Exclusive interview with Caria, founder of NuDEX: From traditional industries to Web3, looking for a way out for DeFi

Original | Odaily Planet Daily ( @OdailyChina )

Author | Fu Howe ( @vincent 31515173 )

In the wave of rapid development of the global crypto industry, blockchain technology has gradually broken through the boundaries of traditional finance, attracting the attention of countless entrepreneurs and technology developers. As Bitcoin continues to set new historical highs, the popularity of the crypto market has also risen, and DeFi projects have become the focus of investors and industry experts.

However, as the market expands, the challenges facing the DeFi field are becoming increasingly apparent - how to stand out in a highly competitive environment and create innovative products that truly meet user needs has become a core issue for every entrepreneur.

In this context, Odaily Planet Daily had the honor of interviewing Caria, the founder and CEO of NuDEX during Devcon in Bangkok. As an entrepreneur with a strong technical background, Caria has accumulated rich experience in the Metis team. With her keen market insight and technological innovation capabilities, she successfully attracted support from heavyweight investors including the founder of Metis . The investment of the founder of Metis is not only a high recognition of Carias personal ability, but also injects strong resources and confidence into the development of NuDEX.

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

● Seamless execution of multi-chain transactions : NuDEX supports single-step cross-chain transactions, allowing users to efficiently manage assets without complex cross-chain bridge operations.

● Zero Gas Fee Mode : Whether in Layer 1 or Layer 2, the platform achieves zero Gas fee, significantly reducing transaction costs.

● Full control of assets : As a non-custodial platform, NuDEX allows users to always have full control over their assets, eliminating the risks of centralization.

● Advanced automatic trading function : supports diversified trading strategies such as limit orders, stop-loss orders and partial transactions, providing flexible choices for different types of users.

In addition, NuDEX has also launched innovative mechanisms such as decentralized listing rights and single-token liquidity provision, allowing the community and project parties to actively initiate trading pairs, lower the threshold for participation, and enhance the openness and activity of the platform ecosystem.

In this interview, we will explore Caria’s entrepreneurial journey together, learn how she solves the pain points in the DeFi field through technological innovation, promotes the popularization and development of decentralized finance, and share her outlook and deep insights into the future crypto market.

Caria’s Inextricable Bond with Crypto

Odaily Planet Daily: Please briefly introduce yourself.

Caria: I started my career in the hardware industry. I didn’t understand Bitcoin when I first came across it, so I missed out on early opportunities. I then went to Canada for a working holiday and enrolled in the Schulich School of Business to pursue an MBA.

After a lot of efforts, I finally got into a top pharmaceutical company in Canada, but I was not satisfied with the nine-to-five life, so I switched to the software industry and accumulated experience in cross-departmental communication and learning.

After that, I joined Metis as a product manager, got in touch with blockchain from scratch, and fell deeply in love with this technology that can break through the limitations of traditional industries.

Today, I am committed to starting a business, hoping to integrate blockchain into everyones life through our technology and truly realize the dream of changing the world.

Odaily Planet Daily: From LinkedIn, you have a very rich work experience. You have held several positions, including project management manager at Caseware, lecturer at York University, and director of a credit union in Taiwan. Currently focusing on NuDEX, how do you balance your time for these jobs? What are your priorities in the Web3 industry in the future?

Caria: I have always been called a workaholic. I cannot stand the state of being idle. Even if I am injured and lying in bed now, I still feel uncomfortable and have to keep working. So even though I have multiple roles at the same time, it is not difficult for me. It mainly depends on good time management and prioritization.

In addition, I am very grateful that many people who appreciate me have given me opportunities along the way, allowing me to accumulate experience and continue to learn in different fields. These experiences, whether industry knowledge or practical work, have provided great help to me after entering the Web3 industry.

In the future, I hope to improve the transparency and liquidity of the entire field through our unique DeFi technology, so that blockchain technology can truly be integrated into the daily lives of ordinary people and make more contributions to the development of this industry.

Odaily Planet Daily: You have extensive experience in switching between different industries and positions. What experience led you to switch to Web3? How do you think your previous cross-field experience has helped 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, the community is small, and the vision and ideas of internal personnel often converge, and the needs of external users are easily ignored. This also leads to one of the biggest challenges of Web3 - it is difficult for external users to truly integrate because they dont understand what the industry is doing.

My advantage is that I used to be a member of the hardware industry and I used to be someone who didn’t believe in Web3 and even thought it was just a scam. I understand the concerns and perspectives of external users, and I also know the logic and operation of the industry.

Now, as a member of Web3, this dual identity allows me to make decisions from the users perspective, taking into account the needs of both insiders and outsiders, and truly solving user pain points . I believe this is the key to developing successful products and the necessary direction to promote the widespread adoption of Web3.

Odaily Planet Daily: You have worked at Metis for more than two years. What business are you responsible for? What unique challenges impressed you?

Caria: When I joined Metis, it was still in a relatively early stage as a participant in the second layer of Ethereum. There were not many L2 solutions on the market at that time, but the competition was already very fierce because everyone was vying to be the first project to effectively solve the pain points of the Ethereum mainnet. Our core mission is to increase transaction speed and ensure that transactions can be completed within a few seconds while reducing gas fees to less than $0.1.

To achieve this goal, we invested a lot of energy with the development team, continuously developed breakthrough technologies, and finally successfully optimized the performance. Although I won’t go into the technical details, I learned a key point from it: no matter in which field, the core of the success of a startup or project is to solve the user’s pain points.

