Verto Exchange Founder Reveals Why He Built the First DEX on Arweave

Well, in the very beginning, I was in middle school. I'm currently a senior in high school, but I discovered crypto around November 2017, right at the end of the last bull run. The first blockchain application I used was Steemit, and although I'm not a writer by any means, the concept of being paid directly for content I produced fascinated me. Though Steemit isn't the platform it once was, it taught me the fundamentals of dealing with cryptocurrency and showed me a new strategic frontier.

Myself along with the team behind Nest.realty, a platform to store code permanently for others to use, had recently discovered a new concept the Arweave team was pioneering: Profit-sharing tokens.

We wanted to be able to reward developers for the value they provided to the ecosystem with the code they published on Nest.realty, and building a profit-sharing token for it was the perfect way to achieve this goal.

Additionally, because the concept was so new at the time, no exchange existed that would allow people to easily trade between these tokens and AR, Arweave's native currency. So, we decided to pursue building what became Verto: A token exchange protocol on the Arweave blockchain.

Besides myself, we currently have 5 other people actively contributing to the codebase and one person handling community relations. I met the developers from the Nest.realty project, as they were direct contributors to the open-source community on GitHub.

I'm American, but we have team members in Hungary, the UK, Germany, and India. Time zones can be challenging to coordinate for synchronous meetings, but it also means there's always someone awake and working.

Arweave allowed us to fulfill the requirement of permanent, immutable, and always accessible data storage. This was exactly what we needed for Nest.realty, and the new concept of profit-sharing tokens made us quickly realize that storing data and computing on Arweave would be extremely cost-effective.

Verto is powered by a network of trading posts, or servers built to handle incoming and outgoing orders on the exchange. In order to disincentivize trading posts from processing orders incorrectly or maliciously, all trading posts are required to stake VRT, the Verto Protocol token. If a trading post acts maliciously, Verto's profit-sharing community can vote to slash the stake of the trading post.

In addition to being used for staking purposes, VRT is a profit-sharing token, which means that a small fee is taken on every trade made. This fee is randomly given to a VRT token holder. Fees are taken on the currency a user is using to trade, which means that VRT token holders have a chance to earn some of the other profit-sharing tokens being traded on the exchange.

Unlike traditional blockchains, Arweave's blockweave is specifically optimized to store any amount of data indefinitely.

I expect the Arweave ecosystem to continue growing as a vibrant community. Just in the past few weeks, the rate of growth we've seen has been unprecedented. New people are rapidly joining the community, collaborating with others, and creating profit-sharing communities of their own. I expect this growth to continue over the coming years as Arweave continues being discovered by the public.

I believe that the milestones being set and achieved in Arweave will largely be determined by the applications and protocols on top of it. In short, I don't know what the future holds, but I can't wait to see what other people build. Arweave brings forward a new frontier for both data and finance, together.

We're continuing to advance the development of the protocol and UI as we move through the Beta phase. With the launch of micro-assets, it's become increasingly important to update our UI/UX accordingly. You can expect to see this soon! Additionally, we're releasing the testing version of Vallo, a mobile app for managing your Arweave assets.

I'm really excited to see applications/protocols like Community.xyz, ArDrive, Koi, Boost, Viewblock, Limestone, CoNstellation, and Kyve grow. Each of these applications has pushed the boundaries of what's possible on Arweave, and they help inspire future builders in the space.

I believe that crypto is going to continue being used by more and more people. As time goes on, it's becoming increasingly clear that this technology can solve problems that centralized entities or governments cannot. I think it's just a matter of time before this technology becomes completely mainstream.

Regulations – Governments haven't yet figured out how to regulate cryptocurrency. Because of this, applications have to take drastic, negative measures (such as geofencing the US) to ensure the safety of the applications' creators and their users.

UX – There are only a handful of truly wonderful user experiences in crypto. Rainbow is a great example. In order for these complex subjects to be understandable by the public, they must have straightforward and intuitive user experiences. I especially look forward to seeing more applications that implement the technology in a way that people don't even realize blockchain is under the hood.

I believe that blockchain replaces the need for most centralized forms of governance. Over the next 10 years, I expect governments using blockchain to manage their native currencies and a shift in employment toward decentralized protocol startups