Original | Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)

Author | Fu Ruo (@vincent31515173)

In the rapid development wave of the global cryptocurrency industry, blockchain technology is gradually breaking through the boundaries of traditional finance, attracting the attention of countless entrepreneurs and tech developers. As Bitcoin continues to set new historical highs, the heat of the crypto market is also rising, with DeFi projects becoming the focus of attention for investors and industry experts.

However, with the expansion of the market, the challenges faced by the DeFi sector are becoming increasingly apparent—how to stand out in a competitive environment and create innovative products that truly meet user needs has become the core issue for every entrepreneur.

Against this backdrop, Odaily Planet Daily had the privilege of interviewing 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 technical innovation capabilities, she successfully attracted heavyweight investors, including the founder of Metis. The investment from the Metis founder not only highly recognizes Caria's personal abilities but also injects strong resources and confidence into the development of NuDEX.

NuDEX, as a new decentralized multi-chain trading platform, is redefining the DeFi trading experience through a series of unique features:

● Seamless Multi-Chain Trading: NuDEX supports one-step cross-chain trading, allowing users to efficiently manage assets without complex cross-chain bridge operations.

● Zero Gas Fee Model: Whether on Layer 1 or Layer 2, the platform achieves zero gas fees, significantly reducing trading 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: Supports diverse trading strategies such as limit orders, stop-loss orders, and partial fills, providing flexible options for different types of users.

In addition, NuDEX has introduced innovative mechanisms such as decentralized listing rights and single-token liquidity provision, enabling 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, understand how she addresses pain points in the DeFi sector through technological innovation, promotes the popularization and development of decentralized finance, and share her insights and outlook on the future of the crypto market.

Caria's Unbreakable 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 enrolled in 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-departmental communication and learning.

Subsequently, I joined Metis as a product manager, starting from scratch in blockchain and falling in love with this technology that can break the limitations of traditional industries.

Now, 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 your LinkedIn profile, it seems you have a very rich work experience, having held multiple positions, including project management manager at Caseware, lecturer at York University, and director at a credit union in Taiwan. Currently focusing on NuDEX, how do you balance your time among these jobs, and what are your future focuses in the Web3 industry?

Caria: I have always been referred to as a "workaholic." I find it hard to accept a state of idleness. Even if I am injured and lying in bed, I feel uncomfortable and must stay in a working state. So, despite juggling multiple roles, it is not difficult for me. This mainly relies on good time management and prioritization.

Additionally, I am very grateful for the many people who have appreciated me along the way, giving me opportunities to accumulate experience and continue learning in different fields. These experiences, whether 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 of transitioning between different industries and positions is very rich. What experience led you to switch to Web3, and how do you think your previous cross-field experience helps you in your work in Web3?

Caria: My cross-industry experience has given me a unique perspective in the Web3 field. Although Web3 is an emerging industry, it is a small circle, 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 in Web3—external users find it difficult to truly integrate because they do not understand what the industry is doing.

My advantage is that I was once part of the hardware industry and was also a skeptic of Web3, even thinking it was just a scam. I understand the doubts and perspectives of external users while also being well aware of the internal logic and operations of the industry.

Now, as a member of Web3, this dual identity allows me to make decisions from the user's perspective, balancing the needs of both insiders and outsiders, and truly addressing user pain points. I believe this is the key to developing successful products and a necessary direction for promoting the widespread adoption of Web3.

Odaily Planet Daily: You worked at Metis for over two years. What business were you responsible for there? What unique challenges left a deep impression on you?

Caria: When I joined Metis, it was still in a relatively early stage 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 very fierce, as everyone was vying to be the first project to effectively address the pain points of the Ethereum mainnet. Our core task was to improve transaction speed, ensuring that transactions could be completed within seconds while keeping gas fees below $0.10.

To achieve this goal, we invested a lot of effort with the development team, continuously researching and developing breakthrough technologies, ultimately successfully optimizing performance. Although I won't go into the technical details, I learned a key point: regardless of the field, the success of a startup or project lies in solving user pain points.

The success of Metis stemmed from its precise resolution of Ethereum's speed and cost issues, and the philosophy I learned during this experience is still applied in my new project NuDEX, where we are also committed to addressing pain points in the DeFi sector, such as transaction speed, ease of use, and security.

