Sei Labs

mission & key concepts

Sei is the decentralized NASDAQ, opening up an entirely new design space for DeFi.

It is the fastest Layer 1 blockchain uniquely optimized for trading, designed to give DeFi apps an unfair advantage.

Most layer 1’s fall into two extremes: with general purpose chains on one end (Ethereum, Solana) and app-specific on the other (dYdX, Osmosis). Sei unlocks an entirely new design space between the two, not general-purpose nor app-specific, but DeFi-specific. This allows Sei to create the best layer 1 for financial apps, featuring a built-in order matching engine, frontrunning protection, and the fastest finality of any chain (600 ms).

The organization believes that both technologically and from a human standpoint, the ultimate key to its scalability will be to maintain one foot firmly rooted in the world of global decentralized finance–its protocols, lexicon, channels, values, rules, delicate sensibilities and community operating and engagement principles–and the world of western finance: Wall Street, tier-1 mainstream financial technology startups, and the mass consumer audiences they serve.

Designed from bottom up to scale, Sei unlocks new possibilities with optimizations including:

• Built-in orderbook - solves the age-old orderbook scaling issue
• Frontrunning protection - MEV is a major drawback of popular chains like Ethereum and Solana
• Finality - Sei is the fastest chain to finality at ~600ms, 5x faster than Solana, Sui, and 2x faster than Aptos.

current challenges

What problem does Sei solve?

1. Exchanges are the greatest killer app of crypto** - AMMs, OBs, NFTs, GameFi

•  GameFi = game built around an exchange like Axie or StepN
•  NFTs = core use case is still speculation and trading
•   as a result, exchanges have the largest network effect - major ecosystems get built around exchanges

2. Ironically, exchanges are the most underserved application in crypto

• have a unique set of requirements around reliability, scalability and speed
• if FTX goes down for a few minutes, it’s catastrophic, but that’s more tolerable for a game
• DEXes succeed in spite of the underlying Layer 1s

History & Achievments

Founded: 2022

Funding:

Sei Labs has raised $5 million. The investment by Flow Traders and Hudson River Trading comes as part of a $5 million seed round led by Multicoin Capital. Other investors include Coinbase Ventures and GSR.

Milestones:

• Transaction Finality - 600ms
• 22k Orders per Second
• 200,000 Total Testnet Transactions
• 25K Testnet Users
• 50+ Apps Launching on Top

Core team

• Dan Edlebeck, co-founder
• Jeffrey Feng - co-founder
• Jay Jog - co-founder

Sei Labs is comprised of three types of backgrounds: 

• Developers from Robinhood, Databricks, Airbnb, etc. with extensive expertise in orderbook design, infrastructure and the Cosmos stack
• Cosmos OGs who have navigated the ecosystem for years
• Finance and strategy members from Goldman Sachs and other market makers who bridge the gaps between DeFi and institutions