The Ones in the Arena: Rocket Joe
“It’s fun, it’s crazy and it’s early.” — Cryptofish, Co-founder, Trader Joe
Trader Joe, the one-stop DEX on Avalanche, is on the cusp of launching a new product: a launchpad for new DeFi primitives that prioritizes protocol-owned liquidity during the bootstrapping phase.
As they prepare for liftoff, Trader Joe is sponsoring a three-day security audit contest at Code4rena, to ensure their new product, Rocket Joe, is as sustainable as those they’ll be hosting on their popular DEX.
Read on for a rapid-fire Q&A with Trader Joe/Rocket Joe co-founder Cryptofish, and for more details on the audit contest.
What are you building, and what sets it apart from similar offerings in the space?
We’re building a platform for bootstrapping protocol-owned liquidity. It’s a new DeFi primitive and the best way to think of it is like Balancer’s LBPs. A set amount of tokens are up for auction over a 2 day period, but the main difference is that it results in the project owning 50% of its initial LP.
What’s your vision for your project? What are you building towards in the longer view?
A product that smooths out the initial seed liquidity launch on DEXes. We’ve witnessed quite a few times where a project will IDO on a launchpad like Avalaunch and then when they seed the initial LP on our DEX, it immediately gets sniped up by bots who then dump ferociously on retail.
Rocket Joe solves this by facilitating price discovery and preventing front-running by bots, whilst allowing projects to also own a huge chunk of their own liquidity. It’s also a great way for projects to seed their LP without having to sell half their tokens for AVAX.
What’s the most innovative idea in your protocol?
Projects can raise funds to seed liquidity and own half of it, by only committing their own tokens — this is a novel idea in itself.
It takes courage to undergo a public audit by a swarm of anonymous security researchers. It also says a lot about how much you prioritize security. What advice would you give to those on the fence?
We take security really really seriously. We’re never satisfied with just one audit; we want multiple, and of varying types too. Code4rena is a brilliant idea and we’ve heard great things about it!
Security has become an increasingly vital topic in DeFi. How do you think the ecosystem needs to evolve in order to rise to the challenge?
Better reviews of auditing firms. It’s really hard as a new project to decide which auditing firms are good and which are bad — and how to even discern the good from the bad. Better education is needed for sure.
What gets you most excited about DeFi?
It’s fun, it’s crazy and it’s early.
Complete the following sentence: “I wish more DeFi projects would…”
Stay focused over a long period of time. The constant feedback from Twitter, Telegram and Discord means you are always getting fed suggestions and often this means a team will start embarking on multiple projects at a time. I wish more projects would reduce their distractions and have a singular focus in what they’re doing.
What DeFi project name do you wish you’d thought of first?
None.. I honestly think Trader Joe is a brilliant name for a DEX.
What do you geek out about, beyond DeFi?
Lately, clothes!
Learn more about Rocket Joe
Rocket Joe’s $50K security audit contest opens January 25, 2022, and runs for three days. Details at code4rena.com.
The Ones in the Arena spotlights emerging and established DeFi projects and their founders, with an eye to celebrating and learning from them. The series’ name is inspired in part by Teddy Roosevelt’s famous quote, which has a central place in Code4rena’s philosophy.
