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What Makes Catalyst Different?

The creation of the unit of liquidity enables 4 significant improvements from current solutions:

  1. Most importantly, Catalyst allows for permissionless token pool creation. To date, there is no DEX that allows for cross-chain pools to be permissionlessly created. This allows Catalyst to support the long tail of assets that cannot be found on any other exchange.
  2. User experience. 1-click transaction on any supported chain, where native assets are swapped. No more excessive bridging and 3+ transactions to approve a swap, and no more reliance on wrapped assets (e.g., hETH, sETH, USDCet).
  3. Scalable liquidity. Single-sided pools per asset per chain. No fragmented liquidity from Central Executor chains or splitting liquidity to supply an intermediary bridge token.
  4. Security by design. One bridge message is sent, so the sole attack vector is on that message—as opposed to the 4-6 attack surfaces of current solutions. This will be mitigated by only working with trust-minimized, battle-tested interoperability protocols like IBC.

Beyond the unit of liquidity, Catalyst is also innovating on other dimensions:

  • MEV redistribution: Catalyst LPs will receive protocol-captured MEV as a sustainable return in addition to pool fees. We want to reward LPs for exposing capital to market making risk such as impermanent loss. Our design has fundamental economic advantages because it internalizes MEV and redistributes it to LPs, making it a better foundation for providing liquidity compared to other DEXs.
  • AA relayer integration: Catalyst UI will integrate best-in-class relayers for gas sponsorships, rules-based transaction logic, multi-call transactions, etc.