped bitcoin tokens like WBTC. Uh but on all the centralized exchanges on all the user wallets there there a lot of bitcoins a lot of um uh money but we have also other blockchains. We have uh even Litecoin like Ethereum Classic is still trading uh traded with like 100 million million US dollars every day.

Uh so also was something new but what I recognized recently. So and we can actually tap into this liquidity. So if you are speaking about digitalized finances there advantages benefits by using this technology. The main advantage is it's non- custody self custody uh technology what uh what what no one need to manage and you have no one to trust that they will do proper things with your funds. You are doing it by yourself.

Your only key is you have own access to to your assets and only you can decide to to move this assets. It's atomic. Um so everything can be executed fully auto atomically. So if if if a transaction is not is not um going through and it's not successful uh the the uh interaction the the action uh can be rolled back. Um so we we ensure that uh what the user actually wanted is what was was executed.

It's permissionless. No one need permission to access uh the web three space the digitalized financial space. You need just a mobile phone. You need um application like one wallet or metam mask wallet or unis swap wallet what whatever trust wallet. uh you can access uh by having just internet access uh the the digitalized finances.

This compossible it's possible to build on top of already existing protocols services something new. So what we actually did back in 2019 in uh in the Ethereum global New York hackathon, we came just to the idea to combine all the decentralized exchanges into a single service and offering um one single uh transaction to exchange on multiple dexes in a in one single interaction and use fully automically. So user get the best execution and this the power of this finances. Yeah, it's composible. everyone can build on top of of the existing services.

It's open. A lot of the smart contracts are open source or just open for reading. Um there there are different implementations in terms of licenses. We at one in we keep delivering under MIT license. So everyone can build any business on top of it and use it um for any needs that they they want.

So very important also defi is global. Yeah, it's accessible around the globe even from the space. So, um our strategical strate strategic vision is um we need a unified liquidity layer. So, we need to transform fragmented pools into a single one efficient market. We need a chain abstraction.

So for the user it should be invisible that the user interact with multiple blockchains like user right now interacting with internet without knowing that under the hood we have TCP IP protocol for example. Yeah. So and we need to build an intentbased architecture. We need to focus on user outcomes and not technical processes. So our solution at 1 in is the intentbased crosschain protocol.

It offers atomic swaps, atomic execution. There are no bridge risks, no wrapped assets, no syn assets. There's a simple direct P2P exchange with cryptographical guarantees. Intent resolution means the user express what they want to get what what they want to achieve and the network the protocol itself ensures that everything will be done by offering just a mark market opportunity to professional executors to to settle to execute some um complex strategy is to fulfill the user needs. So unify liquidity means um we have a goal to unify the all liquidity from all from the whole market.

Um through our protocol approach that we uh uh create opportunity to arbitrage uh for example user swaps with other liquidity sources. Uh we got execution of the cross cross networks highly efficiently because someone can use a centralized exchange or other network to to hedge the position to to to make a reverse direction that the trade and just um after after the trade with the user uh rebalance rebalance it um uh after specific period of time. So we can source the whole liquidity from the market by just offering um arbitrage opportunity. I would say um we offer also gasless experience means the user don't need to take care about native tokens if the traded token is uh with permit support. So user need just to provide um a signature for the for the permit and signature for the order itself and um no transaction are needed.

So if you are doing right now the crosschain swap between all the VM compatible chains what we support right now very soon as well you don't need even a transaction to to do such a crosschain as well. So the economic impact of unified security um is can can be really huge. Soon we solve the problem with the fragmentation and with the adoption of of of this solution. If you look right now on one impact we we we save more than12 billion US dollars in uh gas fees. So through our uh optimizations uh in routting and and um in a swap implementation of our classic aggregation swap protocol and uh I just before intentbased protocol um we were able to offer um seamless solution where user don't pay even for the transaction and all the professional market bakers pay for the transaction execute the transactions because they make money out of it uh and compete between each other.

So we were able to save a lot of money for for customers. So we achieve 105 percentages of um average price improvements. Uh we have a lot of um um succeeded transactions on on the classic swap approach with the aggregations approach. Um and with the based approach we don't even have any failed transaction. We have only expired oras.

We are used to pay anything if it's expires when the price moves out of of the range. So we also improved in this space a lot. Um and we processing around 500 mil uh west dollars every day. That's really huge. But we can do better.

