Darius Tabai aka HeavyD

"If a trader wants to trade massive size, one of the best things to do is tell the world beforehand." This is a ludicrous claim and is a consequence of believing your own BS. Jeff argues that making every whale order fully transparent on-chain actually improves their execution quality because (a) market-makers see the flow, step in, and tighten spreads, and (b) the public liquidation/stop prices don’t really put whales at risk. Both are objectively wrong. (1) Pre-trade transparency increases adverse-selection costs for large traders Execution cost is a zero-sum game because market-makers are utility maximizing entities. And information is a cost that is factored into this spread. Every extra dollar a market-maker extracts in spread is a dollar the transacting side pays. This is micro-structure 101. When a dealer/market maker knows the true size of an order, they widen spreads to offset inventory and information risk. If size revelation were free, TWAP/VWAP algos and hidden-size (“iceberg”) orders wouldn’t exist. By transmitting full-size, the whale ends up paying both the prevailing-spread and the follow-on impact as the book-reprices. Hyperliquid publishes size, margin, even liquidation prices in real time. That removes every information advantage the whale has and is offering this up for free to the market makers. So either you: (a) keep that advantage and trade at the prevailing spread OR (b) you give it up and pay both the prevailing spread plus the follow-on price impact as the book re-prices. Perfect transparency doesn’t eliminate spread—it simply transfers the cost of execution entirely onto the party showing size. In fact you also see this behavior on the HL orderbook. Every time there is a large order at the TOB, you notice the other-side immediately thin out. You can observe this even without an algo. Just stare at the orderbook long enough. (2) Transparency feeds other predatory and anticipatory traders further increasing the cost of transacting. There is already a ton of empirical data and research on on “predatory trading,” “order-anticipation,” and MEV all document that when large flow is observable, other fast agents front-run or back-run it, extracting rents from the order-placing originator. See Flash Boys 2.0 or this paper → arxiv.org/abs/1904.05234 (3) Public liquidation bands create new attack surfaces and invite “hunting” Liquidation “hunts” are not hypothetical. Same logic as broadcasting size: information is a cost. If the world knows your liquidation price, you WILL get hunted. Ask @JamesWynnReal. Jeff knows this; spinning a known risk as a “feature” is pure narrative gymnastics. (4) Tradfi market structure tells the opposite story 50% of U.S. equity volume now trades off-exchange or in dark pools precisely so institutions don't advertise size. Icebergs, conditional blocks, and RFQ platforms like @tradeparadigm and @Tradeweb exist simply because big size and fully lit books don’t mix. Paradigm alone is 35% of Deribit’s daily volume—proof that large clips avoid the CLOB. We wouldn’t have a business if everything went to the lit book. Retardio Also note that in Tradfi regulators demand post-trade transparency for fairness, yet allow pre-trade opacity because it delivers better execution. TLDR, a) Transparent books are great for retail price discovery; they’re empirically worse for block execution. This is why @paradex will have both a CLOB and RFQs for large-block execution away from the orderbook. b) 50-years of market-structure evolution, real-world behavior of institutional desks (dark pools, algos, hidden size) and the academic record on predatory trading, front-running and MEV all contradict Jeff’s arguments. The more troubling thing is that yet another crypto founder is more than happy to bend facts to fit a self serving narrative. @chameleon_jeff: "My exchange is transparent so therefore transparent exchanges are better" @armaniferrante "I built a centralized exchange because it is easy so all exchanges are better and more secure" (lol😂) Remember kids…..principles + truth > popularity.

We're seeing echoes of the tech boom in crypto's current direction, according to @DariusTabai. Always good to catch up with the big man from @vertex_protocol, so we did last week at the @SonicLabs Summit in Vienna. 🇦🇹 This covers where we're heading from a market point of view, the Sonic FeeM model, issues the industry faces from a VC standpoint, inflated valuations, and why it's been so hard for retail this cycle. @YouTube linked below. Enjoy! /// Timestamps: 00:00 Introduction 00:14 Meet Darius from Vertex 01:10 Vertex Protocol Overview 02:13 Surviving the Market 03:00 Darius' Mindset and Experience 04:27 Market Predictions and Trends 07:33 What is Sonic's Fee Monetization Model? 09:14 Future of L1s and L2s 10:59 Conclusion

We're seeing echoes of the tech boom in crypto's current direction, according to @DariusTabai. Always good to catch up with the big man from @vertex_protocol, so we did last week at the @SonicLabs Summit in Vienna. 🇦🇹 This covers where we're heading from a market point of view, the Sonic FeeM model, issues the industry faces from a VC standpoint, inflated valuations, and why it's been so hard for retail this cycle. @YouTube linked below. Enjoy! /// Timestamps: 00:00 Introduction 00:14 Meet Darius from Vertex 01:10 Vertex Protocol Overview 02:13 Surviving the Market 03:00 Darius' Mindset and Experience 04:27 Market Predictions and Trends 07:33 What is Sonic's Fee Monetization Model? 09:14 Future of L1s and L2s 10:59 Conclusion

We're seeing echoes of the tech boom in crypto's current direction, according to @DariusTabai. Always good to catch up with the big man from @vertex_protocol, so we did last week at the @SonicLabs Summit in Vienna. 🇦🇹 This covers where we're heading from a market point of view, the Sonic FeeM model, issues the industry faces from a VC standpoint, inflated valuations, and why it's been so hard for retail this cycle. @YouTube linked below. Enjoy! /// Timestamps: 00:00 Introduction 00:14 Meet Darius from Vertex 01:10 Vertex Protocol Overview 02:13 Surviving the Market 03:00 Darius' Mindset and Experience 04:27 Market Predictions and Trends 07:33 What is Sonic's Fee Monetization Model? 09:14 Future of L1s and L2s 10:59 Conclusion

We're seeing echoes of the tech boom in crypto's current direction, according to @DariusTabai. Always good to catch up with the big man from @vertex_protocol, so we did last week at the @SonicLabs Summit in Vienna. 🇦🇹 This covers where we're heading from a market point of view, the Sonic FeeM model, issues the industry faces from a VC standpoint, inflated valuations, and why it's been so hard for retail this cycle. @YouTube linked below. Enjoy! /// Timestamps: 00:00 Introduction 00:14 Meet Darius from Vertex 01:10 Vertex Protocol Overview 02:13 Surviving the Market 03:00 Darius' Mindset and Experience 04:27 Market Predictions and Trends 07:33 What is Sonic's Fee Monetization Model? 09:14 Future of L1s and L2s 10:59 Conclusion

Vertex Protocol Updates - April 2025 🧵 Gm ya'll! My bros at @vertex_protocol had another insanely bullish month! Here is everything that's going on... (cont.)... 1/x

Trade on Vertex. Earn $AVAX 🔺 Season 2 kicks off Wednesday 23rd April. 40K in AVAX tokens up for grabs, only for traders on Vertex on @avax. Read on to learn more 👇