Bancor’s story has always been tied to the evolution of DeFi itself. As the inventors of arguably the most widely used innovation in DeFi — the technology that underpins the Constant Product Automated Market Maker (CPAMM) — Bancor helped define an era of user-facing innovation. Today, the challenge isn’t proving that decentralized trading can work; it’s about building infrastructure that sustains ecosystems, supports institutions, and aligns with how blockchains generate real adoption.
In this community call, the questions came directly from you. From strategy execution and order flow, to gas consumption, to the bigger question of Bancor’s role over the next three years — the conversation explored the vision that connects these products, Dr. Mark Richardson’s latest research, and the path forward: how Bancor is building for the future of DeFi.
Bancor’s products — Carbon DeFi, the Arb Fast Lane, and the Vortex — each tackle a different problem, but their real strength lies in how they complement one another. Together, they represent a shift from retail-facing AMMs to infrastructure that underpins markets at scale.
Carbon DeFi Execution & Ebay’s PS5
Arb Fast Lane as the De-facto Taker
Metrics for Success
Gas Consumption Importance
Institutions
Most Valuable Product
Bancor’s Moat & IP Protection
Response to Critics of Licensing
Key Successes Since Carbon’s Launch
The Decline of Human Users / Rise of Bots
Can you explain how strategy execution works on Carbon DeFi? Specifically, why the display price on the app isn’t what determines whether an order fills — and what actually triggers a trade?
The in-app price on Carbon DeFi is an aggregated reference from major data sources. It helps orient users in any trading pair, but it’s not what triggers execution.
Orders only fill when an actual counterparty takes your quote onchain. Averages don’t clear markets — live bids and asks do.
And no market owes anyone a fill. If buy interest is thin, such as when a sell wall dominates, even a “fair” quote may not clear immediately. Adjusting quotes is normal price discovery, not a flaw in the protocol.
Carbon DeFi doesn’t “buy from you.” Execution requires real opposing interest somewhere on the chain at your chosen price.
Mark illustrated the point with a PlayStation 5 analogy:
“If Walmart lists at $520, Target at $505, and another shop at $495, an index might average to $507. But no store actually sells at $507. That’s how aggregated prices work — useful for reference, not for execution. And even if every store agreed on $500, your console still wouldn’t necessarily sell immediately. Demand at that moment is what clears inventory.”
The same is true on Carbon DeFi: fills only happen when a real counterparty trades at your price — not because an average suggests they should.
Follow-up: Isn’t this why the Arb Fast Lane exists — to act as the de facto taker for Carbon DeFi?
The Arb Fast Lane was built to correct for a common but false assumption in markets: that takers always choose the best price.
In reality, many users trade through the front end they know best, even when it means accepting worse execution.
When an external trade creates a back-runnable arbitrage, the Arb Fast Lane steps in. It routes that opportunity so Carbon DeFi strategies can fill at the superior price.
In effect, the Arb Fast Lane acts as a taker of last resort — approximating rational execution across venues and improving fill probabilities whenever mispricing appears.
What metrics does the team use internally to judge whether Bancor is succeeding — TVL, volume, unique users, partnerships, etc.?
TVL, volume, unique users, transaction count, and gas consumption.
The Arb Fast Lane was just ranked #1 for gas consumption on TAC. Who is this important to, and why?
Gas isn’t just another metric — it’s the one that matters most.
As Mark explained:
“Blockchains in general want applications that drive a lot of gas use. This is the way blockchains are monetized.”
Think of it like Apple’s app store. They track downloads because the apps that get downloaded the most are the ones bringing people in — and the biggest revenue drivers.
“When you see that Carbon DeFi and the Arb Fast Lane have been top gas consumers, you can think of it as the most downloaded app on the app store. The things you’d credit with your success are the things that are burning the most gas.”
Gas consumption is adoption. It’s a verifiable measure of actual use — something that can’t be faked with vanity metrics like follower counts.
“That’s the number one metric. And so for Bancor, it matters to us because it matters to them.”
Out of all Bancor’s current products, which is most valuable — and how do the benefits align on both sides?
The real strength isn’t in choosing one over the others — it’s in how they work together.
“Early on in the design of Carbon, we realized that the assumption that people would trade if the price is better than what they can get elsewhere is a bad assumption. Carbon becomes less valuable if you don’t have a solver system like the Arb Fast Lane to complement it. And then similarly, without the markup paradigm in Carbon, the Vortex design…”
Each product addresses a weakness the others can’t. Carbon DeFi executes strategies, but without the Arb Fast Lane acting as a solver system, its efficiency would be limited. The Vortex provides a fully standalone solution for consolidating tokens into ETH or BNT without oracles or keepers — but it depends on fees being generated elsewhere to remain useful.
“To say that one of these things is more valuable than the rest is missing the point. They come together. They each address the weaknesses of each other, so to speak.”
That’s the design philosophy: not siloed apps competing for attention, but infrastructure working in tandem. On their own, the Arb Fast Lane and the Vortex can stand — but their highest value comes when integrated with Carbon DeFi and with each other.
