Introducing Shipyard

‍We believe in markets that are free and fair

Shipyard Software was created with one purpose in mind – to create markets that are:

Free from authoritarian constraints and manipulation from special interests.

Fair with rules that are transparent and cannot be unilaterally changed.

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To accomplish this, Shipyard Software builds specialized decentralized exchanges for specific types of trades, crypto users, and DeFi products. 

Decentralization ensures transparency and security, which build user trust.

Specialization through user-centric design ensures that user interests are prioritized.

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We’ve been doing this for a long time

While Shipyard Software is new as an organization, our founders have been in crypto for quite some time. 

Abe Othman, Shipyard’s co-founder and CTO, is one of the most published academic researchers in automated market maker (AMM) design. Leading DEX Uniswap cited his 2012 PhD thesis in its v3 whitepaper. Prior to Shipyard, Abe was an original advisor to the Augur project alongside Vitalik Buterin, and he also created the first liquidity-sensitive homogeneous market maker. Abe’s numerous accomplishments have earned him a spot in Forbes’ 30 Under 30.

Mark Lurie, co-founder and CEO, founded an early NFT protocol in 2018 and led an ICO after serving as a venture investor at Bessemer Venture Partners. As an experienced operator and strategist, Mark has authored several op-eds on decentralized exchanges and DeFi regulations. Additionally, Mark is an active board member of GMO Trust (the issuer of GYEN, the first Yen-backed stablecoin) and the Foundation for Art & Blockchain. 

As a result, Shipyard’s products are created with a broad understanding of what’s happened in the cryptoverse over the past decade – and we have some pretty good ideas on how to improve things.

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Shipyard’s first DEX, Clipper

Clipper is designed to offer regular crypto traders the best possible prices on trades under $10,000. In its first 30 days, Clipper executed nearly 24,000 trades and regularly ranked among the top five DEXs in terms of active user count -- a testament to Shipyard’s design thesis. Clipper achieves optimal prices for smaller trades via its deliberately designed liquidity pool, which is capped at $20m in order to ensure the best balance between trading fees and slippage.

On the flipside, this setup leads to terrible prices for larger trades – but that’s a feature, not a bug. While other exchanges like Uniswap are designed to incentivize high-dollar trading volume, Clipper was designed to attract retail traders and repel whale traders and arbitrageurs. So far Clipper’s users seem to love it – see for yourself!

Every fleet begins with one ship

While Clipper is Shipyard’s first DEX, we plan to build an entire fleet of crypto offerings. 

Today, one-size-fits-all DEXs create usability gaps and opportunities for predatory rent seekers to exploit. If the blockchain industry ever hopes to supplant traditional finance, we need to create services that cater to the users we want to attract. Shipyard believes that a mature DeFi ecosystem will not consist of a handful of massive platforms catering to the biggest fish, but rather a series of highly specialized, user-specific exchanges and applications that benefits all.

There is a vast ocean of underserved crypto traders and DeFi users who can benefit from these tailored crypto products. That’s why Shipyard is working on a full pipeline of diverse products and services. By creating custom solutions that serve different crypto communities, Shipyard will empower anyone to trade in free and fair markets with a ship built just for them.