LayerZero Alex Lim：從 Better Money 到 Better Markets，打造新一代市場基礎設施

0:00產業成熟與新面貌

0:00這已經是我第六次來新加坡參加 TOKEN2049 了。我覺得整個產業正在快速成熟，並且以各種不同的方式在轉變。剛剛我在樓下報到時，第一眼看到的攤位竟然是 Stripe 和 LinkedIn。從沒想過會在加密貨幣大會看到 LinkedIn 攤位，還幫大家拍專業大頭照。我今天也特別穿得正式一點，可能還有點太正式了。This is my sixth time visiting Singapore for Token2049. I think we are already seeing that this industry as a whole is maturing up and changing in a variety of different manners. So when I checked in downstairs, the first couple of booths that I saw were Stripe and the LinkedIn booth. Never ever had I imagined that there would be a LinkedIn booth at a crypto conference helping people to take professional headshots. So I dressed accordingly. Maybe I overdressed a little bit.

0:37Better Markets Technology 與 LayerZero 介紹

0:37今天我想跟大家聊聊所謂的「更好的市場技術」（Better Markets Technology）。我目前負責 LayerZero 在亞洲的業務。LayerZero 是市場領先的跨鏈互操作訊息協議，連接超過 170 條區塊鏈和 800 多個資產發行方及應用，讓資產能在全球自由流動、可編程。我們六年前就押注，每一種資產，不論是穩定幣還是 RWA，都會遍佈各地。事實證明這個方向是對的。But today I want to talk about something called the better markets technology. I lead our Asia business at LayerZero. LayerZero is the market-leading interoperability messaging protocol, which essentially connects more than 170-plus blockchains and 800-plus asset issuers and applications so that assets move globally, programmable around the world. And we made a bet six years ago that every asset, whether it's stablecoin, real-world asset, basically, we live everywhere, and it seems that that has played out for us pretty well.

1:14如果你看看過去五年穩定幣和 RWA 資產的爆炸性成長，我們稱這為「更好的貨幣技術」（Better Money Technology），等等我會解釋這對我們的意義。左邊這張圖是我們做的跨鏈互操作協議，目前我們處理全市場 80% 到 85% 的跨鏈資產移動，涵蓋 DeFi 代幣、穩定幣、RWA 等等。If you looked at the explosive growth of stablecoins and RWA assets in general in the past five years, and we call this better money technology, and I'll share in a bit what that means for us. So, on the left, you see the omnichain interoperability protocol work that we have done. Again. We currently process anywhere from 80 to 85% of the entire cross-chain movement of 800-plus assets. This includes DeFi tokens, stablecoins, RWA assets, so on and so forth.

1:45跨鏈資產移動與傳統金融應用

1:45在我們開發這些更好的貨幣技術時，特別在穩定幣領域看到很多創新服務。例如，現在可以在不同鏈之間燒毀和鑄造接近十億美元的數位資產，三分鐘內完成，手續費不到一美元。想像一下，未來傳統金融機構如果採用這種技術，像外匯市場搬到鏈上，我相信我們下一代轉移價值的方式會跟現在完全不同。And while we were developing this better money technology, we were able to see some incredible services and progress among these stablecoins in particular. For example, it has become a very powerful tool to be able to burn and mint close to a billion dollars worth of digital assets from chain A to chain B. If you imagine this type of technology being adapted by now traditional financial institutions for things like the future of forex market on chain, I think that our kids' generation, the way they move money or values is going to be entirely different from the way it looked this year.

2:21因為我們站在幫助資產跨鏈移動的最前線，所以能夠很早看到趨勢。穩定幣市值從 2020 年的 50 億美元成長到現在超過 3,000 億美元，RWA 也從零到現在五年內達到 400 億美元。但我們發現，資產成長的速度和實際交易市場之間有很大落差。Because we're at the forefront of helping assets move across different chains, we were able to identify where this trend is going. While stablecoins have grown from $5 billion in market cap from 2020 to now $300 billion plus, and from RWA going from basically zero to now $40 billion in just the past five years, we realize that there is such a huge gap between how fast these assets are growing, between that and where these assets are being traded, so where the trading business is now.