So as soon we implement the uh unification of the liquidity through across all the available uh chains where it's possible to integrate we can reduce the price impact uh price slipage of of trades a lot because if you look for example on the base um layer two um there's much less liquidity than on on Ethereum blockchain and you face higher price impact especially on higher amounts because there's less liquidity than Ethereum. But if you if you change it and you think that the whole liquidity on the market is the one united uh and not fragmented liquidity, then we can also offer lower price impact on base and just set the order on price market conditions cross chains. uh and arbitrary trader will anyway settle and professional traders will will will feel and take the oras because they can hatch on other network and settle settle uh for the for the market condition and not for isolated layer two network or uh chain blockchain. We can increase the vability of liquidity by up to 20x and we can lower the transaction costs with the 10based architecture a lot because it's uh a marketplace. It's kind of a marketplace where user oras can be matched with each other.

If you have Ethereum to uh USDC and USDC to Ethereum trades that they can be easily matched by our by our using our protocol and we can achieve faster transactions through this uh batching batching mechanism. So if you look into user experience right now the reality looks like you have to switch network manually. Some of the apps support already switching the network uh kind of automatically but you anyway you need to to confirm it on the metamas for example. So you need to manage how you pay your your transactions how you pay for the gas um on on the different uh multiple chains. You have fully different UIs of different protocols.

um maybe some of your protocols are not deployed on the new chain and then you need to use something else. It's sometimes very annoying and brings all the risks. Uh and when you need to move to funds, you a lot of people right now are still using bridges and also swaps based on um messaging protocols was also not safe because it's secured only with the validators network stake and most most of the time it's the token of the protocol what is used to stake. So there's a limited guarantee. You need to wait for the confirmations like it can take long to bridge tokens between two different uh networks.

It can even stack in the middle what I've seen multiple times also for myself. And you have to deal with failed transactions. So if you do do the transaction by yourself, you take the risks that the transaction will fail. You will pay for for for the transaction itself even if it fails and you can lose a lot of money by being um a victim of a math attack. I was I faced this multiple times in uh 2023 and that's why we started to build on intentbased protocols because we recognized also by after a specific anal analytics researchers that a lot of people lo losing uh a lot of money alone in last year more than$1.

8 eight billions US dollars were taken from users by by meth attacks. I would say partially already today we see improvements in the space especially if I think about the future of the user experience in in DeFi. We should have one interface for all chains. Users should not care about switching to to different networks. You should not care about the native token for the for the gas cost for the transaction costs.

We should have instant execution and not waiting like 10 minutes or 2 minutes or 5 minutes even 30 seconds a lot. We should not have security concerns. You should not have optimistic approach and think everything will be good. If you if I as a user give 10 million US dollar to to someone who would potentially give me yeah their other assets and with the same value on a different chain. So and we should focus only on outcomes only not how it's going to be executed because how it's going to be executed how how the settlement should be done it's it's a it's a bread I would say of professional market makers professional traders who who know it better and we should not worry about math at all not just only for swaps also for being liquidity provider I was sent multiple times by math bought by providing liquidity into unis swap.

It's really annoying. So the key to mass adoption is chain obstruction. So users should not need to understand net chains. Similar to TCP IP protocol we are using just it just works and the same you should we need here. So user should not think about okay on what blockchain I am.

I have just assets and I do something with this asset. So we should focus on financial goals, best execution for the user, best results for the user, no technical details. Um uh so the user should not care about that. We we don't need bridge risks or wrapped asset concerns like WBTC and other uh tokens are rep tokens. It's not real BTC what you own.

You should get the best rates across best execution across all ecosystems and new chains integration should be seamlessly and fast. So the path for unifi defy how we see it it's very optimistic very optimistic I would say uh 2024 we prepared the infrastructure with the already 2023 we've u based protocol and only before intentbased protocol we were able to build a crosschain intentbased protocol so we have the tooling and infrastructure already there the crosschain adoption started already 2025. We we see people building protocols who who offer swaps land borrow partially uh also crosschain liquidity providing also crosschain. So we hope with 2020 in 2026 to achieve u ecosystem integration. So means I want to see crosschain intent based crosschain swaps in 10based swaps in every wallet in Mamas trust wallet exodus in ledger in treasure the all the wallets we need intentbased protocols to improve the user experience a lot and we hope for mass market adoption 2027 2028 eight.

