{"id":35153,"date":"2021-01-21T19:22:25","date_gmt":"2021-01-21T17:22:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/?p=35153"},"modified":"2025-08-28T23:57:41","modified_gmt":"2025-08-28T20:57:41","slug":"coinbase-and-polychain-capital-back-the-launch-of-saddle-finance-a-competitor-to-curve-and-uniswap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/coinbase-and-polychain-capital-back-the-launch-of-saddle-finance-a-competitor-to-curve-and-uniswap\/","title":{"rendered":"Coinbase and Polychain Capital back the launch of Saddle Finance, a competitor to Curve and Uniswap"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The decentralized exchange Saddle Finance, operating on an automated market maker (AMM) model, has launched. The platform raised $4.3 million in a seed round.<!--more--><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/SaddleUp?src=hash&#038;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#SaddleUp<\/a><br \/>\nWe\u2019re launching Saddle to unlock the potential of pegged value crypto assets like tokenized <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/BTC?src=hash&#038;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#BTC<\/a> in <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/DeFi?src=hash&#038;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#DeFi<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/3r2LH2RZww\">https:\/\/t.co\/3r2LH2RZww<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Saddle (@saddlefinance) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/saddlefinance\/status\/1351562624031469568?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">January 19, 2021<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Investors included Framework Ventures, Polychain Capital, Electric Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Nascent, Dragonfly Capital, Alameda Research and Divergence Ventures.<\/p>\n<p>The Saddle Finance startup spun out of the Thesis project, backed by Silicon Valley&#8217;s leading venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). It is known for developments such as Fold, tBTC and Keep.<\/p>\n<p>The new DEX will initially focus on the automated exchange of so-called \u201cBitcoin on Ethereum\u201d \u2014 renBTC, WBTC, sBTC and tBTC. In the future, developers plan to add trading of other Ethereum tokens and stablecoins.<\/p>\n<p>Saddle aims to reduce the problem of so-called [simple_tooltip content=\u2019Slippages are the difference between the expected and actual execution price of a trade order\u2019]slippages[\/simple_tooltip], which are the difference between the expected and actual execution price of a trade order, characteristic of AMMs.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>As Saddle&#8217;s founder Sunil Shrivatsa Shrivatsa explained, &#8220;If you want to swap $100 in USDC for USDT, you would expect to receive around $100 in USDT. For a long time this wasn&#8217;t possible. You could pay $100 in USDC and receive about $97\u201398 in USDT. We are trying to unlock liquidity deep in the blockchain so that traders incur minimal slippage and transaction costs when executing trades,&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>A potential breakthrough could come from Saddle&#8217;s planned integration of Synthetix&#8217;s concept of &#8220;virtual synths&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>A withdrawal fee is in place to encourage long-term liquidity providers. It decreases linearly to zero over one month. The team promises to introduce new incentives soon.<\/p>\n<p>The project underwent three parallel audits of its smart contracts by Certik, Quantstamp and OpenZeppelin. Saddle operates using a Proof of Authority mechanism.<\/p>\n<h2>A Smooth Start<\/h2>\n<p>Support from prominent crypto industry figures did not shield Saddle from post-launch issues.<\/p>\n<p>Presumably due to low liquidity, one trader managed to achieve 12.6x in a single trade. The user bought 4.3 WBTC on Saddle.finance immediately after launch. Subsequently, for unknown reasons, he managed to buy them back at a price far below the market.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">BTW you guys just got Rekt. x13 btc arb not bad right\u2026?<\/p>\n<p>From 12k to 160k \ud83d\ude80<a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/rKg8FfODwL\">https:\/\/t.co\/rKg8FfODwL<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/6JJLkdeAEp\">pic.twitter.com\/6JJLkdeAEp<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Julien Bouteloup (@bneiluj) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/bneiluj\/status\/1351571668884484096?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">January 19, 2021<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/saddle-finance\/saddle-audits\/blob\/master\/12-09-2020_Quantstamp.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Quantstamp Audit<\/a> showed Saddle&#8217;s exposure to attack vectors previously used against Curve.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cBecause Saddle&#8217;s smart contracts implement counterparts on Curve, they are vulnerable to the same attack,\u201d the report says.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Back in November, an unknown attacker <a href=\"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/news\/hacker-drains-2-million-from-akropolis-defi-protocol\">withdrew<\/a> $2 million from the Akropolis project\u2019s YCURVE and sUSD pools. The hacker carried out a series of attacks using flash loans.<\/p>\n<p>Follow ForkLog on <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ForkLog\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">Twitter<\/a>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The launch of Saddle Finance, a decentralised exchange operating on an automated market maker model. The platform raised $4.3 million in a seed round.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35154,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"select":"1","news_style_id":"1","cryptorium_level":"","_short_excerpt_text":"","creation_source":"","_metatest_mainpost_news_update":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1093,849,1133],"class_list":["post-35153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-defi","tag-polychain-capital","tag-venture-investments"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"views":"30","promo_type":"1","layout_type":"1","short_excerpt":"","is_update":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35153"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35153\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35155,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35153\/revisions\/35155"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}