2:55打造專為資本市場設計的區塊鏈 Zero

2:55這也是為什麼我們正在打造專為資本市場設計的區塊鏈 Zero，目標是每秒 200 萬筆交易、每筆手續費只要萬分之一美分。舉個例子，大家可以到我們的 layerzeroscan.com 查看所有 LayerZero 跨鏈轉帳紀錄。你會看到，近 3 億美元的價值從一條鏈轉到另一條鏈，三分鐘內完成，手續費不到 60 美分。And that is why we are building our own capital markets-focused blockchain called Zero, which aims to deliver 2 million transactions per second and one ten-thousandth of a penny per transaction. And I'll speak a little bit about what that means. Just to give you an example of what type of results and the use cases that this technology has enabled now, if you look at our open explorer called layerzeroscan.com, you can actually look up all of the cross-chain transfer that LayerZero Rail is facilitating, and you can see here on the screen that close to $300 million worth of value transfer from chain A to chain B happened in under three minutes for less than 60 cents.

3:38當傳統銀行和金融機構採用這種技術處理外匯、跨鏈兌換時，不同貨幣計價的穩定幣將能以前所未有的速度和低成本流動。這些應用主要分為四大類：穩定幣、代幣化股票、代幣化基金和跨鏈安全。我們這幾年已經和全球許多公司合作，特別是美國金融體系的三大支柱：ICE（紐約證券交易所母公司）、DTCC 和 Citadel Securities。Again, I'd like to reemphasize that once the traditional banks and financial institutions can adopt this for things like foreign exchange, cross-chain swap, you can imagine that for different currency-denominated stablecoins, the value will move much faster and cheaper at an unprecedented level. So. Basically, these use cases are happening across four major categories: stablecoins, tokenized equities, tokenized funds, and cross-chain security. We've been doing this for the past four or five years for a wider range of different companies around the world, and particularly, I would like to point out that while we work with some of the best world's venture capitals around the world, maybe the three companies that I'd like to focus on are basically the backbone of the U.S. financial system, which are ICE, the parent company of New York Stock Exchange, DTCC, and Citadel Securities.

4:34從解決問題到 Permissionless Markets

4:34過去很長一段時間，加密和區塊鏈技術都像是在找問題的解決方案。但今年我們和 ICE、DTCC、Citadel Securities 這三家公司成為 Zero Blockchain 的設計夥伴後，發現有一個非常明確的問題需要解決，這也是我今天想談的重點。回顧過去五年，穩定幣爆炸性成長，LayerZero 的跨鏈市場規模和市佔率也同步成長。Crypto and blockchain, for a long time, was this piece of technology looking for problems to solve. And with these three companies as design partners that we have announced earlier this year for the Zero Blockchain, we realized that there is a very clear and specific problem to solve, which is exactly what I want to talk about today. Let's take a step back and then again look at the past five years. As mentioned, stablecoins saw an explosive growth in the past five years. And concurrently, LayerZero had gone through also very interesting growth in tandem when it comes to cross-chain market volume, market share.

5:21因為我們協助穩定幣跨 170 多條鏈流動，所以能很早看到趨勢。我們稱這波是「無許可貨幣」的崛起，下一階段就是「無許可市場」的崛起。以 Uniswap 為例，花了六年才達到年交易量一兆美元。Hyperliquid 2023 年底才上線，兩年內交易量就達三兆美元。這不只是加密故事，更是市場結構的故事。And because we're at the forefront of helping stablecoins move across 170-plus chains, we were able to identify where this trend is going. And while we call this the rise of permissionless money for stablecoins, we believe that the next phase is the rise of permissionless markets. If you look at Uniswap, which essentially pioneered decentralized exchange, it took them about six years to generate a trillion dollars worth of annual trading volume. Hyperliquid, you probably have heard of it, they launched late 2023, and in just two years, as of last year, they reached $3 trillion in trading volume. This story is often read as a crypto story, but I think that it's more like a market structure story.

