Theo R.

Senior Solidity Engineer | DeFi Derivatives & Options | $25M TVL
RWA via @Aria_Protocol – $10M music IP, $600k royalties

Audited by @pashov, Guardian, Halborn

[Theo R. @theo_solidity]

About Me:

$25M+ TVL secured across Ethereum, Story, BSC, Fantom and Polygon over 6+ years in Web3 through options AMMs, RWA, vaults and launchpads.

My Background:

I did two years of computer science. I learned the fundamentals that no vibe-coder has: OOP, algorithms, advanced data structures, some applied maths (graphs, matrices, cryptography, integrals)... BUT still, 2/3 of what we learned was too broad, too boring, too old-school (20yo bore-out?).

I needed hyperfocus and flow; that's where Web3 and Omnia came into play.

I joined Omnia DeFi as CTO to tokenize real estate, before RWA became a narrative. Every hat: contracts, product, legal, hiring, fundraising (details in thread).
Then Seedify: launchpad and staking contracts, $15M production TVL, 50+ IGOs. Worked with the best Head of Engineering (details in thread).
Then Polarity Finance: I architected an options AMM on Berachain that hit ~$300M notional interest on testnet. We were even incubated by 50Partners (details in thread).
Now Aria: I helped fractionalise $10M of music IP on Story (47 songs, incl. Justin Bieber's "Peaches"), with $600K+ royalties distributed in 9 months. I had the best summer in NYC, meeting half of the team (details in thread).

When I joined Polarity, I'd only invested in ETFs and heard of futures. I learned the maths from the quant and fit their models into Solidity. Fortunately, I'd learned about Taylor series a few months earlier at Seedify while building a Dutch auction/bonding curve (pumpfun style-ish). I even pushed 2024's much dumber AI tools until I landed on a Fenwick tree: O(log n). I needed a gas-efficient way to track the locked liquidity of each deposit (e.g. the first deposit could be withdrawable, but not the third one).

How I Work:

I like joining projects where I don't understand a thing at first. I learn from people smarter than me, then build it exactly as meant. I still like to challenge the status quo, as the devil lives in the details. My brain loves low-level optimisation, as it's like speaking an alien language that has an impact on the Matrix's core. I might have been abducted by aliens in my childhood, which might explain my love of alien languages.

Security paranoid: engineer, hacker and auditor, with unit, fuzz, invariant, integration and differential tests. On top of that, I run static analysis (Slither, Aderyn) and symbolic execution (Mythril, Manticore) tools. At Aria I led 8 contracts through audits by Pashov, Guardian and Halborn.

I also mentor juniors and send a daily report. Ownership is the job, not a nice-to-have. Blockchains save, track and produce verifiable proofs; so do I.

[Theo R. @theo_solidity]

First time I have used X was 14 years ago.

Just learned today you can take a screenshot of a tweet directly from the copy link option 👀🧙🪄

[Theo R. @theo_solidity]

@EtherDev indeed! which is why it's important to take different personas and angles when writing test: user, attacker, admin, third party lib, third party lib hack...

[Theo R. @theo_solidity]

Thanks for the detailed reply Nicolás! Always great to understand what's going on in the space from other builders.

Interesting that you chose to inflate supply to distribute rewards backed by sUSDS (and its future yield), rather than using sUSDS to buy back uWatt and distribute it as rewards.

Trying to explore how the model works once $1,000, let's say in USDC, has been on-ramped into the vault:

1. USDC => sUSDS at 1:1 (0 slippage). This happens in the vault.

2. The (vault?) contract decides how much new uWatt to mint against the $1,000. It won't mint the full 1,000 uWatt to maintain over-collateralization (protection against an sUSDS depeg and a safety fund, I presume).

3. Let's say 800 uWatt were minted in the previous step. These are then vested linearly over 30d to ensure fairness and prevent reward draining.

(4. Protocol earns yield on top of sUSDS treasury.)

Are there any other reasons for the 30d linear vesting?

[Theo R. @theo_solidity]

it feels similar to music ip tokenisation, with a defi vault and a dual-token system (non-rebasing, c-token-style).

what's your pipeline for distributing/streaming yield into the vault, @nvillegase?

is there a contract that receives on-ramped solar energy revenue and is then called by a defi hook to distribute the yield?

[Theo R. @theo_solidity]

@definikos i saved part I for later reading, tho part II already out! need to catch up quickly as this follows along with what i've been building so far

[Theo R. @theo_solidity]

@ddimitrovv22 that's really great! gonna have a look and see where i do have knowledge gaps

[Theo R. @theo_solidity]

rule of thumb: write pure solidity until an invariant or hot path forces your hand. then optimize with yul where the gas savings actually move the needle.

if you're touching opcodes directly in prod, you're either a wizard or about to get rekt.

[Theo R. @theo_solidity]

what makes solidity actually fun is the 3 layers under the hood.

catch is: the exact same logic can cost 2x to 10x gas depending on how deep down the rabbit hole you go.

quick breakdown 🧵👇

[Theo R. @theo_solidity]

the deeper you go, the fewer the guardrails, and the more invisible your bugs become. unlike rust, solidity's compiler won't save you once you leave layer 1.

[Theo R. @theo_solidity]

@zhannamanzyk Oh nice! Will do that then to get data directly

[Theo R. @theo_solidity]

big up to @DeriveXYZ for they Black-Scholes open-source implementation (used the v1, back when called Lyra)

and @BlockScholes for providing ivs onchain to price option

[Theo R. @theo_solidity]

me: use an open-source Black-Scholes implementation for my OAMM. why reinvent the wheel when i could ship as fast as the flash⚡️?

alzzzo me: let’s implement Black-Scholes from scratch and see how far i can push the gas optimisation with Yul. juzzzt for fun you knooow

[Theo R. @theo_solidity]

@inmarelibero @Veildotcash @apex_ether surprising they didn't not get traction, while zcash has been rising like crazy! curious to see where @astrea_systems will go 👀

[Theo R. @theo_solidity]

@fireplyai indeed, exactly what has been emphasised into latest X open-sourced algo