Interview with Serum Stories #12
Project Serum has featured us in their Serum Stories.
Read this story and more through Project Serum’s official column: https://link.medium.com/q4kQkBEBTjb
“I always told my blockchain friends that the future of crypto was going to be with decentralized exchanges…when I found out about Solana early on, I knew that it was the blockchain of choice. And upon much research, led me to the discovery of Serum…It was perfect for everything that I wanted to do, so we built on top of this, but obviously adding our own flavors to it too.”
Welcome to Serum Stories #12
How do you accelerate adoption and participation within a promising and hot blockchain ecosystem? Part of the answer is making the lives of developers and builders much easier. Dexlab encapsulates this idea through a single platform for your team to mint, launch, list, expand, and even trade.
For starters, Dexlab makes launching on Solana easy with their specialized service suite: a token minting lab, a launchpad, and a dedicated DEX for these listings. There’s another cool aspect to their project too: Dexlab itself is a Serum order book-based DEX GUI dedicated to listing these newly minted, incubated tokens. (One among many innovative variations on hosting your own Serum GUI). There’s something here for all Solana builders.
This week, we are delighted to be joined by the Dexlab team, who gives an insightful breakdown of Dexlab’s diverse offerings, share their founding story, and lay out what they see in Solana and Serum.
What’s up next
1. — What is Dexlab?
2. — What’s in a name?
3. — The founding story
4. — The minting lab!
5. — IDOs for all
6. — Why Serum and Solana?
7. — A message from the Dexlab team
Interview
1. For those who are not already in the know, what is your 30-second elevator pitch for Dexlab?
Dexlab is a platform that makes launching on Solana easy with a token minting lab, a launchpad, and a dedicated DEX for all listings. The platform runs on the Solana blockchain, which offers high scalability and very low fees.
We are essentially a one-stop shop for Solana enthusiasts and experts alike. We specialize in onboarding projects into the Solana ecosystem, getting involved every step of the way.
2. What’s in a name? You’ve got DEX and Lab right in the project name. Who are you inviting to come and experiment?
So our name literally means, “a decentralized laboratory”. In essence, we want people to be able to come to our platform and do almost everything, whether it’s from experimenting with token minting, creating NFTs, trading, API use, etc.
As the platform develops, we will keep adding features, but in essence, we are a one-stop-shop. Projects will be able to experiment and do almost everything at Dexlab (soon).
3. What brought you to where you are now? How would you describe the founding story of Dexlab?
Well, although Dexlab started a year ago, my crypto ventures go way beyond that. I’ve been investing in cryptocurrencies for many years now. But the story goes all the way back to a company I founded.
In fact, I founded my first company about 10 years ago, which was a booking platform for luxury vacation homes. We grew it to the top player in its category before moving on to Yellomobile after 2 years. I worked there as the youngest C-level executive, leading their platform strategy. At the time, they had also invested in CoinOne and, through that, I became connected to Icon, Korea’s most successful ICO up-to-date. This became my real entry point to the blockchain world.
My co-founder at Dexlab, Ray, was also my co-founder for my first company. Ray also focused on other projects, such as Seoul Auction, the number one art auction website in Korea, and Cashwalk, one of the top advertising apps for Android and iOS. We had more than 7 years of experience working together, so we decided to move onto the blockchain world. My friend from FTX told me about Solana, so immediately, I knew it was time for us to build our next project here.
4. That’s awesome, and you’ve certainly come a long way! You launched your DEX in Q1 2021 and have since released a number of ancillary features for traders, including your analytics, bots, and more.
One feature in particular that has just been released is your minting lab. Would you like to share more about how this works?
We actually launched our DEX in the summer of 2020, but at the time, the Solana ecosystem’s activity and the trading of SPL tokens were very low in terms of volume. During Q1 2021, we ramped up development and eventually started to focus on our platform’s flagship product, the Minting Lab.
In order to understand the Minting Lab, one must also understand how Solana’s Command Line Utility works. You see, The SPL CLI is the primary method to create and manage Solana tokens. Currently, it lacks the linkage to be able to manage environment settings, token sales, market listings, and token information. With Dexlab’s GUI, we are allowing users and projects to manage these settings, and be able to do everything from token issuance to adjusting utility settings. And all of this will be do-able with simple clicks and fill-ins.
Right now, we are in our alpha phase and have added the basic features such as minting and managing the tokens. We are adding more features such as vesting smart contracts, wallet management, listing management, etc.
5. Incredible. This all makes Dexlab a great example of a platform that leverages Serum to make Defi more user-friendly for a wider audience. You also have an IDO process for projects to apply and quickly launch their tokens. What was the thinking behind this offering?
As I mentioned earlier, we are a one-stop-shop for Solana projects. In essence, we are providing projects with a complete package when it comes to token distribution. That means we help projects create or further grow their community. We also hold a public sale for them, and then we provide the necessary market pair for the project.
In terms of traditional marketing, we provide full support for their pre-marketing (build community, review tokenomics, etc), and then provide the necessary distribution channels for interested parties that want to either realize profits or invest.
When our Minting Lab is fully functional, projects will be able to mint a token, distribute the token, and list it. All under one platform.
6. What do you see in Serum and Solana? What guided your choice to build on Solana blockchain and to host a Serum-based DEX?
I always told my blockchain friends that the future of crypto was going to be with decentralized exchanges. But for a DEX to work properly, we couldn’t have a product that was slow or extremely expensive. So, when I found out about Solana early on, I knew that it was the blockchain of choice. And upon much research, led me to the discovery of Serum. I was so fascinated by an on-chain orderbook, which I found to be revolutionary. It was perfect for everything that I wanted to do, so we built on top of this, but obviously adding our own flavors to it too.
7. Do you have any last words for your followers and supporters? Anything for your fans to look out for in the near to medium-term horizon?
First, I want to say thank you to all the supporters and community members who have stayed with us throughout this whole time, especially through the bad times. Your support means the world to us at Dexlab, and we want nothing but to see the community succeed with us.
My goal is that Dexlab becomes the entry-hub to Solana, so be on the lookout, because once the gateway completely opens, things are going to get wild! We are only at the beginning stages.
If you are a project the believes you can be part of the Solana ecosystem, be sure to check out our governance portal at https://governance.dexlab.space/#/overview for future collaborations with Dexlab.
We hope you enjoyed the interview!
We would love to continue having these kinds of conversations with all the incredible teams building on Serum and sharing them with you. Just let us know who you want to read about next!
You can keep up with the Dexlab team and development through their Twitter, Medium, Discord, and of course, their website.
…
Getting Started with Project Serum
Read Serum Roadmap 2.0
Read An Ultimate Vision for Project Serum
Read Building on Serum’s Vision
Check out Serum’s Developer Resources and Project Ideas
Listen to Sam Bankman-Fried’s breakdown of the Serum ecosystem