5:58市場結構革新與 Atlas 誕生

5:58Hyperliquid 並不是做出比紐約證交所更快的撮合引擎，而是把原本分散的交易堆疊（信用、風險、撮合、結算、清算）整合成一個流程。傳統金融每個流程都有不同的利害關係人、費用和對帳需求，這也是為什麼市場每天要收盤。但 Hyperliquid 把這些整合成一個堆疊，沒有額外費用、也不需要對帳，市場也不用收盤。Hyperliquid didn't build a faster matching engine that competes with New York Stock Exchange. What they did instead was they integrated a variety of different exchange stacks, which are credit and risk, matching, settlement and clearing, which are different processes, each of which has its own stakeholders and partners for TradFi trading venues, which involves a different fee, it involves a reconciliation, and it accounts for why markets have to close by the end of the day. But what Hyperliquid did here is by integrating this value exchange stack into just one. There's no fee, there's no reconciliation, and again, the markets don't have to close by the end of the day.

6:41因此，我們決定推出 Atlas——聚合交易流動性與結算引擎。簡單說，LayerZero 要做的是 headless exchange，讓全球各地的交易場域（交易所、市場、券商）都能用同一個聚合堆疊，像是鏈上永續合約 DEX，把原本分散的信用、結算、清算、撮合整合起來。我們的目標是結合傳統金融和 DeFi 的優點。So with that, what we would like to call the rise of permissioned markets, we decided to launch something called Atlas, Aggregated Trading Liquidity and Settlement Engine. What this is in plain English is that LayerZero is going to launch headless exchange. For trading venues around the world, what I mean by trading venues are exchanges, markets, and brokerages, to essentially launch something like on-chain perp DEX by utilizing one aggregated stack, again, that was fragmented before into four different steps: credit, debit, settlement, clearing, and matching. What we're really aiming to do here is to merge the best of TradFi businesses and the decentralized finance.

7:25Atlas 架構與 TradFi/DeFi 優勢融合

7:25如果你看看去中心化交易所，它在兩件事情上非常出色。第一是效能，也就是在撮合訂單時非常快速。第二，當你處理一筆訂單時，去中心化交易所基本上可以保證你的訂單會被處理。DEXs，或者說去中心化金融，在另外兩件事情上也很優秀。第一，任何人都可以用密碼學方式進行驗證；第二，因為你可以自我保管資產，交易平台就不再持有使用者資產。當然，這裡有一個取捨。通常，當區塊鏈以單一順序結算時，也就是驗證發生的方式，這同時也是讓整個流程變慢的原因。If you look at decentralized exchange, it's great for two things. It's great for performance, which means it's very fast when it comes to matching. And then second, when you process an order, there is a guarantee that your order will be basically processed by using decentralized exchange. DEXs, or decentralized finance, is great for two other things. One, anybody can verify cryptographically, and two, because you can do self-custody, trading venues no longer hold user assets. Now, there was a trade-off for a reason. Usually, when a blockchain is settled in a single sequence order, which is how the verification happens, it's also what slows down the entire process.

8:09我們在 Atlas 想要達成的目標，是透過將這兩項工作分開：讓交易所運行在高並發伺服器上，而密碼學證明則專注於記錄交易所訂單的結算。如此一來，藉由分離這兩項工作，我們就能夠在傳統金融（TradFi）和去中心化金融（DeFi）之間，取得兩者的最佳優勢。What we're aiming to do with Atlas is by separating these two jobs, where the exchange is being run at the high concurrency server and the cryptographic proof is really there to record the exchange order settlement only, so that by separating these two jobs, we can get the best of both worlds between TradFi and DeFi.