Odaily Planet Daily: Why transition from Ethereum L2 to building DeFi products on Bitcoin L2? In fact, from your experience, you do not have experience in DeFi or exchanges. What was your starting point for creating a DEX? What difficulties and challenges did you encounter in this process? How did you solve these problems?

Caria: The transition from Ethereum L2 to Bitcoin L2 is because Bitcoin's decentralization and security characteristics align more with my vision for blockchain development. Although I previously had no experience in DeFi or exchanges, my understanding of technology and insights into industry needs enabled me to design feasible solutions.

Our starting point was to create a truly decentralized exchange that addresses the common centralization issues 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, by adopting GOAT Network's cross-chain technology, our platform can support multiple assets, not limited to a single chain, greatly lowering the learning curve for users and improving the convenience of trading. Although we encountered some technical challenges along the way, we gradually overcame these challenges through the team's efforts and continuous adjustments.

Odaily Planet Daily: What milestones do you envision for NuDEX in the future? How will your role change within it?

Caria: Our goal is to achieve complete decentralization of NuDEX; a decentralized exchange cannot be centralized in management. That would be incorrect. I believe that 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, with community members making decisions. Our goal is for NuDEX to become a new standard for decentralized exchanges, and we hope to change and rebuild the standards for decentralized exchanges one day. As 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.

How to View the Future Development of the Crypto Industry Amidst Market Surge?

Odaily Planet Daily: Bitcoin is currently continuously breaking new highs, but the rise of Bitcoin is more driven by policy expectations and traditional financial institutions, which are not 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 rather than engage in internal 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 competitive models to directly confront large exchanges.

Our strategy is to collaborate with emerging or developing projects, utilizing their window period before they partner with large exchanges to assist them in entering the market. Through this collaboration, we can provide some special trading opportunities, such as issuing meme coins, helping projects grow while offering our users more choices. This strategy not only avoids internal competition in the existing market but also helps us expand the incremental market.

Currently, we are conducting in-depth collaborations with several emerging projects, providing them with technical support and market guidance. By helping these projects acquire users and accelerate market expansion, we further expand the incremental market. At the same time, we are collaborating 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 within the decentralized finance ecosystem.

Odaily Planet Daily: I noticed you had an impressive 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 we will start to see a phenomenon of integration between the two. Decentralized exchanges will gradually combine with traditional financial products and tools.

For example, the traditional financial market can now purchase cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum through the stock market. If we do not 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 real-world financial tools to enhance its popularity and influence. I was very pleased with the sharing at the MEMEWonder conference, which was supported by Binance and introduced DeFi in a way that is closer to the public, demonstrating that it is not as distant as it seems, which is crucial for mainstream market acceptance.

Odaily Planet Daily: What are the real pain points of DEX?

Caria: I believe the biggest pain point of DEXs currently is that they often rely on the development of a single chain's ecosystem. Each DEX has its own chain, which forces users to be loyal to a specific chain in order to use that DEX's services. For ordinary users, the process of learning how to enter this ecosystem is very complex, creating a significant barrier to use.

This is also why we chose to build our DEX based on the GOAT Network, which allows us to connect multiple chains and various assets, thus solving the limitation issue.

Odaily Planet Daily: Currently, BTC ecosystem projects that easily attract significant investors often focus on L2, staking, etc. We chose the DEX direction. Have you gained any insights from the VCs you interacted with regarding 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 view it as a store of value, and we hope to provide more DeFi innovative services through DEX to further tap into Bitcoin's potential.

However, Bitcoin's smart contract functionality is not as developed as that of public chains like Ethereum, which is currently the biggest pain point in ecosystem development. We are investing more resources and technical capabilities to address these shortcomings and promote the construction of the Bitcoin DeFi ecosystem.

From the VC's perspective, they are more concerned about the profitability and liquidity of the 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 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, with all aspects from deposits, withdrawals, and trades to token listings and delistings being decentralized. All records on all chains are completely transparent.

With these technological innovations and a clear market positioning, we have already attracted the attention of several institutions and large holders, and we are currently actively negotiating collaborations.

免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。