Advising @ Decibel FNDN | All opinions are my own 🔊
Aptos
Joined July 2025
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Decibel started with a simple idea: finance should move at the speed of the internet. The team has built incredible momentum pushing the limits of what exchange infrastructure can be.
As the company continues to grow, I’ll be shifting into an advisory role to support the next phase of Decibel’s journey. The leadership team is world-class, and I couldn’t be more confident in where we’re headed. The future of finance is being built right here.
This is a highly underrated update from Aptos and a crucial step toward enabling fully on-chain trading. Previously, some perpetual DEXs justified using centralized sequencers for MEV protection. However, with encrypted mempool on Aptos, this provides inherent MEV protection and private transactions across the entire Aptos ecosystem, bringing MEV protection natively to all dapps.
Built-in MEV protection is coming to @Aptos.
Today, every network broadcasts your next move: what you’re buying, how much, and when. That visibility powers frontrunning, censorship, and a multibillion-dollar MEV shadow market.
Encrypted Mempools would change the game 🧵
> Run a centralised exchange
> Get user deposits
> User earns profit
> Freeze withdrawals of user
> Community backlash
> *shocked pikachu face*
Ming @ Decibel retweeted
1. One suggested improvement for single stocks, I would use single stock options implied forward prices instead of single stock futures (SSF). The concern is as SSF are highly illiquid (historical reasons why) trying to infer an underlying cash stock price using an illiquid futures is very dangerous.
2. Given that stock prices drop by the dividend amount on the ex-div date, you'd also need to handle the step change in your 'q' value when calculating the index price and mark price.
Before the Ex-Dividend Date
Before ex-div, the market price of the stock includes the present value of the upcoming dividend.
The theoretical forward price for a single stock option is:
F = S × e^(rT-q)
After the Ex-Dividend Date
After ex-div, the market price of the stock drops by the dividend amount.
- Spot (S) drops by the dividend amount.
- The forward price (F) adjusts downward by the same amount.
- The dividend term (q) should go to 0 as buyers no longer receive the dividend.
Am very interested in this topic, would love to chat more! DMs open
Instead of defi protocols competing with each other, what if they could all connect to each other and build a more valuable product? That is the vision of Decibel.
Why 15% APY Exists in Crypto
Some folks think it's crazy that there are places to earn 15–20% yield on USD in crypto. They laugh and said, “that’s a Ponzi.”
Except it's not. It’s pure market mechanics.
Here’s what actually happens. During volatile moments, crypto prices across exchanges can dislocate by 10–30%, for example Oct 10, prices were dislocated by up to 80%! That’s a massive arbitrage spread waiting to be captured.
If you’re a market maker with $10M in capital and see a $100M arbitrage opportunity to capture, you want to take it. But you're bottlenecked by capital, because you can’t instantly access another $90M in capital.
Banks aren't going to lend you $90M to trade magic internet money. And even if they would, it takes 48-72hrs to wire the cash, convert it to USDC/T, and move it on-chain. By then, the opportunity is gone.
So what do market makers do? They borrow from on-chain lenders like Aave, Maple, or Morpho. They’re willing to pay 30–40% interest because their expected profit is far higher. So you borrow a couple million @ 40% APY for a week (pay ~0.8% interest) and capture a 40% return. Sounds like a pretty good deal!
That’s why lending platforms can offer 15% APY to depositors. The yield flows downstream from market makers and arbitrageurs who are happy paying 40% to capture inefficiencies -> to the passive lenders providing the liquidity (and capture a juicy spread in between).
So really, that 15% yield you're getting is the time premium on the slowness of fiat.
Crypto markets are 24/7, and need instant liquidity. Banks can only offer 24hr-48hr settlement. That inefficiency is rewarding people that are willing to provide that ready-to-use liquidity up to 15% (or more) a year.
That inefficiency is the yield.
The real unlock for global finance isn’t zero fee trading or a different version of an AMM, it’s always been about composability. That has always been the vision of DeFi from the start, and somewhere along the way, we lost sight of that. A global financial platform where everything connects, and anyone can build on top of. That is true financial freedom.
Decibel is building the execution and liquidity layer that everything else can plug into. With composable accounts and unified margining, unlocking opportunities for traders to maximise trading opportunities and make trades at the right time. With many of today’s exchanges, your wallets and trading accounts are siloed and frustrating to use.
With Decibel, everything is unified under a single account to trade spot, and perps seamlessly.
You should be able to trade, earn yield, and pay from one account. Right now, people are juggling multiple wallets and exchanges to save, trade, pay and earn yield. It’s messy. Nobody wants to manage separate accounts for spot, perps, and yield products. It should all just happen in one place. People want a single platform where they can trade spot, perpetuals, earn yield and pay.
People want access to markets without worrying about downtime, frozen accounts, or delays. They don’t want to onboard five different times with five different platforms. They want a single trusted platform that gives instant access to everything.
Imagine if you could buy crypto, stocks, commodities all from a single account, without worrying about transferring in/out of accounts and things just work.
That is the power of unified accounts. Trading, savings, payments, yield products all converged into one seamless unified experience.
Decibel.
The Merkle team has great taste in building user friendly trading UI
Best of DeFi. One app.
Merkle app is now live on iOS + Android.
Download now: merkle.trade/g/mobile-launch
My takeaways from my first Aptos Experience. The fastest blockchain goes even faster with 10ms block times with proxy primary and namespaces. Composable liquidity is going to unlock insanely creative financial structures and products. WLFI partnership goes deeper. Tradfi is coming on chain and Aptos' team is perfectly positioned. Decibel jackets slap.
Everyone wants to get access to financial markets and investments. And just like the internet, that made information accessible for everyone blockchain makes finance accessible for everyone.
