Behind the Code EP9: Elexium Finance

Elexium Finance is a Ve33 DEX built from the ground up on Alephium. VE stands for “Vote Escrowed,” a tokenomics model pioneered by the Curve Finance platform. The (3, 3) concept, created by Andre Cronje, the creator of Yearn Finance, is based on game theory. In a cooperative scenario, if everyone acts in the protocol's best interest, the total value generated is maximized. This approach is built to align liquidity providers, users, and governance participants, ensuring incentives are shared in a way that keeps the protocol thriving.

Today, we will dive deeper into the minds of the developers behind Elexium Finance. I am privileged to interview not just one, but two core members of the team.

Let’s get into the interview!

Digger, Jekyll, thanks for accepting this interview. For those who don't know you yet, could you please introduce yourselves and tell us a bit about your background?

Jekyll: I am a 30 something year old male who has held a range of positions in real life from finance to tech to science. I can’t divulge fully but my life outside of crypto is very full. I’ve been part of multiple defi project teams since 2019.

Digger: I am Digger! A 30-something-year-old male seeking an army of plebs to follow me blindly into financial freedom. In all seriousness though, that’s pretty much my background. I was raised in a poor suburb of Australia. I spent a lot of time wishing for financial freedom, and during the DeFi summer in 2020, I found an accessible way to achieve this. I grew up loving computers and console games.

How did you first get involved in the crypto world, and when did you discover Alephium?

Jekyll: Digger’s answer below covers a lot of the story. But I first interacted with Bitcoin sometime around 2013, definitely fumbled that (I was not seriously looking at it for investment). I discovered Alephium sometime early in 2021, I’m sure main net was not properly live. I tried to bring the tomb finance team to build here but it was arguably too primitive at the time. Alephium was shilled to me by a friend singing its praises :)

Digger: The first part of this question gets a bit personal, but I'll do my best to keep it entertaining. My father was always into computers and even owned an internet cafe back when they were profitable. When he passed, I inherited a lot of his old equipment. None of it was really valuable, but there was some potential. During my grieving stage, I spent a lot of time building, breaking, and experimenting (mostly with computers). Before this, I had very little connection to my father or any of the knowledge he possessed about PC building.

Driven by obsession and compulsion (grief related probably), I spent 12 hours a day on YouTube with a room full of PC equipment, looking for a way to turn it all into profit. That’s when I discovered GPU mining—specifically ETH mining. This was around 4 or 5 months before the DeFi summer of 2020. At that time, GPU mining was "dead," so parts were cheap and accessible.

I got lucky and managed to make a profit on the Ethereum I mined, scaling up my mini operation. While doing this, I also participated in the early days of DeFi. Along the way, I got scammed out of maybe 10k-20k. I still see this as the "penance" I paid to enter the industry. Similar to an internship or learning a trade. One of the main lessons I learned was that trust and honesty are rare commodities in the crypto world.

This is where Jekyll and I started working together. I was being scammed, again, but was too caught up in the hype to see it. I can't remember exactly when, but it was somewhere between Sharktron and Andreas' Katrud and his Ponzi scheme on Tron. Jekyll warned me about the project I was involved in after doing a deep dive into the founder’s history. Eventually, Jekyll got a Tron wallet and joined me. We then started playing with SOUP, an algorithmic stablecoin on BSC. From there, Jekyll did what he does best—building connections within the SOUP community. This led to the formation of the team that built Tomb Finance on FTM. Tomb Finance was a large team, and I only knew Jekyll in real life but that was enough for me. So, I strapped in, unaware of the wild ride ahead.

Once Tomb was acquired by Harry Yeh in 2021 and the main team disbanded, I went on hiatus, only resurfacing in 2022 for $AYIN. I was still mining through the Switch from eth P.O.W to P.O.S, trying to figure out which coin would be the next big thing. I found that the best way to do this was to follow the miners and ASIC companies (like Bitmain). At that time, $ALPH was priced around 9-12c, and I became intrigued by POLW. I started mining and waited to see what would happen after the Lehman upgrade.

What inspired you to start building on Alephium?

