Bringing Tradfi Liquidity On-Chain w/ Lucas V. Schuermann

Lucas V. Schuermann, Co-Founder of Variational, joins us to talk about building a high-performance crypto brokerage model on Arbitrum. Lucas explains how Variational routes execution to TradFi venues, eliminates external market maker extraction through its in-house LP, introduces flat-rate swaps to fix funding rate volatility, and builds isolated smart contracts to protect user capital.

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## Notes: * Variational sees $1B daily volume on platform. * Platform holds $1.4B in total open interest. * Swaps feature a flat carry cost around 4% to 5%. * LP takes the other side of 100% of platform trades.

Timestamps: 00:00 Start 00:46 Lucas' background 03:20 Hedgefund strategies 05:59 Hedgefund tasks 08:31 Variational founding 10:45 Variational market structure 13:41 RWA 16:32 RWA hedging 19:17 Market neutrality 22:53 "Venue for execution" 26:36 Price discovery on-chain 30:02 Building on Arbitrium 33:52 Liquidity pool 37:08 Users depositing to OLP 39:52 A Prop AMM for Perps? 42:23 Future of Order Flow 46:18 Order book theater? 50:50 Incentive programs 55:09 Swaps 57:06 Wrap up

The Gwart Show is sponsored by Ellipsis Labs. Ellipsis Labs builds the most efficient on-chain markets. Their orderbook and Prop AMM products have delivered price improvement to hundreds of billions of dollars in retail volume. Now, they are bringing their expertise to build Phoenix, the best on-chain perpetuals platform.

Ellipsis Labs is hiring New York-based engineers. If you're an engineer looking to work with a proven team in making DeFi better, go to ellipsislabs.xyz/careers Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices