Guest: Ashwin, Chief Strategy Officer of Axis
Organizer: momo, ChainCatcher
From trader to entrepreneur, the path of Axis founder Chris has always revolved around one core principle: seeking real and sustainable returns in the market.
As the first employee of QCP Capital, he experienced the wild growth of crypto trading firsthand; later, he co-founded the quantitative fund Alphanonce, which managed over $400 million in assets and achieved an annualized return of over 35% in five years. This experience made him deeply aware that the risk control framework and capital efficiency of traditional finance are precisely the most scarce elements in the current DeFi ecosystem.
He saw an industry filled with unsustainable token incentives, opaque "black boxes" of returns, and users forced to compromise between security and usability. These issues did not deter him; instead, they became the starting point for founding Axis: could institutional-level arbitrage strategies generate stable and transparent returns on-chain?
Thus, Axis was born. Through strategies such as cross-market arbitrage, it creates synthetic assets (like USDx), which users can stake to earn returns, without relying on market directional judgments or inflationary incentives; the only source is capturing real existing price differences.
This vision has recently attracted capital. Axis has completed a $5 million private placement round led by Galaxy Ventures, with oversubscription reaching four times, and several well-known institutions such as OKX Ventures and FalconX participating.
According to Axis, the protocol plans to launch on the Plasma chain and is currently in a non-public testing trading phase, making final preparations for public launch. Following USDx, Axis will also consider gradually introducing yield-bearing assets based on Bitcoin and gold.
In this ChainCatcher exclusive interview, the Axis team shared in-depth insights into their entrepreneurial logic, product architecture, risk philosophy, and thoughts on the future of on-chain finance. Below is the transcript of the conversation.
What Opportunities Did Axis See from Quantitative Funds to DeFi?
1. ChainCatcher: The core team of Axis has a complete background from top trading desks to quantitative hedge funds. How has this background shaped your unique perspective on DeFi? What is the core insight behind the leap from Alphanonce to Axis?
Axis: Founder Chris, as an early member of QCP Capital, experienced the initial development phase of the crypto trading market; the co-founded Alphanonce is a quantitative hedge fund that has been operating since 2018, managing hundreds of millions in assets and achieving over 35% annualized returns. Currently, Alphanonce and Axis are two completely independent legal entities.
This shared experience gives us a dual perspective. On one hand, we have deeply internalized the standards of capital efficiency, rigorous risk control, and systematic execution required by traditional finance and quantitative investing; on the other hand, we have also personally felt that while the emerging DeFi ecosystem has astonishing capital formation capabilities and user accessibility, its yield models are often built on unsustainable incentives and generally lack transparency, making it difficult for users to balance security, returns, and usability.
The motivation to establish Axis came from seeing an opportunity for integration: borrowing capital efficiency from traditional finance; capital formation and user accessibility from DeFi; and competitive principles from quantitative trading.
We believe there is an opportunity to build financial products that were previously impossible by combining institutional-level infrastructure with the open characteristics of DeFi to solve some real problems.
2. ChainCatcher: How was the core team of Axis built? What was your philosophy when forming the founding team? What three capabilities do you think are essential to create a top-tier "arbitrage engine"?
Axis: Our team brings together veterans from several top companies in the digital asset space, with backgrounds in traditional finance (like BlackRock, Blackstone), stablecoin issuance (Tether), trading (QCP Capital, Alphanonce), and DeFi (Ondo, Maple, Velodrome).
Our philosophy in building the team is clear: to gather world-class talent from DeFi, traditional finance, trading, and asset issuance to create unprecedented financial products that solve real problems.
There are many practical issues we want to address, such as the unsustainable phenomenon in DeFi that relies on token incentives rather than real returns; the opacity of yield products, where users do not know where the money comes from; the overcrowding of basis trading strategies leading to diluted returns; and the difficulty users face in balancing institutional-level security/infrastructure with DeFi usability.
As for the three essential capabilities for an arbitrage engine, I believe they are, first, world-class engineering capabilities to ensure extremely low latency, direct market access, and top-tier exchange connectivity.
Second, institutional-level risk management, which is the foundation for gaining trust, maintaining resilience, and ensuring capital efficiency.
Finally, institutional-level security practices, including robust custody solutions, multi-signature controls, audited smart contracts, and operational security processes that meet institutional standards.
Building an Institution-Level Arbitrage-Driven Yield Dollar
3. ChainCatcher: If you had to introduce Axis to someone unfamiliar with DeFi in one sentence, how would you do it? What fundamentally distinguishes it from typical DeFi yield protocols?
Axis: Axis is a protocol that supports and issues dollar-pegged assets (USDx) through institutional-level arbitrage strategies, allowing users to earn returns by staking (sUSDx).
Our fundamental difference lies in the fact that returns come from real cross-market arbitrage rather than unsustainable token incentives or directional market bets.