Jekyll: For me it was the fact it was so early, a POW, fully sharded, decentralized L1 where I immediately had access to the founders. At the time, you couldn’t even buy it. Later, OTC from miners launched in the discord. I knew it was something special to keep an eye on, and it’s not even just the fact we were “early” as this is an investors perspective (of which I am one) rather than a builder perspective. It was just a nice place to be, a certain air about the project and community, not sure how to explain. I love POW, and most fall short, or for some reason flop due to lack of community, bad core teams etc. There was a few fantom people who came over around the same time and lurked in silence for ages.

Digger: The community. The $ALPH community has what it takes to get projects off the ground—they just need quality products to use. Our team has delivered, and we’ll do it again. The excitement of creating the "first" of any dApp was new to me. Most chains I had experience with were overcrowded etc.

The AYIN Trio. Has it always been Jekyll, 0DD, and Digger together, or was there someone else?

Digger and Jekyll: No, we’ve only worked together as a full trio for $AYIN. For this project, we introduced Reed. Digger worked on Tomb Finance as a moderator, and Jekyll was core team. 0dd was introduced for the Alph saga, the rest of tomb core team disbanded. Reed, we have been in a private discord with since 2020-ish and was a well-known dev in the fantom arena with Degen Watch. We’ve stayed in contact over the years. Once my shilling finally seemed to convince him to come to Alph, we joined forces for Elexium.

Can you share some challenges you faced while developing $AYIN and how you overcame them? What challenges are you currently facing with developing a Ve33 DEX on Alephium?

Jekyll: At the time ALPH was pre-Lehman. A lot of the dev work didn’t always make sense, but at that time we were working much closer to Cheng and Muchen. We also had zero idea if the launch would be successful, how to design tokenomics on a project that was the only dApp on Alph, heaps of issues. But we just powered on through them. There’s a lot of what ifs, risk, and unknowns when building dApps in general. You have to be a certain type of person/team, or it’ll eat you alive all the worries and potential scenarios.

Digger: Yes, as Jekyll mentioned above, we were in the pocket with $ALPH core team as we worked. It was definitely a pro having the core team in our DM's, not a very common practise on other chains. Even so, there was a lot of waiting for replies and explaining and reexplaining issues. Also, the risk of the unknown. It is a large burden to wear, knowing that your project is the first attempt at a DEX on a new chain. There can be a heavy load of responsibility to carry if people place their trust and funds into your smart contracts.

This new project has been a hell of a lot smoother. Having the basic connections, we need and the understanding of how the framework looks, we've spent a lot of our time on the extra elements the VeDEX needs.

From your previous tweets, you mentioned deploying a project on a different chain. Can you tell us about that project and give us an overview?

Jekyll: We built most of a VeDEX on an EVM L2, but 75% of the way through, we felt like we made the wrong choice, so we went back to ALPH. The original plan was to quit doing anything, which we did for 4 months. Eventually, the call was too loud.

Digger: After $AYIN, we considered moving to a new chain but ultimately returned to $ALPH due to the overwhelming potential and support here.

Before we deep dive into the DEX, what is a Ve33 DEX to you?

Jekyll: The reason our catchphrase was chosen as “The People’s Choice” was for this reason. The people using it get to decide what should be funded, and we as a team no longer have that control. I like it much better. The other reason we named it "The People’s Choice" was because we have a tight-knit relationship with the Alph community. Some may not like us (or me), but one thing is certain: things happen when we build, and when Alph people use what we build. I find it very fun, the way we bounce off each other. This is what a VE DEX is to me also, interacting with the community. While we can vote for what we want as a team, we will never have full control, and we become closer to the community as stewards rather than gatekeepers.

Digger: To me, it’s a DEX with governance that actually works. It’s still a gameable system, but it has added layers and incentives to encourage participation.

Let’s talk about Elexium Finance. How many people are on your team currently?

Digger and Jekyll: There are 4 in total. REED, JEKYLL, DIGGER, and 0DD. This is for the core founders. We had a 5th who recently departed, and there are the peripheral freelancers including UI, UX, advisors etc.

What pushed you to create Elexium Finance, a Vote Escrowed (3,3) DEX on Alephium?

