Founders Space Spotlight 🎙️ w Aslan from $DEEP | WEB3 Journey | Future of DEFI

The Spaces features host Mike interviewing Aslan (DeepBook at Mysten Labs) about his journey from Coinbase to GSR and then to Sui’s liquidity layer, DeepBook. Aslan recounts building Coinbase’s early DeFi rails, then moving to GSR for high-frequency trading and MEV, where latency optimization shaped his execution-first mindset. At Mysten, he and Tony rebuilt DeepBook v3 from scratch, prioritizing maximally optimized, minimal smart contracts and a tight focus on core markets. He details experiments like driving sub-1bp spreads to capture CEX–DEX arbitrage, and emphasizes DeepBook’s real value: composability that lets builders plug into shared liquidity and monetize quickly. Upcoming shifts include margin lending pools, a yield-bearing USDC, and enabling looping strategies via integrations with existing vaults. Aslan urges founders to ship MVPs, iterate fast, and build unique user experiences—options-quality UX and programmable “virtual liquidity” are notable frontiers—rather than chasing feature-bloat or copying incumbents. He highlights leadership by example, clear vision, and action producing information. Personal notes: Turkish origin (name means “lion”), Michigan State CS grad, multilingual, and lifelong competitor.

Founder Space Spotlight: Aslan (DeepBook, Mysten Labs) — Journey, DeepBook’s evolution on Sui, and the future of DeFi market structure

Participants and roles

• Mike (Host): Founder Space Spotlight moderator
• Aslan (Guest): Turkish-born builder based in Michigan; co-leads DeepBook at Mysten Labs; prior roles at Coinbase and GSR
• Tony (Mentioned): Co-lead on DeepBook at Mysten Labs; joined the same week as Aslan
• Audience: Diego (career path question), Uber (community remarks), another attendee (confirmed Aslan’s Turkish background and name meaning “lion”)

Executive summary — key takeaways

• DeepBook’s mandate: serve as Sui’s composable liquidity layer, enabling efficient, low-latency, CLOB-quality execution that other apps can plug into without rebuilding liquidity from scratch.
• Impact evidence: by tightening spreads (sub-1bp on some pairs) and latency-optimizing infra, DeepBook measurably captured CEX-DEX arbitrage flow, keeping value on-chain; Aslan noted DeepBook’s SUI markets are now trailing only Binance in venue volume and exceeding other CEXs.
• Build philosophy: small, empowered team; rebuild from zero if needed; ship minimal, maximally-optimized code; hyper-focus on a few core markets; run fast, measured experiments (1–2 week cycles) — “action produces information.”
• Value to builders: DeepBook is not merely a trading terminal; it’s an embedded, composable platform. Goal: teams of 2–3 can ship an app in ~2 months and earn day one by tapping DeepBook’s liquidity and shared revenue surfaces.
• What’s next: margin and novel lending pools (yield from borrow fees and liquidation rewards, not treasury bills), a yield-bearing USDC, and “components of DeepBook appearing in different places” (vaults, aggregators, lending protocols). Expect more direct user touchpoints atop DeepBook.
• Market-structure outlook: watch prop-AMMs on Solana and vault-based perpetuals (e.g., Jupiter, Hyperliquid). Explore “virtual liquidity” — computing quotes at trade time using oracles to 10x capital efficiency. The winning path is offering new user experiences that don’t exist elsewhere (e.g., truly usable on-chain options akin to Robinhood 0DTE UX), not cloning incumbents.

Aslan’s journey and how it shaped DeepBook

• Coinbase (pre-IPO through IPO and a bear market)
  • Role: Early DeFi integrations; helped stand up Coinbase’s first DeFi platform when staking and DEX integrations didn’t yet exist.
  • Lessons: Code quality and optimization first; minimize features and perfect them (cites Jack Dorsey–style principle). Focus on what users need over “feature sprawl.”
  • Culture: Visionary leadership (Brian Armstrong) and contrarian engineers; early brave push for legal clarity helped the industry long term.
• GSR (crypto market maker)
  • Scope: Built out the internal DeFi platform; led DEX-CEX arb and MEV initiatives; became No.1 DEX–CEX arbitrageur on Arbitrum and Polygon for ~a year.
  • Lessons: High-frequency trading rigor — latency measurements, end-to-end optimization (shaving milliseconds matters), competitive edge in winner-takes-all environments. Continuous competitive analysis (e.g., track prop-AMMs on Solana and learn from them).
• Mysten Labs (Sui)
  • Motivation: Wanted to build user-facing products that improve everyday DeFi experiences, not just “using money to make more money.”
  • DeepBook v3 reboot: When Aslan joined, a prior version existed but was brittle. A trivial 7-line change broke production, signaling the need for a clean-slate rebuild. Aslan and Tony rebuilt everything — smart contracts, indexer, public APIs, site — without reusing code, and maintained it largely as a two-person team until recently.
  • Empowerment: Mysten gave green lights and unblocked execution, enabling fast, high-quality shipping. Result: bug-free operations to date, with measurable performance gains and adoption.

