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I'm sure you are saying, “V2? But Infinex doesn't do anything!”
Well, Infinex V1 begs to differ.
We learned a lot building Infinex this year. Infinex is the best onboarding experience in crypto, but we can do even better, and after a lot of R&D, we know how.
Since Infinex launched in May 2024, we have delivered:
Speedrun the waitlist, a TVL campaign with 150m+ in deposits.
Craterun, a second TVL campaign with a twist, users earned crates powered by Pyth onchain entropy.
Memewars, a sub-campaign inside Craterun
Wormhole bridging
Curve swaps
NFT support
Two Ethena SATs campaigns
The Patron Sale and Distribution
Bullrun, a fantasy trading game powered by Blast
Blast Network support
Numerous other small campaigns and releases
These were all part of Launch Season; but we are now into Integration Season.
Infinex V1 relies on programs and contracts for security. This is why one of the first things you do when signing up is to add a recovery address. This address is stored onchain. Your funds are secure as long as you control your recovery address. You can recover your funds even if Infinex goes down or you lose your passkey.
We use passkeys and Turnkey to sign transactions, meaning only you can move your funds. The combination of these two approaches is what keeps funds in Infinex secure. In addition, to upgrade your contracts, you must sign with your passkey; this means you control what functions your account can perform. We take this one step further, though. Your Infinex account does not ever call a contract directly. Instead, you deploy middleware onchain to enable each downstream integration.
Again, this is all amazingly secure; I hold over $10m of crypto in my Infinex account. I’m very confident in the custody of my passkeys and recovery addresses.
This security posture is a vault; it is ultrasecure but it does not allow us to take full advantage of the Infinex platform. This is where Infinex V2 comes in. All existing users have Infinex Vaults on Base and Solana. The new architecture introduces Infinex Wallets.
The current architecture requires months of integration effort to enable new functionality, but it also treats all assets as critical to security. What does this mean? It means you will only lose them if you lose your passkey and recovery address. So far, no one has managed this. However, this security posture is not appropriate for all accounts. Most crypto users have a range of security postures, from Solana tokens in telegram sniper bots to Bitcoin in Binance. Infinex V1 defaults to Max Security and clings on for dear life. Infinex V2 is far more flexible
The introduction of wallets enables two things. A far better onboarding process and rapid integrations.
The V2 architecture is still highly secure, but you can now use your wallet to interact with external contracts. This architecture is far easier to integrate, and you will notice it preserves the original design principle of airgapping the vault from downstream contracts. This means that if you want to deposit funds into Aave, the funds will first move out of your vault and then be deposited into Aave. This will result in aTokens in your wallet. Depending on your security posture, these can be moved back into your vault or left in your wallet. The only functionality required in the vault is transferring funds to the wallet. It also means the wallet integration into Aave is a platform integration. There is no middleware contract. I cannot stress enough how huge of an unlock this is for the platform team. It is not just the lead time of writing and deploying onchain code to enable integrations. It is also the audit time required.
Swidge is a portmanteau of Swap and Bridge. Infinex currently supports seven networks across the EVM ecosystem and Solana. So, we must have solutions for swapping assets across as many routes as possible for all these chains. We are implementing three swap and bridge aggregators and will continue to roll out new ones as we add networks.
If you have been using Infinex over the last few months or participated in the Patron Sale, you will be extremely eager to get your hands on this new functionality. It will be the best swapping interface in crypto.
I am sure many people have had this experience: you are in an Uber, and the conversation turns to crypto, then inevitably, to the value prop of XRP. At this point, you try to explain why Solana or Ethereum, or, worst case, Cardano, is a far superior network. Wouldn't it be fantastic if you could show them how cool Solana meme coins are? PNUT ftw.
But how? Your Uber driver only has a Gate.io account; how do you get them trading on Raydium?
Infinex.
You open your phone and go to Infinex.xyz then login with your passkey. Click “send” and create an onboarding link with $10 worth of $PNUT. This can be sent as a QR code. After they drop you off, the driver opens the link via the QR code. They are prompted to create a username and generate a passkey. The Infinex account is configured with two vaults and two wallets. PNUT is automatically claimed into the Solana wallet. The driver goes to his wallet page and sees PNUT has just 10x'd. He immediately jeets it to XRP via a cross-chain trade powered by Near chain signatures. The circle of life is complete. But wait, now the driver relies on a single passkey with $500 of XRP in his Infinex wallet. The next time he logs in, XRP has doubled (I swear when I first started writing this post last week, this was a joke). The platform prompts him to create a backup passkey or social recovery because he has over $1k in his wallet. Or it allows him to move his funds into his Infinex Vault. But this requires a recovery address. There are a few solutions here, but none are great today. Regardless, we have enabled a much smoother onboarding process that only requires users to elevate their security as needed.
