ViFi Labs

The crypto economy deserves non-USD stablecoins. We are building the first capital-efficient DEX for onchain currencies. A new day starts now for Onchain FX.

The argument that cross-border payment costs are "just the price of moving money" collapses when you look at what it costs to move money domestically. Instant. Near-zero. Same underlying technology. The cost difference is not technical. It is institutional. And institutions can be rebuilt.

Nigeria receives more than $20 billion in remittances every year. At 8 percent average transfer costs, roughly $1.6 billion of that is captured by financial intermediaries before it reaches a Nigerian household. That is not a rounding error. That is a structural wealth transfer away from the families who need it most.

Every year, migrant workers send hundreds of billions of dollars home to their families. A significant portion of that money never arrives. It is captured in fees, spreads, and margins before it reaches the people it was sent for. This is not an accident. It is a feature.

ViFi's thesis: EM FX pairs are underserved not because the demand isn't there, but because the liquidity infrastructure was never built. We're building the onchain FX liquidity layer for local-currency corridors, ZAR, NGN, BRL and beyond. Not USD rails with EM endpoints. Native local-currency infrastructure.

Bitso now processes approximately 10% of all US-Mexico remittance volume via stablecoin rails. USD/MXN is a managed float with real volatility. That didn't stop the model from working. It made it necessary, because the SWIFT-correspondent alternative was costing migrants 5–7% per transfer.

"Emerging market currencies are too volatile for stablecoin FX infrastructure." We hear this constantly. It's used to explain why crypto payment rails "can't work" in Nigeria, Kenya, or Brazil. The data disagrees. Here's what it actually shows. 🧵

We’re thrilled to announce that we @ViFi_Labs have been chosen as a Circle Grant recipient! @Circle is helping bring the global economy onchain with USDC and a set of developer-first tools designed to make building with digital dollars easy, secure, and scalable. With Circle’s support, we’re excited to accelerate what we’re building, unlocking new possibilities through fast, cost-efficient, and interoperable onchain experiences. Explore the program and meet the latest cohort of grantees here. circle.com/blog/announcin…

We're glad to announce that @wschwab_ has joined ViFi as a lead smart contracts engineer. Will was formerly an engineer Head of Smart Contracts at Polygon Labs and a Engineering Manager at @AlchemixFi. He's working alongside our existing smart contracts team, and our focus is clear, mainnet!

To catch the full talk 👇🏽 youtube.com/watch?v=AYU5_J…

Our CoFounder @VarounVlogs talks FX failures what Onchain FX needs to become a global financial standard.

What will it take for Africa to invest in AFrica? Our take away from the recent @Nsconf_ Read here: linkedin.com/pulse/reflecti…

Varoun (@varounsvlogs), Co-founder of @ViFi_Labs, explains why off-chain FX breaks down in emerging markets and how on-chain FX primitives solve pricing, liquidity, and settlement risk. Listen to the talk on building capital-efficient currency rails for emerging markets.

If you used a Uniswap v2, you would take a 10% haircut. That's why traditional AMMs don't work for FX. That's why the @ViFI_Labs Virtual Fiat Environment does on-chain FX for the real world, where every fiat becomes tradable on-chain. 9/9

When that same swap passes through the @ViFi_Labs VFE. The combined effect shifts only from 8:1 to 8.08:1 That's less than 1% total slippage, nearly flat! The Wi-Fi VFE moves ten grand with almost no slippage. 8/9

What if Pendle & Uniswap had a baby and it grew up in emerging markets? That’s exactly what we’ve built at ViFi and here’s how we’re up to 90% cheaper vs traditional AMMs. A thread 🧵1/9