DeepBook today — scope, design choices, and performance

• Problem framing: Create efficient on-chain capital markets on Sui with orderbook-quality execution and shared liquidity, not siloed pools per app.
• Execution edge: Latency-sensitive design and co-location practices enable very tight spreads and low price impact (Aslan cited ~2 bps price impact for $10k trades on core pairs).
• Market focus: Concentrate on a few deep markets first (e.g., SUI/USDC, DEEP/USDC, xBTC/USDC) instead of listing “everything.” Perfect fewer features/markets before expanding.
• Capturing CEX–DEX arbitrage: Hypothesis validated — with sub-1bp spreads, DeepBook attracts arb flow that historically extract value off-chain; now more of that value remains on-chain.
  • Evidence: On venue rankings (e.g., CoinMarketCap), DeepBook trails Binance for SUI volume and surpasses other CEXs — a direct measure of competitive on-chain execution.
• How users interact: Today much flow routes via aggregators and searchers; DeepBook sits under the surface as the liquidity engine rather than demanding that all users come to a proprietary front end.

Composability and the builder value proposition

• Not just a terminal: DeepBook is a programmable liquidity substrate apps can compose with.
  • Builders can skip bootstrapping their own TVL/LPs and focus on product/UX; DeepBook’s pools and infra do the heavy lifting.
• Monetization path: Aslan’s goal for 2025 is to let a 2–3 person team ship in ~2 months and earn on day one by plugging into DeepBook’s infra.
• Collaboration model: Builders often reach out inbound; Aslan prefers tight collaboration — weekly calls, joint ideation, prioritization, adding small features in DeepBook if it unlocks their use case.

Experimentation engine — how ideas become shipped features

• Process: Small chat → 30-minute brainstorm → quick design doc → next-day approvals → define metrics and run a 1–2 week experiment.
• Principle: “Action produces information.” Ship minimal changes, measure sharply, double down on what works, stop what doesn’t.
• MVP discipline: Many teams overbuild (20+ features). Aslan’s advice: strip to a tiny core, ship it, observe real usage, then iterate.
• Example learning: Lotus vaults showed vaults work best when curated and managed by a pro market maker using deposits to generate value for users; retail should “deposit and forget,” with the strategy tier handled by experts.

Near-term roadmap and the coming “shift” in how DeepBook shows up

• Margin and lending pools
  • Pools accrue yield from borrow fees and liquidation rewards (distinct from treasury-backed stablecoin yields). Users can supply/withdraw without trading.
  • Enables direct interaction surfaces beyond aggregators: supply flows, leveraged long/short, and derivatives layers built atop.
• Yield-bearing USDC (DeepBook-native)
  • Design goal: higher APR than traditional treasury-backed stablecoins; can serve as collateral.
  • Strategies like looping (borrow USDC → deposit → use yield-bearing receipt as collateral → borrow more) become possible.
  • Expect vaults like Chi Finance and Volo to tap DeepBook pools for improved USDC strategies.
• More touchpoints: Users will increasingly interact directly with DeepBook components via partner UIs — “DeepBook parts appearing in different places.”

Sui’s opportunity and the future of DeFi market structure

• The north star: deliver entirely new user experiences that don’t exist elsewhere; do not clone incumbents.
  • Example: On-chain options still don’t match the Robinhood-like 0DTE retail experience; most crypto options have 5–10% spreads — far from usable. Solving this on Sui would be a major unlock.
• Trends to watch and learn from
  • Prop-AMMs on Solana: market making via oracle updates rather than constantly re-posting book orders; instructive for Sui.
  • Vault-based perps (Jupiter, Hyperliquid): bifurcate users into LP-vault providers vs. traders; design for “no extraction” while delivering strong UX. When done right, LP vaults can earn 20–30% APR while traders get competitive execution.
• Virtual liquidity and programmable execution
  • Idea: compute the “virtual order book” at trade time off an oracle, rather than maintaining deep resting liquidity. If price quality is preserved, capital requirements can drop by an order of magnitude.
  • Unique to crypto: such programmable execution is infeasible in TradFi given rule rigidity and coordination costs, but it’s transparent and composable on-chain.

Leadership, culture, and personal drivers

• Leadership values: clear vision, sharp instinct (trend vs. fad), and being the hardest worker in the room; never ask others to do more than you do yourself (Elon example).
• Competitive mindset: grew up playing soccer and rugby; lifelong competitive gamer; thrives on leaderboards and performance.
• Background: born in Russia to immigrant parents; values education; multilingual (Russian, Turkish, English); name “Aslan” means “lion” in Turkish — a fitting match to his competitive nature.
• Explaining DeepBook to non-crypto friends: “It’s an exchange.” Aslan generally avoids deep technical explanations in casual settings due to the complexity and common misconceptions.

Audience Q&A and career guidance

• What is GSR? A crypto market-making firm.
• How to get into web3 dev?
  • Aslan studied Computer Science but says there’s no single path. Build things, deploy, post on Twitter, be present and proactive. Pet projects matter more than pedigrees.
  • The market is fluid (AI changing white-collar work). The constant: ship, learn, iterate, and get a little uncomfortable.
• Community note: audience members highlighted Aslan’s consistent support of DeFi builders and willingness to share insights publicly.

Calls to action for builders

• Treat DeepBook as composable infra, not just a terminal.
• Ship an MVP, measure, iterate quickly; keep the feature surface minimal and perfected.
• If a small DeepBook feature would unlock your idea, ask — the team routinely ships targeted changes to enable partners.
• Reach out to Aslan via DM if you want to build on DeepBook; he actively co-ideates and helps teams turn ideas into revenue-generating products on Sui.