8:30我們提供 Atlas 兩種不同的模式。左邊是我們稱為 Open Atlas 的產品，它是無需許可的、開放掛單，並且採用自我託管。這基本上意味著，對於加密原生的應用程式、預測市場以及錢包服務提供者來說，他們能夠將我剛剛提到的四個不同技術堆疊整合成一個整合式堆疊。我們所有合作的交易場所現在都能夠存取同一個全球流動性層的資金池。右邊則是我們為機構設計的 Regulated Atlas。它是需許可的，由營運商部署，擁有經過審核的掛單以及合格的託管服務。We offer Atlas in two different models. So on the left, we have something called Open Atlas, and it's permissionless, open listings, and self-custody. What this essentially means is that for crypto-native applications, prediction markets, and wallet service providers, they're able to run the four different stacks that I just mentioned into one integrated stack. All of the partner trading venues that we have have now access to a single pool of global liquidity layer. Now, on the right, we have regulated Atlas for institution. It's permissioned, it's deployed by an operator, it has vetted listings and qualified custody.

9:11所以當機構再次想要推出像是鏈上去中心化交易所這類產品時，他們需要能夠設定像是風險參數、撮合規則，並且能夠擁有一套符合當地法規以及其內部合規政策的規則。So when the institutions again want to launch something like on-chain decentralized exchange, they need to be able to configure things like risk parameters, matching rules, and be able to have a set of rules that are compliant to the local jurisdiction and their internal compliance policies.

9:39Atlas 商業模式與交易場域分潤

9:39在這個架構設計下，我們有三個明確的角色。首先是Atlas，這是LayerZero唯一擁有的東西。再次強調，這是一個在信貸、撮合、結算和清算之間整合的堆疊。接著是市場創建者，負責部署和治理市場掛單，包括價格發現、質押品和保證金等事項。最後是交易場域，負責擁有使用者關係。每一筆被推薦的交易，他們都能獲得永續交易手續費。我們認為，從經濟角度來看，這些交易場域最重要的元素之一，就是他們絕對應該保留的是能夠讓使用者留在自己的介面上，而不是相反。There are three clear roles that we have under this architecture design, we have Atlas, which is the only thing that LayerZero owns. Again, one integrated stack among credit, matching, settlement, and clearing. Then we have a market creator that deploys and governs market listings, things like price discovery, collateral, and margin. And then we have the trading venue, which owns the user relationship. And have a perpetual trade fee that they will get for every referred trade. We believe that these trading venues, economically speaking, one of their most important elements that they should absolutely keep is they should be able to retain their users on their interface, not the other way around.

10:22所以，從經濟角度來說，我們跟這些交易平台的合作方式基本上是，他們每帶來一筆交易到 Atlas，就能獲得每筆交易回饋金的 20% 到 65%，這是在做市商回饋金發放之前、在 LayerZero 自己分潤之前的比例。所以，目前正在整合的這些交易平台，平均下來大約可以拿到 51% 的回饋金。這代表如果你要推出一個鏈上去中心化交易所，你在你的交易平台上帶進來的每一美元，有超過 50% 直接進入你的利潤。因此，從經濟層面來說，我們的目標就是賦能這些交易平台，讓他們能夠最大化利潤空間、最小化延遲。這也是為什麼 LayerZero 在協助或推出這個交易所架構時，並沒有自己的前端介面，因此才會有「無頭交易所」這個概念。So, economically speaking, how we work with these trading venues is that they basically get anywhere from 20 to 65% of the rebate off of every single trade that they bring in to Atlas before the market maker rebates, before LayerZero pays itself. So blended across the trading venues that are integrating right now is around 51% of the rebate, which means that if you're launching an on-chain decentralized exchange over 50% of the dollar that you bring in on your trading venue is straight going into your profit. So, economically speaking, we're here to empower the trading venues to maximize their margin and minimize their latency. And this is also exactly why LayerZero does not have our own interface when it comes to helping or launching this exchange stack, hence the headless exchange.

