Cata Labs

Development team contributing to @catalystsystem

[Cata Labs @CataLabsOrg]

Fresh new look 👀

[Cata Labs @CataLabsOrg]

@CatalystSystem gmeow!

[miumiu🐈‍⬛✨ @miwooyork]

I SAID YES… 💅😺

to level up @CatalystSystem as Growth Marketing Manager!

After learning in the infra land for 2 years, I'm diving into the world of cross-chain defi. In the current state of crypto where hundreds of chains are competing, the blue ocean of cross-chain potential is clear.

I'm beyond lucky to have found Catalyst, the S-tier team building the only bridge for all altVMs.

A bit about me:
+ my name is MIUMIU (meow meow)
+ bilingual crypto growth & marketing badass with a love for multi-channel expansion
+ left marks @tiktok_us investment, @MantaNetwork marketing, and @ethsign growth
+ roaring @Columbia graduate, girlie in New York

Catalyst marches with the dream team!
Imagine a squad of crypto veterans with visionary goals.
I vividly remember @jimchang sold me on the cross-chain future over a 3-hour rizz session in west village. @stabiliseret's giga-brain energy convinced me this vision could become reality. Add in @nimonty_'s token Italian lover boy charm, @diegoprudencio's 100x design skills, @hellojintao's degen expertise, and more.

I am the missing piece of the puzzle and we are here to make history.

What’s cookin at Catalyst?
As @jimchang eloquently puts in the manifesto: https://t.co/lJBqnO7YWL

“EVM interop is solved, and altVMs are the new frontier.” Our new product will take you beyond Ethereum, opening up a world of possibilities for traders and developers alike.

My mission? Ensuring everyone knows how fast, affordable, user-friendly, and (let's be honest) adorable our solution is. Get ready for banger contents, top-tier swags, and the cutesy overload brand from Catalyst.

Onwards and upwards, Q4 will be the month of Cats.

DM open for convos on cross-chain DeFi, marketing, and growth in crypto! Always down to get boba in the city!

GMEOW😺

[Cata Labs @CataLabsOrg]

@jimchang @solana @movementlabsxyz @EclipseFND @ton_blockchain @fluentxyz Mama there goes that man

[Jim @jimchang]

some news: going forward, my team is focusing 100% of our efforts on altVMs

that means building on @solana, @movementlabsxyz, @EclipseFND, @ton_blockchain, @fluentxyz & others that we’re bullish on

it also means much less building on Ethereum.

this was a hard decision for me and @stabiliseret. we both have built on Ethereum for many years and have spent the last 2 years building Catalyst on Ethereum

i, like many first time founders, thought that if we built something, then the users would come. but 8 months since Catalyst mainnet launch, it has achieved lukewarm adoption at best.

we tried to expand to new chains, but found it hard to attract liquidity. there seemed to be little demand in the market for another AMM.

i didn’t know what to do. nothing seemed to work, and i felt like a failure. it seemed like every other cross-chain protocol has been kicking ass. every week, a new volume ATH.

during ethcc, i was asked to be on a panel. it had all the big interop builders on it, with projects processing billions of dollars in volume.

i declined. i felt like I didn’t deserve to be there.

~~~~~~~~

confidence at an all time low, i went back to the drawing board. i re-read every book that I bought as a bright-eyed college kid dreaming of starting a business: the lean startup, zero to one, how google works, etc

i had ignored something that was so obvious, that EVERY book on entrepreneurship talked about — but I was too arrogant to heed, somehow thinking that crypto was different.

i needed to talk to users.

so i did. i asked everyone who would spare the time (you know who you are - THANK YOU!!), what was missing from cross-chain?

the takeaways were clear:

(1) bridging within EVM chains is crowded and has found its winners.
four projects do 90% of all volume. the rest of the 53(!!) bridges fight for the scraps.

(2) bridging within EVM chains is “good enough”, with each incremental innovation giving marginal returns.
thanks to @AcrossProtocol, @StargateFinance and @RelayProtocol, it now costs half a cent, and takes 2 seconds to bridge between EVM chains. what more can a user ask for?

(3) the vibes in EVM are off.
we were promised sovereign money. we were promised the world computer, the future of finance. instead, we got empty promises and the same copy-paste primitive again and again.

we’re tired, boss.

(4) in contrast, altVMs are bringing a new wave of hope
this one, i had to confirm with my own eyes.

i said gmove in the the @movementlabsxyz discord. i went to the @superteam bounty board. i chatted with the @SolanaFndn team, the @eclipsefnd team, and the @fuel_network team.

something was different there.

they were excited. they stood for something. believed in something.

new VMs bring new technologies that allow the next generation of builders to reimagine what’s possible onchain, things are not possible on evm.

for the first time in a long while, my old heart felt something that i hadn’t felt since DeFi Summer. i actually wanted to play these apps. Because they were fun.

only one problem stood in my way: getting on to these chains. which leads me to my last takeaway.

(5) people want access to altVMs, but they are hard as hell to get to.
in my mind, the story is clear.

altVMs will create a whole new design space. a whole new design space allows never-before-seen applications to be built. never-before-seen applications will bring in millions of mainstream users. millions of new users will result in billions of dollars of new tokens and yield.

only one thing stands in the way: how do we get there?

there’s no @jumperapp for altVMs. there’s no one product that opens the doors to all altVMs.

until today.