Additionally, the team has a proven track record in institutional trading, capable of providing "all-weather" returns that do not rely on funding rates or market cycles, and we always prioritize transparency, employing third-party independent verification mechanisms.
4. ChainCatcher: What do you mean by "beyond basis"? How does the yield engine adapt to different market environments?
Axis: The core philosophy of Axis is "beyond basis." While basis trading itself is a reliable strategy, the current market has become too crowded. Our breakthrough lies in not only using spot inventory for arbitrage but also deploying it to meet real operational capital needs, especially liquidity infrastructure needs, allowing us to capture opportunities across a broader strategic dimension.
Our engine continuously monitors liquidity, opportunity windows, and preset risk parameters across multiple markets, dynamically allocating capital to the most advantageous strategies (whether cross-location arbitrage, cross-asset arbitrage, or other convergence trades). This process is fully automated, supplemented by 24/7 human monitoring. It is this dynamic adaptability that ensures we can still provide relatively stable and sustainable returns in different market environments, such as high volatility, deleveraging, or sideways markets.
5. ChainCatcher: While arbitrage theoretically carries low risk, many strategies fail in extreme market conditions. What tail risks are you most concerned about? What risk management mechanisms do you have in place?
Axis: The tail risks we are most concerned about mainly include counterparty or exchange risks, as well as the risk of liquidity tightening.
Our risk control mechanisms include a strict risk budget framework, due diligence on trading venues, collateral, and counterparties, as well as a full suite of institutional-level risk management practices derived from hedge fund experience.
Most importantly, our team has years of experience managing large amounts of capital in real markets and has established comprehensive contingency plans to manage and mitigate various extreme situations.
6. ChainCatcher: Many collapsed yield stablecoin protocols were later revealed not to have implemented the claimed delta-neutral strategies, exposing fundamental flaws in the industry's "transparency." How does Axis fundamentally address this issue to make yields truly credible?
Axis: This exposes a core issue: transparency is often an afterthought in many projects rather than a first principle. They make unverifiable promises.
From the very beginning, Axis has prioritized transparency. We insist on third-party independent verification rather than self-assertion. Through our reserve proofs, users will ultimately be able to verify on-chain whether our asset reserves are sufficient, whether our strategies maintain true delta neutrality, and all historical performance data, all of which are verified by third parties before being put on-chain.
Our goal is to enable users to directly verify our reserves, delta neutrality status, and performance on-chain in the future.
7. ChainCatcher: In the current regulatory environment, yield dollars are in a gray area. When designing products, did you consider future compliance? How did you consider it?
Axis: We are indeed building with an eye on the future. We emphasize transparency, third-party verification, and verifiable on-chain data, not only to build user trust. We also believe that as regulatory frameworks become clearer, those protocols that prioritize accountability and provide clear audit trails will be in a more favorable position. We are preparing ourselves for that.
8. ChainCatcher: You plan to launch the Origin Vault on Plasma. Why choose Plasma?
Axis: The choice of the Plasma chain is primarily based on ecosystem considerations, as it has sufficient USDT liquidity, a vibrant USDT DeFi ecosystem, and the second-largest Aave market, with all the key infrastructure we need already well-established.
9. ChainCatcher: What stage is your product development currently in? What milestones or updates should the community pay attention to in the near future?
Axis: We are currently in a non-public testing trading phase, making final preparations for public launch.
Upcoming milestones worth noting include that we will gradually release more updates regarding transparency, and the community will have the opportunity to participate in the Origin Vault later this year.
Long-Term Vision: From Arbitrage Engine to Liquidity Infrastructure
11. ChainCatcher: In your view, what is the most difficult aspect to replicate in true "on-chain institutional finance"? What will be Axis's ultimate moat?
Axis: I believe "on-chain institutional finance" means that DeFi capital markets need to meet the standards of Wall Street and institutional trading. Of course, it is not a simple replication but rather a fusion of new technologies, new products, and new interfaces with the criteria and principles required by institutional finance.
Axis's moat comes from several aspects: the capital aggregated from on-chain depositors, the trading system built by our team based on experience, and our organizational culture.
But the most difficult to replicate is the combination of these three, especially the trading system and culture that can drive continuous evolution.
12. ChainCatcher: If the next market cycle experiences an extreme bull or bear market, which part of the Axis system do you think will be tested first?
Axis: The parts that are likely to be stress-tested first are collateral risk management, counterparty solvency, and our ability to capture price differences during extreme volatility. These are precisely the moments when our institutional-level risk management framework needs to demonstrate its value.
13. ChainCatcher: What are Axis's strategic priorities for the next year? What is the long-term vision?
Axis: The recent strategic priority is clear: to ensure the successful launch of the product and introduce it to a broader crypto ecosystem in an easy-to-understand and participate manner.
In the long term, our vision is to transform trading inventory into "liquidity infrastructure" within the ecosystem, not limited to pure arbitrage, but to meet the real and diverse capital needs within this ecosystem.
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