11:14Zero 區塊鏈效能與產業級應用

11:14這一切在我們所謂的普通區塊鏈上是無法實現的。即使是我們現在在生產環境中所稱讚的一些最快的區塊鏈，他們在實際運行環境中，每秒大約只能處理4,000筆交易。而紐約證券交易所基本上需要每秒2百萬筆交易。因此，這個巨大的差距，如果要讓像紐約證券交易所這樣的玩家，或者讓區塊鏈能夠支援紐約證券交易所等級的每秒交易量，每年大約需要36億美元的成本，這基本上是沒有意義的。而造成這個情況的主要原因，就是複製工作的負擔。Now, none of this was possible on what we call a normal blockchain. Some of the fastest chains that we celebrate in production today, they talk about in the production and the actual environment, they run, let's say, 4,000 transactions per second. New York Stock Exchange requires essentially 2 million transactions per second. So this sheer gap, in order for a player like New York Stock Exchange to be able to, or a blockchain to be able to support a nicey level transactions per second, it would cost something like $3.6 billion per year, which essentially doesn't make any sense. And the reason very, very much is around the replication work.

11:54現今一般區塊鏈的運作方式是每個驗證者都必須保留完整的帳本副本。而對於 Zero 來說，驗證者唯一需要檢查的就是密碼學證明，這讓每秒兩百萬筆交易以及每筆交易只需萬分之一美分這樣的事情成為可能。The way that the normal blockchains operate today is that every verifier has to keep the full copy of the books. Whereas for Zero, the cryptographic proof is the only thing that verifier needs to check, which makes things like 2 million transactions per second and 1/10,000th of a penny per transaction possible now.

12:14我們今年二月已經宣布，DTCC、Citadel、紐約證交所都是 Zero 的設計夥伴，年底就會上線，Atlas 會建在 Zero 上。效能方面，這不是同機房、不是特製硬體，實際生產環境下 5 萬到 10 萬 TPS，延遲只有一毫秒，大概是眨眼的四十分之一。這會是最快的鏈上交易基礎設施，能支援鏈上 DEX 等應用。So we announced this back in February, again with DTCC, Citadel, and New York Stock Exchange as design partners. We'll be launching this. By the end of the year, and Atlas will be built on top of the zero blockchain. In terms of performance, we have a couple of figures here. These are not co-located. These are not tuned or custom hardware. In the actual production environment for both 50 and 100K transactions per second, we have somewhere around one millisecond latency, which is like one-fortieth of blink of an eye, essentially when it comes to trading experience. So we believe that this is the fastest on-chain exchange infrastructure that can process things for, again, things like on-chain decentralized exchange.

13:02從 Better Money 到 Better Markets

13:02我們認為跨鏈價值轉移的問題已經解決，Better Money Technology 讓人和機構能在三分鐘內用不到一美元的成本，把穩定幣從一條鏈轉到另一條鏈，甚至銀行之間也能用這套軌道轉帳，金額高達八億到十億美元。這很厲害，但資產真正的交易市場才剛起步，這裡有兆美元級的機會。We think that the value transfer work or the interoperability is basically solved. We have the better money technology where now people and institutions can send stablecoins from chain A to chain B or a bank from another using stablecoin rails that we have built, again under three minutes for less than a dollar. When you're trying to move 800 million to a billion dollars, for example. While that is great, and that is to the billions. Where these assets are being traded, if you look at things like the future of trading, RWA, and other markets, we're just getting started, and this is speaking to the trillion dollars of opportunities.

13:41我認為金融和交易產業已經經歷過最大的一次轉型，從類比到數位。也許我們有些人太年輕沒經歷過那一波，但現在我們正要見證下一波轉型——從電子化到整合化。傳統金融現在能把信用、撮合、清算、結算整合成一個聚合堆疊。這波交易產業的巨大變革，如果你想打造未來的交易市場、抓住這個兆美元機會，歡迎一起合作。謝謝大家！I believe that we have gone through the largest shift when it comes to the finance and the trading business from analog to digital. And I think that some of us are maybe too young to go through that transition ourselves, but we are now old enough to go through the next wave of the shift, which is essentially from electronic to integrated. Again, where TradFi businesses are now able to integrate the credit, matching, clearing, and settlement process into one aggregated stack. So with this massive shift in terms of the trading business, if you're here to build, to build the future of trading and basically grab this trillion-dollar opportunity, we would love to work together. Thank you so much.