Metis’ success stems from its precise solution to Ethereum’s speed and cost issues, and the concepts I learned from this experience are still being applied in my new project NuDEX. We are also committed to solving the pain points in the DeFi field, such as transaction speed, ease of use and security.

Odaily Planet Daily: Why did you switch from Ethereum L2 to Bitcoin L2 to build DeFi products? In fact, from your experience, you have no experience in DeFi or exchanges. What is your starting point for building DEX? What difficulties and challenges have you encountered in this process? How do you solve these problems?

Caria: I switched from Ethereum L2 to Bitcoin L2 because Bitcoins decentralization and security are more in line with my philosophy of blockchain development. Although I have no previous experience in DeFi or exchanges, my understanding of technology and insight into industry needs enabled me to design a practical solution.

Our starting point is to create a truly decentralized exchange to solve the centralization problem that is prevalent in current DEXs. I am well aware of the pain points of decentralized exchanges, especially in terms of security and user experience, so we have focused on technological innovation and optimization from the beginning.

For example, the use of GOAT Networks cross-chain technology enables our platform to support multiple assets, not limited to a single chain, greatly reducing the learning threshold for users and improving the convenience of transactions. Although we encountered some technical difficulties in the process, we gradually overcame these challenges through the efforts of the team and continuous adjustments.

Odaily Planet Daily: What milestones do you think NuDEX will reach in the future? How will your role change?

Caria: Our goal is to achieve complete decentralization of NuDEX. A decentralized exchange cannot be centralized at the management level. This is wrong. I think that many DEXs claim to be decentralized, but in fact the project owners still have a lot of control.

NuDEX will set up a DAO in the future, and community members will make decisions. Our goal is to make NuDEX a new standard for decentralized exchanges, and we hope to change and rebuild the standards for decentralized exchanges one day. When we grow to a certain size, my role will change to serving community members and helping to connect to more international resources to promote the rapid expansion of NuDEX.

When the market is booming, how do you view the future development of the encryption industry?

Odaily Planet Daily: Bitcoin is currently breaking new highs, but the rise of Bitcoin comes more from 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 instead of being involed in 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 the traditional competition model to directly compete with the big firms.

Our strategy is to work with emerging or developing projects, taking advantage of the window period before they cooperate with large firms to help them enter the market. Through this cooperation, we can provide some special trading opportunities by issuing meme coins, etc., to help the project grow, while providing more choices for our users. Such a strategy not only avoids involution in the stock market, but also helps us expand the incremental market.

At present, we are deeply cooperating with some emerging projects, providing them with technical support and market guidance, and further expanding the incremental market by helping these projects acquire users and accelerate market expansion. At the same time, we cooperate 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 in the decentralized financial ecosystem.

Odaily Planet Daily: I have noticed your wonderful sharing 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 think that in the future, whether it is centralized or decentralized exchanges, the boundaries will become increasingly blurred, and the two sides will begin to merge. Decentralized exchanges will gradually combine with traditional financial products and tools.

For example, the traditional financial market can now buy crypto assets such as Bitcoin and Ethereum through the stock market. If we fail to combine DeFi with real-life financial instruments in a timely manner, we may be marginalized.

In the future, DeFi will move in this direction, gradually combining with real-world financial instruments to increase its popularity and influence. I am very happy to share at the MEMEWonder conference, which is supported by Binance and introduces DeFi in a more accessible way, showing that it is not so out of reach, which is crucial for the acceptance of the mainstream market.

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

Caria: I think the biggest pain point of DEX at present is that they usually rely on the ecological development of a single chain . Each DEX has its own chain, which requires users to be loyal to a certain chain before they can use the services of that DEX. For ordinary users, the process of learning how to enter this ecosystem is very complicated, which creates a high barrier to use.

This is why we chose to build our DEX based on GOAT Network, through which we can access multiple chains and multiple assets, thus solving the limitation problem.

Odaily Planet Daily: Currently, BTC ecological projects that are easier to attract important investors tend to focus on L2, staking, etc. We chose the DEX direction. Have we obtained some side views from the VCs we contacted, such as the core competitiveness and innovation direction of BTC L2 DEX?

Caria: Bitcoins inherent decentralization, robustness, and wide-ranging influence are the core reasons why we chose it as the underlying asset. As Bitcoin continues to appreciate, more and more people regard it as a store of value, and we hope to provide more innovative DeFi services through DEX to further tap the potential of Bitcoin.

However, Bitcoin’s smart contract function is still not as perfect as that of public chains such as Ethereum, which is also the biggest pain point in the current ecological development. We are investing more resources and technical capabilities to solve these deficiencies and promote the construction of the Bitcoin DeFi ecosystem.

From the perspective of VC, they are more concerned about the profitability and liquidity of assets. We chose GOAT Network as the infrastructure because it has obvious advantages in solving these two points.

At the same time, NuDEX also has two core technologies:

● NIP-20 Protocol : With NIP-20 technology, we achieve offline matching and online settlement, and can process more than 10, 000 transactions per second.

● TSS (Threshold Signature Scheme) : With the help of TSS technology, we have become a truly fully decentralized exchange that processes transactions, from deposits, withdrawals, transactions to the listing and delisting of tokens. All links are decentralized. All records are completely transparent on all chains.

With these technological innovations and clear market positioning, we have attracted the attention of many institutions and large customers, and are currently actively negotiating cooperation.