Joel Choo

[Allium @AlliumLabs]

Cross-chain interoperability moves billions of dollars across crypto every month.

Yet understanding where that value flows and which protocols facilitate it remains difficult.

Today we're launching the Interoperability Dashboard with @LayerZero_Core.

Track:
> Cross-chain volume
> Messages sent
> User activity
> Market share
> Chain-to-chain flows

Across the leading interoperability protocols.

[leech @lchylch]

https://t.co/4rk10iT1Ea

[Joel Choo @joelchoo]

I'm so lucky to be working with a truly amazing Singaporean founding team 🫶🫶🫶 @ethanyish @lchylch @potaypaul @gohchaa

[ethn @ethanyish]

🇸🇬There’s a take I keep seeing that Singapore doesn’t produce founders. The standard reasons given are that LKY was the ultimate founder so no one else has to be, that the system is too homogenous, and that the market is too small and fragmented (South East Asia). I’ve read and produced versions of this argument for years. I’m not going to re-litigate it today.

I’d rather share what I actually see working. Singapore has produced tech founders. Razer. Creative. Sea. Peng Ong co-founded https://t.co/GO61fvQzuQ out of here. It’s not a long list and no one pretends otherwise, but the list exists, which means there's precedent.

In non Singaporean fashion, I want the discourse to shift from the 1,000 reasons singapore can’t produce founders, to the reasons singapore could produce great founders and how to make that work.

If @ycombinator managed to crack the code 21 years ago to generate 10,000x times the number of founders and changed the mindset of the entire silicon valley, I do know that Singapore and the broader ecosystem will have its own way of achieving some outcome here. YC normalized failure as a young founder imo, it wasn't as hot and sexy to start your own company then.

There are green shoots - a new cohort of Singaporeans abroad quietly building real companies. Jeffrey Tiong from @Patsnap. Desmond Lim from @workstream_us. Thomas Li from @Daloopa1. It takes 10 plus years for these success stories to grow and reach the mainstream in Singapore.

How can singapore founders combine the best and brightest and most hardworking Singaporeans with the abundance of global opportunities available in this new age of ai disruption? A lot of this having the mindset to sell globally from day 0. And of course one of the biggest markets in the world is USA. Is this easier said than done, yes. but is this definitely doable? yes.

At @AlliumLabs, we have a Singaporean core founding team (@lchylch @potaypaul @gohchaa) incorporated in US. We benefited greatly from having a Singapore office from nearly day one. HQ in the US, usually New York or San Francisco, because that’s where the deepest pool of capital and the largest customers actually sit. I do think combining the best of both worlds is a viable path forward and a template that one can expand and scale on.

We actually ran this pros & cons (in typical singaporean pragmatic engineer fashion)
1. Are there critical and core parts of our work embarassingly parallel? Output of one team is not blocked by the output of another.
2. Did we get 24/7 coverage SLAs for our customers because "the sun never set" on Allium? Yes. This allowed us to service the biggest institutions in the world at a much younger stage in a leaner fashion.
3. Can we get access to top tier problem solvers who have great work ethic? YES.

We mitigate the timezone piece by having the Singapore team log in ~10pm-11pm SGT Monday to Thursday for more synchronous communications with the US team. Is this easy? Not really, is it possible and a sustainable template going forward? 100%.

Allium is built this way. We’re headquartered in New York. We opened the Singapore office in year one. The founding team is Singaporean. Our customers are global. Both offices do real work, and neither is a satellite of the other. The reason this works is that you get both sides. Singapore gives you strong operators, real financial infrastructure, access to Asian markets in one flight, and an institutional reputation that’s hard to replicate elsewhere. And of course the ability to hire the best and the brightest in the broader region. The US gives you customer density, deeper capital, and the kind of ambient pressure that forces you to think bigger than you would at home.

You don’t have to pick, you can have both.

If you’re a Singaporean sitting on an idea or a hope to do some great on the global stage one day, that’s the thing I want more people to hear. You also don’t have to wait and say it's hard. Of course it's going to be hard. Just set something up and keep going.

Here's what I am happy to do with fellow sporeans
1. For Singaporeans who do want to build their own company one day, I am happy to set some time to share my own personal journey to cross the mindset chasm.

2. We are expanding our office in Singapore of course (just got a new lease in Chinatown), and imo this is the best way for a Singaporean to get exposed to the global tech world while still being in Singapore and being "not just a satelite" office. It's an MBA for startup. If you're interested in opportunities too, let me know

I have personally cared about this topic for more than 20 years (reading sim wong hoo's, creative's founder 1999 book) as a kid, and have spent most of my life thinking about it and what can be done and how it will be done.

