Prequel

When Bitcoin was created in 2008, its goal was to create a peer-to-peer system for payments. In 2013, Ethereum took this one step further by integrating smart contracts, consequently laying the basis for Decentralized Finance (DeFi), NFTs and other decentralized applications. However, with the rising adoption of cryptocurrencies, it soon became clear that Ethereum can’t singlehandedly scale to satisfy the needs of every user. Suddenly, DeFi became inaccessible to most people in the world as users had to pay tens of dollars in transaction fees.

It became clear that Ethereum needed help by having some of its work done outside of the main layer. Since then, there have been many protocols that have helped Ethereum to scale such as State Channels, Plasma, Side Chains and Optimistic Rollups. Although, what Vitalik Buterin considers to be the most prominent of them all, ZK Rollups, are fully yet to arrive. This includes StarkNet, which enables DeFi applications to achieve unlimited scale for its computation without having to sacrifice Ethereum’s security or composability. Here at JediSwap, we believe that the technology of StarkNet is game-changing and that’s why we decided to build on it.

Origins of JediSwap

The origins of JediSwap go back to early 2020. That’s when Rohit and Prince, the founders of Mudrex (a Y Combinator backed company) decided that it’s time to bring Open Finance benefits to billions of people. From their experience, they knew that there was a lot of demand for DeFi because it offers equal investment opportunities for everyone but at the same time it was accessible to very few people because of the high gas costs and low awareness. It became pretty clear that a community of strong believers can do it in the best way: not one person or a company. That gave rise to the Mesh community. The Mesh community had a very humble beginning with 10 people joining in the first month. 10 true web3 believers, who wanted to make web3 accessible to everyone. Since then the Mesh community has kept growing to 100s of people and has done experiments with different products on different protocols including Ethereum, Polygon and Arbitrum. Soon, the Mesh community came to the conclusion that validity rollups (aka ZK Rollups) are the long term solution to make web3 accessible to everyone. The Mesh community first came to know about StarkWare around March, 2021 and has been working on JediSwap since October, 2021.

Current state

Fast forward to December of 2022 and we just had the reason to celebrate our mainnet launch. We also had the pleasure of hosting StarkNet CC India where enthusiasts from all over the world came together to speak their minds and bring innovation to the whole ecosystem. During testnet, more than 150k wallets used JediSwap. Today, the JediSwap community has over 25000 Jedis as well as more than 300 contributors.

From day 1, the objective was to build the first ever fully permissionless and composable protocol on StarkNet. Our contracts are made upgradable to enable seamless migration on StarkNet regenesis that takes place by the end of 2022. Post regenesis all JediSwap contracts will automatically change into non-upgradable contracts making it fully permissionless. On JediSwap, users can swap their assets instantaneously with near to zero gas fees while relying on the security of Ethereum. Anyone can add a trading pair on JediSwap without asking for permission. Furthermore, builders are able to build any kind of advanced applications leveraging the composable nature of JediSwap.

Concluding thoughts

It’s undeniable that the technology behind cryptocurrencies has seen rapid growth and with the approaching complete-launch of ZK rollups, we are again one step closer to a financial system where each and every individual has equal rights. We are proud to contribute to this cause by creating a financial product on StarkNet that allows users to access DeFi in a cheap and convenient manner.

JediSwap is a fully permissionless and composable AMM on StarkNet to enable lightning-fast, near-gasless exchange of assets in a trustless manner. JediSwap is the first-ever trustless AMM on StarkNet.

Stay tuned for our blog updates as in future editions we will be covering the following topics:

• What made us build on StarkNet?

• What is Mesh Finance and how can you contribute to JediSwap?

• What’s on the horizon for Jedis?

For any immediate questions or requests, feel free to reach out to our team in Discord.