The new architecture will allow us to roll out new features rapidly. The list of features is long, but the immediate goal is to get to feature parity with Binance. The primary requirement is asset support, with the ability to buy, sell and deposit the top 2,000 assets. This requires a lot of network integrations. While rolling these out, we can immediately support the long tail of assets on Ethereum and Solana.
Here is the complete list of features that will get us to parity:
Support for the top 2,000 cryptoassets (Including BTC, LTC & XRP etc)
Spot trading
Margin trading
Perp trading
Options Trading
NFT trading
Staking and yield farming
Airdrops
Borrowing and lending
Launchpad
We will develop spot trading once we finish rolling out swapping and bridging. This will allow the design of the interfaces to support many different types of trading and sources of liquidity. Beyond this, user demand and testing will dictate the exact order of feature development. However, with Swidge almost ready, we are confident the new V2 architecture is the right path forward and will set us up for an amazing 2025.
While Infinex is an ambitious project that created a new category of crypto application, there is something unsatisfying about building a walled garden. If we successfully displace CEXs, we will bring everyone onchain and end the database era of crypto. But this can never be the complete solution. This is where sign-in with Infinex is needed. It will allow us to extend the distribution of Infinex to all Dapp interfaces. But crucially, it will not just be another way of connecting to a Dapp. Infinex SSO will improve the UX of every Dapp that integrates the platform. Because Infinex SSO does the hard work of abstracting away the challenging aspects of crypto, when you connect to a Dapp via Infinex, you still get all the benefits of chain and gas abstraction and the safety of passkey and Infinex security.
It seems crazy that we have been building Infinex for almost two years; when I first imagined it in May of 2023, it seemed like a relatively straightforward project. What it has evolved into is the next iteration of crypto applications. To use one of my favourite copy pastas, “Infinex is the most egalitarian thing we've ever seen. It's insanely ambitious, and if it works, can really reshape the fabric of society.”
We have learned so much about designing and building rich crypto applications this year, we are now ready to accelerate.
I'm sure you are saying, “V2? But Infinex doesn't do anything!”
Well, Infinex V1 begs to differ.
We learned a lot building Infinex this year. Infinex is the best onboarding experience in crypto, but we can do even better, and after a lot of R&D, we know how.
Since Infinex launched in May 2024, we have delivered:
Speedrun the waitlist, a TVL campaign with 150m+ in deposits.
Craterun, a second TVL campaign with a twist, users earned crates powered by Pyth onchain entropy.
Memewars, a sub-campaign inside Craterun
Wormhole bridging
Curve swaps
NFT support
Two Ethena SATs campaigns
The Patron Sale and Distribution
Bullrun, a fantasy trading game powered by Blast
Blast Network support
Numerous other small campaigns and releases
These were all part of Launch Season; but we are now into Integration Season.
Infinex V1 relies on programs and contracts for security. This is why one of the first things you do when signing up is to add a recovery address. This address is stored onchain. Your funds are secure as long as you control your recovery address. You can recover your funds even if Infinex goes down or you lose your passkey.
We use passkeys and Turnkey to sign transactions, meaning only you can move your funds. The combination of these two approaches is what keeps funds in Infinex secure. In addition, to upgrade your contracts, you must sign with your passkey; this means you control what functions your account can perform. We take this one step further, though. Your Infinex account does not ever call a contract directly. Instead, you deploy middleware onchain to enable each downstream integration.
Again, this is all amazingly secure; I hold over $10m of crypto in my Infinex account. I’m very confident in the custody of my passkeys and recovery addresses.
This security posture is a vault; it is ultrasecure but it does not allow us to take full advantage of the Infinex platform. This is where Infinex V2 comes in. All existing users have Infinex Vaults on Base and Solana. The new architecture introduces Infinex Wallets.
The current architecture requires months of integration effort to enable new functionality, but it also treats all assets as critical to security. What does this mean? It means you will only lose them if you lose your passkey and recovery address. So far, no one has managed this. However, this security posture is not appropriate for all accounts. Most crypto users have a range of security postures, from Solana tokens in telegram sniper bots to Bitcoin in Binance. Infinex V1 defaults to Max Security and clings on for dear life. Infinex V2 is far more flexible
The introduction of wallets enables two things. A far better onboarding process and rapid integrations.