How does Bancor’s moat evolve? Is it more about technology, tokens, or community trust?
A durable moat comes from technology and protected intellectual property.
Tokens and community support matter, but they’re cultural forces — they can swing quickly. Inventions and defensibility persist.
What strengthens the moat over time is implementation quality, and the ability to package that technology for others through licensing.
How do you respond to critics who say Bancor’s licensing clashes with DeFi’s open-source ethos?
Mark didn’t mince words on this one:
“I’m a capitalist, right? So I don’t like open source. I like source-available, which I think is a nomenclature I’ve only just learned about recently. But source-available means that you can see the code and what it does. What it doesn’t do is invite you to use it and start your own business with it.”
He pushed back on the claim that “open source” is DeFi’s ethos:
“I think the people who want to steal good ideas are telling you that is the status quo in DeFi. It’s the people who have lots of capital and no good ideas that want things to be open source, because they can wait and see what looks interesting and then just take it — using their enormous political and financial resources to rewrite history and make it seem like they were the geniuses who brought it into the world.”
For Bancor, the principle is simple: source-available encourages innovation, protects IP, and creates sustainable business models. Open source, by contrast, too often allows powerful actors to appropriate breakthroughs and rebrand them as their own.
Looking back three years since Carbon launched, what has been a big success?
Mark highlighted two milestones as clear wins since Carbon DeFi’s launch.
First, standing up continuous, multi-chain bot operations with the Arb Fast Lane:
“From 2017 to 2022, we were really about building an app and the smart contract infrastructure that implied. But we were never really running bots. That was a brand new barrier we had to break through as an organization.”
He emphasized how daunting it was at first:
“Pivoting into something where we actually need constant 24/7 bot operations — on several blockchains — wasn’t something we anticipated. Especially with chains that don’t follow typical standards or even have an RPC provider. But we did it, and that’s a huge success to show — even just to ourselves — that we can.”
The second milestone was proving that licensing works:
“At the time we were formulating the business model, we didn’t know if people would actually be interested in licensing. But it turns out the products themselves are marketable infrastructure. They can be sold as licensable technology, not just as retail apps. And that’s been very well received.”
Together, those two achievements — running 24/7 infrastructure across chains and validating licensing demand — mark a step-change in Bancor’s trajectory.
What did you expect to happen since Carbon’s launch that hasn’t?
Mark admitted one of the biggest surprises since Carbon DeFi’s launch:
“There are fewer people today using blockchains than there were in 2020. And the trend isn’t slowing down — it just keeps going down. That really does strike me as strange.”
At first, he assumed the drop in human users was a symptom of the bear market, and that adoption would rebound with new highs in Bitcoin. But the recovery never came.
Why? Partly because many “users” may not actually be onchain.
“A lot of people trading on Coinbase think they’re using Bitcoin, but they’re not. They’re just interacting with a website. The same goes for apps in the app store that look blockchain-centric but actually have nothing to do with the chain itself.”
Meanwhile, institutional adoption is finding ways to sidestep the blockchain altogether — trading database entries instead of moving assets on-chain.
And yet, one audience has only grown: robots.
“Robots love using blockchains. They don’t need a UI, they don’t hesitate in decision-making, they read directly from smart contracts. In many ways, they’re the ideal customer.”
Looking ahead, Mark suggested that even the humans who remain may no longer accept one-size-fits-all interfaces.
“Very soon, your browser could have an AI plugin that knows exactly what kind of UI you prefer — and generates it for you. In that paradigm, you’re still building for the AI. The human user becomes secondary.”
For Bancor, the unexpected decline in human adoption — and the overwhelming rise in bot activity — poses a challenge, but also an opportunity. The question now is how to build for a future where machines, not humans, dominate onchain activity.
From strategy execution on Carbon DeFi to the Arb Fast Lane’s role as a market stabilizer, from licensing infrastructure to building a defensible moat — the story so far has been about proving that Bancor’s technology works at scale. The next question is: where does it go from here? Stay tuned for Part 2, where we cover:
Bancor’s Role Over the Next 12–24 Months
Bancor Chain
Scaling Carbon & Arb Fast Lane Fees
Carbon’s Next 3 Years (new model in the works)
Solana & Blockchain Politics
The Vortex Continuation
US Adoption & Geoblocking
Moderation & Community Strength
Contribution vs. Employment
DAO vs. Licensing
About Bancor
Since 2016, Bancor has been developing foundational technologies critical to the success of DeFi and the broader blockchain ecosystem — focusing on infrastructure that supports liquidity mechanics and ensures robust onchain market operation.
Website | Blog | X/Twitter | Analytics | YouTube | Governance
Carbon DeFi
Website | X/Twitter | Licensed Deployments | Analytics | Telegram
The Arb Fast Lane
Website | Research | Analytics
Carbon DeFi and the Arb Fast Lane are products of Bancor and governed by the Bancor DAO.