So, and we see a trillion dollar opportunity. The crypto users are growing by 100 percentages annually. We are at three years high with the TVL and the global crypto adoption rates around 12 percentages. the current growth rate we will reach 1 billion users by 2026. So, and we can capture with unified liquidity 10x and more value by eliminating inefficiencies and and uh borders I would say between those networks.

the crypto uh global crypto adoption is accelerating. Uh if you look into um countries and then the adoption of crypto we see India and the first place with 93 million users African countries also growing a lot of people there have less opportunity to to to make money in in their own country and they're looking also into new crypto space. We see also Vietnam uh growing and we see United Arab Emirates uh 30% of population own already crypto and that's huge and we see great growth dynamics 28% of US adults now own crypto and 14 percentages of non owners plan to buy in 2025. times. So and other countries are also growing like Asia and Pacific more countries getting more involvement in in crypto and Latin America also growing with higher higher adoption and we have power powerful network effects with our technology.

We have So we we we can reach more users with our T. Everyone who has access to internet can interact with our protocols with our services. We can have a lot of integrations because it's easy to integrate. We are not isolated bank or financial in institute or even like software as a service platform where it's like closed and you need first sign a lot of contracts and get API keys to access it. You can just easily interact with the smart contracts.

we can offer deeper liquidity than everything else out there if you if you combine the whole liquidity across all the networks and you have the we have the opportunity to improve TX a lot. So in terms of uh technical innovation highlights uh especially at 1 in protocols um we introduce something like we call it Dutch auction model where uh we create opportunity for professional traders uh to make money on uh on the user orders. So protocol selling user oras to market makers where market maker could pin between each other. Um who first they take first and cannot wait. Uh so we uh create a market where we have compet competitive environment for for market makers and arbitrage traders.

Uh and user outcome is better execution. We have great resol network. Um we have atomic settlement. our core value proposition from the beginning atomic execution and non-custody approach. So and we have a chain agnostic design.

So it every chain what what can implement HTLS L HTLC contracts uh can can be supported. So benefits across the ecosystem. So for users um user get better execution no chain switching is needed um lower fees in terms of like um execution execution costs in terms of fees in general. Uh it's a market market marketplace environment where user get best execution because market makers compete between each other and faster execution for trades. Uh for protocols protocols can get access to the whole liquidity.

Um it can the uh fragmentation can be reduced. Uh we can get better composibility crosschain and uh can improve the the the user base. for liquidity providers. Um it like someone who provides liquidity on uni chain uh can earn more because uh our marketplace also can access this liquidity through the crosschain protocol. better yields for uh for also even for lending protocols um uh because um it's easily to move funds from one chain to another chain and also get all the uh differences between these different chains.

Um there are other things um also for developers. Um it's simple to integrate. Um it's um out of box multi-chain um compatible um and it's focused on the future. So and also it's extendable uh so everyone can build additional um extensions on top of this protocol. So um I'm running out of time.

Um I will jump for forward to um the the main thing in terms of like real world impact. There are a lot of potential potential to to get integrated uh to to being integrated in all the already existing um in commerce for example gaming and um and other things. Um we jump into the main slide. Um join us and build with us the future. We are building the uh infrastructure to on board the other billions of people who are still maybe about crypto but didn't touch it.

So build your applications, leverage our protocols. Um use use them. Uh you can contribute to to the protocols itself. You can expand the functionality. You can build protocols.

uh also on chains what we are not supporting. Get your prices and uh we are also open to support everyone. We are open to even for like supporting your with your early stage um startup setup. So we came out from the hackathon and I'm Richard. You built your own unicorn here at this hackathon.

Thank you very much. It was a pleasure to be here.

Sergey, that was an amazing intro and uh outlook on the future of Unifi DeFi world. Um we sadly do not have enough time for questions, but we did get a few questions on the live stream. Uh so I saw you were already signed into global.tv. You can see three or four questions there.

would you mind just replying to people there directly? I think some of them are willing to have a fight with you on uh auction mechanisms for Dutch auctions. So, we'll we'll see how that chat goes, but uh definitely some feedback people want on um some ideas that they're thinking about and uh some of the comments you made on the slide.

All right. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Sergey. [Music]