~~~~~~~~

we’re building a brand-new product: the only bridge built for altVMs.

our mission is to take you beyond Ethereum.

Movement, Solana, TON, @fuel_network, even Bitcoin — our goal is to make accessing them even easier than EVM chains today.

i can’t share too much right now, but here's what it’ll look like:
- incredibly simple. < 1 month to connect a new VMs
- best-in-market cross-chain UX (we absolutely cooked on this)
- competitive pricing and speed
- only one EVM connection: Base. we rely on smarter ppl than us (like @lifiprotocol @BungeeExchange and @SkipProtocol) to connect users to the rest of EVM Land

if you love this pivot, great! dm me, i’d love to show you what we’re building and partner.

if you hate this pivot, great too! let me know why I suck. for me, its better to stand for something (even if it turns out wrong) than to not stand for anything at all

gmove, gsvm, gblend and GMEOW 🫡

[Cata Labs @CataLabsOrg]

In two weeks, a star is born.

[Jim @jimchang]

in two weeks, a star is born.

[Alexander @stabiliseret]

My journey to building @CatalystAMM and completing the generalization of the constant product AMMs has origins in 2017.

@Bancor made records by completing – at the time – the largest ICO ever. They promised to eliminate middlemen by using BNT as an intermediary between trades. Their strategy was to price assets based on the ratio between their token holdings a supply of BNT. By cleverly engineering the relationship, they had created a path invariance between the 2 tokens.

Shortly after @Bancor's ICO @VitalikButerin commented on the situation: On Path Independence[1]. He formalized a path-independent market maker – called a Constant Function Market Maker today – that would later inspire @haydenzadams to develop Uniswap. Unbeknownst to him at the time, the idea contained in a 162 line smart contract[2] has become a constant presence on Ethereum and rollups ever since.

What makes the constant product AMM so ingenious? It has an important and unique property: The price function slope is – relative to balances – constant everywhere. In other words, if you want to buy a constant percentage of the vault twice, say 1%, it will also cost you a constant percentage of the vault, in your case 1.0101%, regardless of the current vault state. This property effectively lets a single deposit of 100 USDC and 100 Tokens market make forever, for all prices. It is easy to prove:

Establish the trading equation:
X · Y = k = (X + x) · (Y - y) ⇒ y = Y · x / (X + x)
Let's define the percentage relationship: x = X · a and y = Y · b.
Solving for b ⇒
Y · b = Y · X · a / (X + X · a) ⇒ b = a / (1 + a).

This property was important for the first generation of DeFi and is still important for long tail assets that would otherwise have trouble finding a market. It is a promise that as long as you can get people to provide liquidity for a token – and not withdraw it – you are guaranteed to always have a market for your token.

I am fascinated that such simple mathematics leads to these beautiful results, and I wanted to do more. Specifically, I had my cross-hair on a cross-chain AMM. I love integrations – no wonder given my Insurance Mathematics background – and I thought why not get inspiration from Lebesgue integrals.

The idea is simple, assume that you have a value function P(u) that describes how much you value 1 tokens given you have u tokens. Assume you have X tokens, then we can describe the value of a change, x, in your portfolio as: ∫_X^(X+x) P(u) du. If you paired 2 such integrations together, you would get: ∫_X^(X+x) P(u) du = ∫_(Y-y)^Y P(u) du. Revelation, each side of the equation is independent of the other side!

If we use P(u) = 1/u, the equation becomes ln(X+x)-ln(X)=ln(Y)-ln(Y-y) and solved for y results in the equation y = Y · x / (X + x)! We just discovered that you can write the constant product AMM as 2 independent equations that can be computed on 2 different chains. The last argument to seal the deal, the one @VitalikButerin described in On Path Independence, is very simple. It is given to us for free. Integrals are by definition path independent as long as the integrant is continuous (a.e.) which P(u) = 1/u is!

@CatalystAMM have been using these equations on mainnet for 4 months to swap between 3 chains, and soon you will be able to deploy own pools with these equations using either @Wormhole or @LayerZero_Core as the messaging protocol to send the integration results cross-chain. If you are clever, you may have caught a mistake in the Path independence proof. Catalyst is live on 3 chains, but I only showed path independence on 2. That is for another day.

[1]: https://t.co/eK67uRFgkk
[2]: https://t.co/PIbwqYniBc

[Cata Labs @CataLabsOrg]

@stabiliseret Babe, new Alexander blog just dropped.

[Alexander @stabiliseret]

Most projects only integrate one cross-chain messaging protocol. At Catalyst, I've scoped five integrations. Let me tell you my story from a builder’s perspective.