[Joel Choo @joelchoo]

@AlliumLabs 🔥🔥🔥

[Joel Choo @joelchoo]

lfg! check out what my team has been working on!!

[Allium @AlliumLabs]

Wallet teams spend months stitching together APIs before shipping a single feature.

Balances. PnL. DeFi positions. Prices. History.

Different providers. Broken decoders. Constant maintenance.

We fixed that.

Allium for Wallets = one API key for the full stack

(PnL, positions, holdings, prices, history -- fully decoded)

No stitching. No decoders. Just ship.

Docs: https://t.co/4n13F26IXf

Try it today: https://t.co/DW3qKjFxap

[Joel Choo @joelchoo]

@eltoniselton @AlliumLabs 😮😮😮

[Elton @eltoniselton]

Drift Protocol on Solana was exploited for $285M today, the largest Solana DeFi hack since Wormhole.

Timeline >11:00 AM ET: Attacker drains Drift vaults. $153M in JLP tokens redeemed instantly
>12:00 PM ET: DEX volume spikes to $735M/hr as stolen assets are swapped through Orca, Raydium, Meteora, and Jupiter
>1:00 PM ET: Drift suspends withdrawals, coordinates with security firms and exchanges
>3:00 PM ET: Drift publicly confirms the exploit

The attacker used 3 wallets to spread swaps and converted everything into:
>$184M in SOL
>$101M in stablecoins (USDC, USDT)

DRIFT token down 20%

[Joel Choo @joelchoo]

@AlliumLabs 🔥🔥🔥

[Allium @AlliumLabs]

Most teams spend months decoding DeFi positions before shipping anything.

Today we’re launching: DeFi Positions, one API call for any wallet, on any chain.

Built for teams shipping wallets, analytics, and agents:
-> LP positions
-> Lending collateral + borrows
-> Fees + interest
-> health factor

Ship your portfolio features this week, not next quarter.

Try it: https://t.co/1NcW0gVDyo https://t.co/1NcW0gVDyo

[Joel Choo @joelchoo]

@AlliumLabs @stripe woohoo @AlliumLabs 🤝 @stripe

[Allium @AlliumLabs]

Proud to support MPP.

Leveraging @stripe's infrastructure to enable programmable payments for onchain data.

[Joel Choo @joelchoo]

@AlliumLabs @tempo tempo!!!

[Allium @AlliumLabs]

Excited to support the @tempo mainnet launch.

Allium is live on Tempo.

We’ve integrated MPP to enable programmable, machine-native payments for onchain data.

Builders can move from pay-per-request to continuous payment streams for onchain data.

One more step toward fully programmable, machine-native data access.

See how to get started: https://t.co/HNmrr6zHcq

[ethn @ethanyish]

https://t.co/1JcvsiEfe9

[Joel Choo @joelchoo]

@AlliumLabs 💻

[Allium @AlliumLabs]

Onchain volume without attribution is noise.

Everyone talks about stablecoin growth. Almost no one can tell you:
-> Where it’s happening
-> Who is driving it
-> What economic activity it represents

Today we’re launching Allium Terminal.

An institutional command center for onchain finance.

Terminal provides:
-> Geographic attribution by region, country, and corridor
-> Entity intelligence across 300M+ labeled wallets (CEX, payment services, treasuries, custodians, DeFi platforms)
-> Counterparty segmentation to distinguish retail, institutional, and commercial flows

Built on first-party indexed data across 150+ chains.
SOC 1 & SOC 2 certified.

If you’re sizing stablecoin markets, tracking tokenized asset adoption, or building investor-ready research -- Terminal is for you.

https://t.co/TQm6ylyqqh

[Joel Choo @joelchoo]

@AlliumLabs 💰

[Allium @AlliumLabs]

x402 IS NOW LIVE ON MAINNET

You can pay for Allium API access natively onchain.

Testnet remains live until end of month:
-> Real data
-> Fake money
-> Zero risk

Build on testnet.
Switch to mainnet when ready.

Time to ship 👀

[Joel Choo @joelchoo]

@AlliumLabs @privy_io 🪙🪙🪙

[Allium @AlliumLabs]

AI agents can now pay per API call.

x402 is live on Allium.

Real-time onchain data, paid per request.
Wallet -> request -> response.
No accounts. No billing dashboards.

This works seamlessly with @privy_io powered agent wallets.

Live on Base Sepolia. Mainnet next week.