Jekyll: I would say it’s mainly covered in the previous question. I’ve always liked this model but when we built Ayin I don’t think we or Alph was ready for it, we were building pre-Lehman. Rhone upgrade opened some doors, but we did consider other types of projects. This is probably the one that suits us and our users the most and I believe we have the right mix to make it successful, especially on Alephium.

Digger: The lack of a Vote Escrowed (3,3) DEX on Alephium.

What sets Elexium Finance apart from any other Ve33 DEX in the crypto space?

Jekyll: I am hoping this doesn’t sound arrogant, but our team is the first reason. We have the super devs mixed with a great community already. Aside from that, we are bringing an Alph first in the router we already teased on X and telegram. While a standard on other chains, it’s an Alph first, and will elevate the swap standard for future dexes or aggregators. There are other reasons coming post launch that will make us different to all Ve Dex as well but it’s too much alpha for here, at this point in time. First, we need to launch. I will say though that Alph as a chain is fresh ground, even building what maybe standard on other chains is groundbreaking in itself, as it’s pushing POW and the specific Alph proof of concept to its limits every day. This includes all other projects on Alph either already launched or in build behind the scenes. It’s not simple like evm to just fork a protocol and launch. It is, however, worth it. The prize at the other end is the community. Reminds me of 2020 FTM, without the scammers.

Digger: We aim to give the $ALPH community real choices.

How was your (3, 3) designed?

Jekyll: The 3,3 part is game theory- anyone interested can google the idea. It’s implemented as a standard mix of CRV vote locks and normal DEX things- a flywheel where stakers are incentivised to give to LPs, LPs earning Elexium are incentivised to stake and vote etc. like a flywheel. Everyone is encouraged monetarily to do the best thing for the protocol. In terms of Elexium the token, it’s entirely in the users control really. If someone acts against the interest of the protocol, they lose. This is the 3,3 part. We have some interesting mixes as part of this like haircut, vote decay, and use cases planned for the NFT.

As for the DEX itself is designed in a totally “hands off” from the team way. Much like aerodrome, we must use our team coins to vote for Elexium pairs and hope our users do too. We have not reserved supply specifically for any pools, as we believe this defeats the goal of a VE DEX. This way, if people think Elexium deserves less votes than some other token, that’s what will happen that week/epoch. The actual design was done by our UI freelancer in coordination with front end dev team. It’s very nice and I’m pretty happy with it. Summarising all of this, it’s designed like a mix of a curve VE system and a Uniswap DEX, although our LPs are implemented differently.

Digger: We chose the Ve33 model we liked best and adapted it for $ALPH. Since this is our first time building, and because we’re using Ralph, a lot of the code was written from scratch and not forked. This has been extremely labor-intensive, and the developers have been working around the clock to ensure a quick and smooth release.

Let's talk about DApp security. Will it be open-sourced on Day 1? What about external auditors? Will the findings be made public?

Jekyll: We have our own private, third party eyes to look over this as well as multiple devs on the team. We sought an audit from the core team but they are no longer conducting them, and eventually outside audits also. We are in contact with a few external auditor companies to begin soon enough. In the interest of DYOR, you’ll have to accept some level of risk here- although Alph is quite secure, always practice good wallet hygiene etc. We will follow what seems to be the standard now and open source after a period of time in private mode, particularly protecting the router unless someone else comes up with the same implementation.

Can you share what the most challenging part is when developing on Alephium?

Jekyll: Small new chain, definitely different devx to evm and others. Not full documentation, a lot of tooling not yet available. Me Being a somewhat controversial figure previously, there is nowhere to hide on Alph, either your friends with the well-known or you’re not and that’s a lonely place to be. It’s encouraging to see projects pop up out of nowhere who never really introduced themselves that much because it means this part isn’t intimidating to some people. Don’t confuse the above with a complaint though. It’s just new chain things.

Digger*: I have never been involved in a blockchain pre-smart contracts. There was a lot of groundwork to do and back and forwards to do with companies like CMC or Coingecko. Informing them of $ALPH's Smart Contract capabilities so they could on the information we had for them to display. This was a painful process. Sometimes, as Jekyll mentioned above it felt like we were being blocked simply because of personality clashes. It was also difficult to deal with so many people so closely, some with little to no defi experience.*

Without giving away trade secrets, how do you plan on expanding within Alephium?

