Recently, the encryption currency circle has been ignited by chaos again, with the explosion of GPS Token market makers suspected of malicious dumping, leading to a big dump in Token prices, causing investors to suffer heavy losses instantly. The RedStone project was also accused of modifying the Airdrop rules at the last minute, leaving countless long-awaited community members with nothing.

These events inevitably remind people of the chronic problems in the coin circle: asymmetric information, arbitrary rule changes, and the strong 'harvesting' retail investors. As Twitter user @maik2hello lamented in a post: 'The current coin market is too chaotic to even describe as 'bad'.

The chaos in the traditional financial markets has long been a precedent: market makers manipulate prices, insider trading is rampant, and in the unregulated encryption market, these problems are exacerbated, and retail investors have almost nowhere to escape.

It is in this context that the Vest project emerged, with a clear mission to reshape fairness with technology and mechanisms.

The mission of Vest from the perspective of unfairness in the crash

Vest is a quantitative research company dedicated to building real-time, universal risk pricing financial infrastructure. Its core product Vest Exchange is a decentralized perpetual contract trading platform.

The core product of Vest - Vest Exchange

Unlike traditional CEX or some DEX relying on order books and market makers, Vest Exchange ensures transparency and fairness of trading pricing with state-of-the-art cryptographic technology, like installing a 'firewall' for the encryption market, accurately combating common issues of liquidity shortage and market manipulation in traditional markets.

In traditional order book exchanges, traders are often squeezed by the 'predatory strategies' of institutions and high-frequency traders—such as front-running or price manipulation. However, on Vest Exchange, each transaction is directly matched with a unified liquidity pool and priced in real time by the zkRisk engine, eliminating unfair competition.

zkRisk: Transparent Risk Pricing Engine, the "brain" of Vest

zkRisk is the core pricing mechanism of Vest Exchange, which can be called the "super intelligent butler" of the platform. It monitors individual positions, account risk exposure, and overall system risk in real time, and adjusts pricing according to market dynamics, aiming to minimize risk rather than maximize profit.

Through zkRisk, Vest has established a 'fair arena': no one can 'cut in line' by unfair means, the impact of market fluctuations on trading is minimized, and liquidity remains stable.

More importantly, zkRisk makes transaction costs completely transparent. Costs are directly linked to the introduced risks, eliminating the hidden and confusing costs in traditional markets. This design not only protects users, but also balances privacy and security through zero-knowledge proof technology, avoiding common issues such as Miner Extractable Value (MEV).

Vest's technology is like the "supercar" of the blockchain world - fast, efficient, and smart enough to deal with complex market conditions.

Financing Situation and Backers

BlockBeats news, on March 12th, the trading protocol Vest announced the completion of a $5 million financing, with participation from BlackRock, Jane Street Group, Selini Capital, Amber Group, QCQ Group, and Big Brain VC. The combination of these investors demonstrates Vest's role as a bridge between traditional finance and the encryption ecosystem.

Although the specific identity of the Vest team has not been disclosed, being favored by BlackRock and Jane Street indicates that the team likely consists of top talents in blockchain development and the traditional financial sector.

The support of heavyweight institutions not only provides funding for Vest, but may also bring strategic guidance and market credibility endorsements. In addition, the participation of native encryption institutions such as Amber Group will also provide practical support for the product landing and ecological expansion of Vest.

From Ondo to Vest, the on-chain chess game of BlackRock

As the world's largest asset management company, BlackRock has been very active recently, from Tokenizing funds to laying out RWA, it's not difficult to see its ambition in the on-chain infrastructure. In March 2024, its Tokenized fund BUIDL (tokenizing traditional financial assets mainly cash, U.S. short-term Treasury bonds, and repurchase agreement Tokens) went online on Ethereum, quickly absorbing $520 million in assets, occupying nearly one-third of the Tokenized government bond market.

Subsequently, BlackRock, through partnerships with institutions such as Securitize, drove the RWA market from $100 million in 2023 to over $1.3 billion. Looking at another aspect of the chessboard, Ondo Finance, with its OUSG Token directly linked to BUIDL, provides retail investors with a tokenized national debt investment channel. The addition of Vest completes BlackRock's layout in the on-chain derivatives market.

The thriving RWA market will undoubtedly bring greater liquidity to the Perp DEX market, and Vest Exchange is committed to building a fair and efficient Perp DEX with zkRisk engine and zkps, which coincides with BlackRock's pursuit of transparency and liquidity goals.

It can be foreseen that if Vest can combine Hyperliquid's high-performance architecture (zero gas fees + on-chain order book), it may become the next breakthrough in BlackRock's on-chain strategy. From the tokenization of assets by Ondo to the trading innovation of Vest, BlackRock is using technology as a chess piece to lay out a grand game of deep integration of traditional finance and encryption.

As BlackRock's head Larry Fink said, Tokenizing securities is the 'next generation of the market'.