The V2 architecture is still highly secure, but you can now use your wallet to interact with external contracts. This architecture is far easier to integrate, and you will notice it preserves the original design principle of airgapping the vault from downstream contracts. This means that if you want to deposit funds into Aave, the funds will first move out of your vault and then be deposited into Aave. This will result in aTokens in your wallet. Depending on your security posture, these can be moved back into your vault or left in your wallet. The only functionality required in the vault is transferring funds to the wallet. It also means the wallet integration into Aave is a platform integration. There is no middleware contract. I cannot stress enough how huge of an unlock this is for the platform team. It is not just the lead time of writing and deploying onchain code to enable integrations. It is also the audit time required.
Swidge is a portmanteau of Swap and Bridge. Infinex currently supports seven networks across the EVM ecosystem and Solana. So, we must have solutions for swapping assets across as many routes as possible for all these chains. We are implementing three swap and bridge aggregators and will continue to roll out new ones as we add networks.
If you have been using Infinex over the last few months or participated in the Patron Sale, you will be extremely eager to get your hands on this new functionality. It will be the best swapping interface in crypto.
I am sure many people have had this experience: you are in an Uber, and the conversation turns to crypto, then inevitably, to the value prop of XRP. At this point, you try to explain why Solana or Ethereum, or, worst case, Cardano, is a far superior network. Wouldn't it be fantastic if you could show them how cool Solana meme coins are? PNUT ftw.
But how? Your Uber driver only has a Gate.io account; how do you get them trading on Raydium?
Infinex.
You open your phone and go to Infinex.xyz then login with your passkey. Click “send” and create an onboarding link with $10 worth of $PNUT. This can be sent as a QR code. After they drop you off, the driver opens the link via the QR code. They are prompted to create a username and generate a passkey. The Infinex account is configured with two vaults and two wallets. PNUT is automatically claimed into the Solana wallet. The driver goes to his wallet page and sees PNUT has just 10x'd. He immediately jeets it to XRP via a cross-chain trade powered by Near chain signatures. The circle of life is complete. But wait, now the driver relies on a single passkey with $500 of XRP in his Infinex wallet. The next time he logs in, XRP has doubled (I swear when I first started writing this post last week, this was a joke). The platform prompts him to create a backup passkey or social recovery because he has over $1k in his wallet. Or it allows him to move his funds into his Infinex Vault. But this requires a recovery address. There are a few solutions here, but none are great today. Regardless, we have enabled a much smoother onboarding process that only requires users to elevate their security as needed.
The new architecture will allow us to roll out new features rapidly. The list of features is long, but the immediate goal is to get to feature parity with Binance. The primary requirement is asset support, with the ability to buy, sell and deposit the top 2,000 assets. This requires a lot of network integrations. While rolling these out, we can immediately support the long tail of assets on Ethereum and Solana.
Here is the complete list of features that will get us to parity:
Support for the top 2,000 cryptoassets (Including BTC, LTC & XRP etc)
Spot trading
Margin trading
Perp trading
Options Trading
NFT trading
Staking and yield farming
Airdrops
Borrowing and lending
Launchpad
We will develop spot trading once we finish rolling out swapping and bridging. This will allow the design of the interfaces to support many different types of trading and sources of liquidity. Beyond this, user demand and testing will dictate the exact order of feature development. However, with Swidge almost ready, we are confident the new V2 architecture is the right path forward and will set us up for an amazing 2025.
While Infinex is an ambitious project that created a new category of crypto application, there is something unsatisfying about building a walled garden. If we successfully displace CEXs, we will bring everyone onchain and end the database era of crypto. But this can never be the complete solution. This is where sign-in with Infinex is needed. It will allow us to extend the distribution of Infinex to all Dapp interfaces. But crucially, it will not just be another way of connecting to a Dapp. Infinex SSO will improve the UX of every Dapp that integrates the platform. Because Infinex SSO does the hard work of abstracting away the challenging aspects of crypto, when you connect to a Dapp via Infinex, you still get all the benefits of chain and gas abstraction and the safety of passkey and Infinex security.
It seems crazy that we have been building Infinex for almost two years; when I first imagined it in May of 2023, it seemed like a relatively straightforward project. What it has evolved into is the next iteration of crypto applications. To use one of my favourite copy pastas, “Infinex is the most egalitarian thing we've ever seen. It's insanely ambitious, and if it works, can really reshape the fabric of society.”
We have learned so much about designing and building rich crypto applications this year, we are now ready to accelerate.
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