Jekyll: Our partnerships are a good place to look at the start. Let’s call it lateral expansion :) integrating everyone who’s publicly put their name next to ours. Also, we will bring out new features that will allow people to earn, play etc within the protocol. Just like with Ayin- bringing Pounder and then Rubber, we will be equally as innovative, that’s a promise :D

We also have differing LP types that will allow certain types of projects to make an LP that really benefits their purpose 👀 👀 👀 more on this later

Digger: As Jekyll has mentioned, we value our partnerships and will start to build out our system by implementing these services fully. Then onwards and upwards! The sky and our imaginations is the limit!

How are you strategizing on onboarding LP stakers and designing liquidity? Could you share your roadmap and MVP?

Jekyll*: The tokenomics are the most important in my view for something like this. You cannot over - dilute, but you also need rewards. We use a clever mix of the VE system as well a hard-coded mix of emission split between stakers and LPs that changes based on certain criteria, so it is dynamic. We also have the bribe system, where anyone can add token rewards for a pool so potentially one pool could earn 4+ different tokens in rewards. Trading Fees are split between stakers and LPs, and these are directly claimable and accessible via dashboard , unlike other projects on Alephium. So an LP can see what trading fees they earn. As can a staker. In other implementations it is a bit lost in the UI and process, it’s just added to your LP.*

Also, as stated above, multiple pool types 👀

Digger: 1st Amazing Tokenomics. 2nd Top tier communication and morale boosting daily for the Community through competitions, games etc. 3rd Brilliant partnerships and onboarding of new teams. 4th The general shenanigans and pizazz only this team can bring.

Any words of wisdom you'd like to share with someone new to the crypto space?

Jekyll: If you want to build, get yourself in the right rooms/circles. A project requires many skills from different people. If you’re an investor, learn every single thing out can until it’s second nature. Stop pressing buttons 65x a day and have some patience and well thought out moves . Try and enjoy it most of all, it can be fun if you don’t let it overtake your thoughts, dreams and every spare moment. Have something else going on in your life. Take profits regularly, regardless of what people tell you. Yes on Elexium, yes on ALPH also.

Digger: The crypto sphere is akin to "The Wild West" If it’s too good to be true, it probably is. DO YOUR OWN FREAKING RESEARCH. Don’t take bob or Ahkmeds word for it. Divulge yourself in the information you need. You can gather that mostly from resources like YouTube. Don’t be lazy, work a strategy.

Mow: Thank you, Jekyll and Digger! This conversation has been a pleasure.

My Final Thoughts

Nine episodes of project deep dives and interviews, and this has been the most extensive and detailed one I've had with anonymous developers. Well, only their names are anonymous. Their identity is known to everyone as they are the creators of AYIN!

For more context: Their first creation, AYIN, has been one of the strongest pillars of Alephium. This gives almost every ALPH bull and every OG a very positive outlook on their newest creation, Elexium Finance.

The Ve33 DEX is the most preferred choice of design by many people. This is because the actual people who have a stake in the protocol get to shape its direction. No need to ask the developers to add LP Rewards to a certain pair, just VOTE or BRIBE and the pool gets it. Everyone who knows how to sign a transaction can benefit on a Ve33 DEX. Are you a meme project manager? Add your token LP and place some bribes! Oh, you have staked Elexium tokens? Sure, you can vote on the pool and that pool gets some allocation on the emissions. Awesome, isn't it?

I also like how they are staying true to the motif and that there is no allocation to incentivize a certain pool of their choice. Elexium Finance’s approach for the DEX to be a set-and-forget and just let people (with stake) decide is probably the most intuitive path towards decentralization and permissionless-ness.

Their token is scheduled to launch on AlphPad. Recently, a similar Ve33 DEX launched and successfully raised 40,000 ALPH. With the new APAD Tier System now in place, their robust technical background, and a dedicated following, I am confident that Elexium Finance can set new records. This is, of course, not financial advice.

Follow their socials here: Elexium Finance | Linktree

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