From Liquidity Layer to Execution Engine: How Omniston Scaled in Production

Building a swap DApp is comparatively simple. Running it below 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 hear what that course of really regarded 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 had to manually evaluate costs throughout protocols. Omniston was supposed to repair that by aggregating liquidity right into a single entry level.

Aggregation labored. But scale uncovered new constraints.

Three Lessons From Production

Fedorov is candid about what went improper early on. “First there was only one token, and it was very simple to present the know-how. Activity ranges have been minimal, and the consumer base was nonetheless small. But over time it exploded.”

The first lesson was scaling. Both the entrance finish and again finish buckled below sudden demand. The second was subtler: multi-hop swaps — routing trades by way of intermediate tokens — labored in testing however revealed edge circumstances below stay circumstances. “In principle, each hops execute seamlessly,” Fedorov explains. “In observe, you’ve gotten simultaneous transactions, liquidity shifting throughout swimming pools, and a number of DEXs updating state directly. The first hop can succeed whereas the second fails.”

The third lesson was about complexity itself. The preliminary mannequin assumed a easy set of actors: customers swap, liquidity suppliers present. Reality added arbitrageurs, bots, and extra advanced interplay patterns that hadn’t but been totally anticipated. “I don’t assume it’s really potential to work out all these items in the start. You want to launch it, see the way it goes, then repair one thing 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. But cross-chain swaps, subsequent on the roadmap, will reset that counter. “The fundamentals would be the similar, however I’m certain we are going to see new challenges.”

Why Aggregation Wasn’t Enough

Omniston’s unique proposition was to join all TON DEX swimming pools and discover the very best route. But aggregating public liquidity has a ceiling. If no person has added liquidity to a selected pair, no quantity of good routing helps.

“Sometimes individuals simply don’t need to present liquidity in a selected pool,” Fedorov says. “When a consumer desires to swap a token in this pool, they will’t get worth as a result of there isn’t any liquidity.”

The reply was escrow swaps — a parallel execution path that faucets into personal liquidity from skilled market makers, or “resolvers.” Instead of relying solely on AMM swimming pools, Omniston now evaluates each private and non-private sources and routes every swap by way of whichever delivers the higher final result.

“It’s not a silver bullet, as a result of we’d like to have each. The mixture supplies the very best expertise.”

Tokenized Equities as a Stress Test

The escrow mannequin proved its worth when STON.fi integrated 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: not like established crypto pairs, xStocks don’t but have deep AMM swimming pools throughout pairs. Technically, AMM help is there. But we additionally launched a further execution path — escrow swaps — so customers can entry deeper liquidity. Today, most xStocks quantity executes by way of escrow.

From the consumer’s perspective, Fedorov insists the expertise ought to really feel an identical to every other swap. “We need our customers to overlook about technical complexity. Under the hood it’s totally different, however customers don’t see it.”

The Self-Custody Trade-off

Fedorov is direct concerning the constraints of remaining totally non-custodial. 

“Sometimes we see options with robust traction — huge consumer bases, high quantity. From a enterprise standpoint, integrating them would increase our development instantly. But a lot of them are centralized. When I convey these choices to our technical group, the reply is straightforward: it doesn’t work like that.” STON.fi is non-custodial. Users maintain their property in their wallets. Swaps are executed by good contracts.

Centralized integrations are quicker and easier — usually simply an API connection. DeFi integrations require trustless, contract-level logic the place property by no means go away the consumer’s pockets. “We may develop quicker if we compromised on custody. But then we wouldn’t be constructing DeFi infrastructure — we’d be constructing one other fintech layer.”

The trade-off isn’t solely technical. It’s academic. Sometimes this creates a advertising and communication problem. Self-custody shifts accountability to the consumer — one thing many newcomers underestimate. “If somebody loses their seed phrase, we will’t restore entry. We don’t have it. We’ve by no means had it. But very often customers nonetheless come to us anticipating help, like they’d from a financial institution or centralized change.”

In centralized methods, there’s a security internet — password reset, account restoration, customer support with override energy. In DeFi, safety comes from not having that backdoor. The similar mechanism that protects customers additionally removes our capability to intervene.

For STON.fi, meaning investing extra in onboarding, schooling, and clearer UX — with out diluting the core precept of self-custody.

“It’s a long-term guess. In the brief time period, schooling is more durable. But in the long run, customers perceive the worth of possession. Especially in Web3, that’s the purpose.”

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 need to use the protocol as a result of they need to allow swaps in their purposes. But it is usually our distribution community. 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 reasonably than simply throughout DEXs on a single chain.

“Make issues simpler for individuals who don’t need to take into consideration technical stuff. Get wider distribution by integrating into all of the apps. And combination liquidity from a number of blockchains, not only one,” Fedorov says. “That’s the roadmap. Now it’s about scaling it.”

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