Today, more chains exist than ever before. More importantly, there are now major competing chain ecosystems. It doesn’t matter if you are a @bitcoin, @ethereum, @solana, or @ton_blockchain maximalist, you must realize that each of these not only have a community but a community of chains. This is not the way to broad adoption, this is fragmentation. It infuriates users, and we risk turning an early proponent into a for life hostile opponent. With a good reason. The road forward requires interoperability to enable applications to be built natively cross-chain.

Building native cross-chain applications is not difficult. It just requires a new way of thinking and some courage. There is 1 hurdle you have to pass – which interoperability provider are you going to use? For now, let’s ignore security and talk about parameters that are easier to quantify: cost, complexity, flexibility, and contract integration speed.

@LayerZero_Core is convoluted and messy, even their own engineers have trouble understanding it. It is expensive, locked down, annoying configs, and relaying parameters. I could talk endlessly about design decisions I believe are directly detrimental to adoption. Nevertheless, LZ benefit from best in class network support making it the best candidate for applications that want to get on every chain. Especially upcoming chains where they often have day 1 support. LayerZero supports 85 chains. It took us 5 months to do the integration.

@wormhole is simple. Most verification is done by a single contract and after optimizing it, Wormhole is by far the cheapest. Wormhole is incredibly flexible because of the simple and easily auditable on-chain footprint. It makes for a delightful integration experience. Sadly, network support is poor and they are relatively slow to expand. Described this way, Wormhole is the polar opposite of LayerZero. Wormhole supports 45 chains. Wormhole was the first integration which caused it to take longer, it took us 20 days. If it was our second integration, it would probably have taken 4–5 days.

@chainlink is a walled garden. If you don’t build your application specifically for CCIP, it is unlikely to be compatible. You are beholden to @chainlink’s decisions, and there is nothing you can do about it. In a DeFI vs CeFi world, CCIP represents CeFi. Like any good tradfi company, they are incredibly slow to support new technologies at 15 supported chains. After extensive research, we found no integration path.

@hyperlane is a zoo. They support the widest range of validation mechanisms by using a simple approach: You specify what logic is used to validate messages. This is a double-edged sword: It is amazing for chain compatibility, but it also presents a problem: which mechanisms to use and where? Unlike the other protocols mentioned here, Hyperlane support permission-less deployments. This allows anyone to add Hyperlane though at significantly reduced security. In a way it feels like Hyperlane ends up trying to do everything but fails to do a single thing well. At varying levels of security, Hyperlane supports 58 chains. It took us 3 days to the contract integration.

@Polymer_Labs is different. The gold standard for cross-chain messaging – IBC – is written in the DNA of Polymer. Instead of chain IDs, Polymer use channels IDs. Instead of multisigs Polymer uses light clients. Light clients should make it more permissionless and more secure than competitors. As they aren't live on mainnet, it remains to see how the strategy will pay off. It took around 2 weeks to do the contract integration for testnet.

At the end of the day, which one should you use? If you are unlikely to venture beyond @wormhole’s supported chains, I would choose Wormhole. If you need to be on the very edge and are willing to swim with closed eyes, @LayerZero_Core is likely a better choice for you. If you need a blue corporate hand holding you, you should choose CCIP.

[Cata Labs @CataLabsOrg]

@jimchang @guildxyz ❤️

[Cata Labs @CataLabsOrg]

@CatalystAMM @nimonty_ 🥚🥚🥚

[Wormhole @wormhole]

Unifying liquidity across chains is a step towards a multichain future.

@CatalystAMM is launching the first AMM pool that shares liquidity for native ETH across rollups on the OP Stack.

Catalyst uses Wormhole's interoperability platform to seamlessly pass messages. Read how. ⬇️

[Cata Labs @CataLabsOrg]

Very proud to getting this out the door.

[Cata Labs @CataLabsOrg]

@edimot0x no

[Cata Labs @CataLabsOrg]

Learn more about how to run a Catalyst Underwriter tomorrow at their Twitter Spaces!

Link: https://t.co/oIr5WRHrPh

[Cata Labs @CataLabsOrg]

@binji_x @jimchang it's actually incredibly incredibly sad how little the layperson knows about the inner machinations that happen in microwaves on a daily basis

and I’m sadly complicit in all this

[Cata Labs @CataLabsOrg]

@CatalystAMM 🥹

[Jim @jimchang]

hiring 4(!) new roles for @CataLabsOrg

1. frontend dev
2. backend dev
3. contracts dev
4. community manager

if ur interested, apply on https://t.co/60qxy32Itd and dm me after u do

[david phelps @divine_economy]

the thing that gives me the most hope for crypto right now isn't modular blockchains or intents or user-owned data

it's finally getting beautiful ui/ux design that can let us do things like, you know, swap cross-chain without using two apps and wallet networks

[aditi @adeets_22]

Testing @CatalystAMM alpha 🧪🔥

Bullish on teams that phase rollout, thoroughly test UX/UIs, and talk to users