Constructing a swap DApp is comparatively simple. Operating it underneath actual market circumstances — with bots, arbitrageurs, and risky liquidity — just isn’t. BeInCrypto sat down with Andrey Fedorov, CMO & CBDO at STON.fi Dev at Consensus Hong Kong to listen to what that course of truly seemed like.
STON.fi launched as an AMM (automated market maker) on TON Blockchain — a swap interface with liquidity swimming pools. Omniston, its liquidity aggregation protocol, got here later as a response to fragmentation: a number of DEXs on TON meant customers needed to manually examine costs throughout protocols. Omniston was supposed to repair that by aggregating liquidity right into a single entry level.
Aggregation labored. However scale uncovered new constraints.
Three Classes From Manufacturing
Fedorov is candid about what went unsuitable early on. “First there was just one token, and it was very easy to provide the technology. Activity levels were minimal, and the user base was still small. But over time it exploded.”
The primary lesson was scaling. Each the entrance finish and again finish buckled underneath surprising demand. The second was subtler: multi-hop swaps — routing trades by means of intermediate tokens — labored in testing however revealed edge instances underneath stay circumstances. “In theory, both hops execute seamlessly,” Fedorov explains. “In practice, you have simultaneous transactions, liquidity shifting across pools, and multiple DEXs updating state at once. The first hop can succeed while the second fails.”
The third lesson was about complexity itself. The preliminary mannequin assumed a easy set of actors: customers swap, liquidity suppliers present. Actuality added arbitrageurs, bots, and extra advanced interplay patterns that hadn’t but been absolutely anticipated. “I don’t think it is actually possible to work out all these things in the beginning. You need to launch it, see how it goes, then fix something if it breaks.”
STON.fi now accounts for 80 to 90 % of DEX exercise on TON, underscoring its dominant share of swap quantity on the chain. However cross-chain swaps, subsequent on the roadmap, will reset that counter. “The fundamentals will be the same, but I’m sure we will see new challenges.”
Why Aggregation Wasn’t Sufficient
Omniston’s authentic proposition was to attach all TON DEX swimming pools and discover one of the best route. However aggregating public liquidity has a ceiling. If no one has added liquidity to a specific pair, no quantity of good routing helps.
“Sometimes people just don’t want to provide liquidity in a specific pool,” Fedorov says. “When a user wants to swap a token in this pool, they can’t get a good price because there is no liquidity.”
The reply was escrow swaps — a parallel execution path that faucets into non-public liquidity from skilled market makers, or “resolvers.” As an alternative of relying solely on AMM swimming pools, Omniston now evaluates each private and non-private sources and routes every swap by means of whichever delivers the higher consequence.
“It’s not a silver bullet, because we need to have both. The combination provides the best experience.”
Tokenized Equities as a Stress Take a look at
The escrow mannequin proved its worth when STON.fi built-in xStocks — tokenized representations of US equities issued by Backed Finance. These are technically TON jettons, however they behave in another way from crypto-native tokens in ways in which matter for execution.
The more durable problem was liquidity: in contrast to established crypto pairs, xStocks don’t but have deep AMM swimming pools throughout pairs. Technically, AMM help is there. However we additionally launched an extra execution path — escrow swaps — so customers can entry deeper liquidity. As we speak, most xStocks quantity executes by means of escrow.
From the person’s perspective, Fedorov insists the expertise ought to really feel an identical to some other swap. “We want our users to forget about technical complexity. Under the hood it is different, but users don’t see it.”
The Self-Custody Commerce-off
Fedorov is direct concerning the constraints of remaining absolutely non-custodial.
“Sometimes we see solutions with strong traction — big user bases, high volume. From a business standpoint, integrating them would boost our growth immediately. But many of them are centralized. When I bring those options to our technical team, the answer is simple: it doesn’t work like that.” STON.fi is non-custodial. Customers preserve their belongings of their wallets. Swaps are executed by good contracts.
Centralized integrations are sooner and less complicated — typically simply an API connection. DeFi integrations require trustless, contract-level logic the place belongings by no means depart the person’s pockets. “We could grow faster if we compromised on custody. But then we wouldn’t be building DeFi infrastructure — we’d be building another fintech layer.”
The trade-off isn’t solely technical. It’s academic. Typically this creates a advertising and communication problem. Self-custody shifts accountability to the person — one thing many newcomers underestimate. “If someone loses their seed phrase, we can’t restore access. We don’t have it. We’ve never had it. But quite often users still come to us expecting support, like they would from a bank or centralized exchange.”
In centralized programs, there’s a security web — password reset, account restoration, customer support with override energy. In DeFi, safety comes from not having that backdoor. The identical mechanism that protects customers additionally removes our capability to intervene.
For STON.fi, which means investing extra in onboarding, training, and clearer UX — with out diluting the core precept of self-custody.
“It’s a long-term bet. In the short term, education is harder. But in the long term, users understand the value of ownership. Especially in Web3, that’s the point.”
Distribution First, Then Depth
Fedorov frames TON not solely as a blockchain alternative but in addition as a distribution technique due to its integration with Telegram. STON.fi and Omniston combine with wallets, apps, video games, and bots throughout the Telegram ecosystem — each a possible swap floor. “They want to use the protocol because they want to enable swaps in their applications. But it is also our distribution network. It’s a win-win.”
The subsequent part is cross-chain aggregation — beginning with Tron, then increasing to EVM chains — to unify liquidity throughout ecosystems quite than simply throughout DEXs on a single chain.
“Make things easier for those who don’t want to think about technical stuff. Get wider distribution by integrating into all the apps. And aggregate liquidity from multiple blockchains, not just one,” Fedorov says. “That’s the roadmap. Now it’s about scaling it.”
