How Odos Became DeFi’s Power Engine

by
Victoria d’Este

Printed: March 30, 2025 at 10:24 am Up to date: March 30, 2025 at 10:27 am

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March 30, 2025 at 10:24 am

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In a DeFi world more and more outlined by complexity and fragmentation, Odos has carved out a novel position as a robust execution layer designed to make decentralized buying and selling smarter, quicker, and extra seamless. Odos is tackling one of many greatest challenges within the DeFi house—delivering the very best commerce outcomes in a extremely fragmented and complicated setting—by specializing in two key areas: routing optimization and deep, cross-chain liquidity entry.

Main that effort is Ahmet Ozcan, Co-founder and CEO of Odos. On this interview, he shares how the platform got here to life, what units its expertise aside, and why the way forward for DeFi might rely upon invisible infrastructure, agent-based techniques, and a better method to on-chain execution.

Are you able to share your journey to Web3? 

I truly got here to crypto and Web3 a bit late. I used to be working at IBM for a very long time, most lately managing an AI staff. So I used to be already deep into AI when it began to get sizzling once more. Round 2020, I personally obtained into crypto.

After I give up IBM and began my firm, I needed to work on the intersection of AI and crypto. The opposite founders additionally had comparable backgrounds, so it was an important match. However the true turning level got here after I met the founders of The Graph Protocol. We began working with them and performing some initiatives.

Then 2021 got here—DeFi summer time occurred—and that basically caught my consideration. I used to be annoyed with the expertise, particularly on decentralized exchanges. The fragmentation was annoying. Like many founders, I used to be pushed by frustration and a need to unravel an actual drawback.

With my background in physics, optimization has all the time been necessary to me. So, I began specializing in decentralized finance and routing optimization to handle the fragmentation challenge. My journey into Web3 was a bit later than others, however I feel my business background brings a distinct perspective.

Might you stroll us via how the Odos routing algorithm works? What makes it distinctive?

Think about DeFi as a map, the place tokens are cities and swaps are roads connecting them. To get out of your enter token to the one you truly need, you typically need to cross via a couple of cities or tokens.

Odos appears in any respect doable routes throughout all of the DEXs and swimming pools we help and identifies essentially the most environment friendly path from begin to end. We begin by pulling in an enormous variety of swap choices; then, we start filtering out those that don’t make sense—perhaps they require additional tokens or have excessive fuel charges. By way of this iterative elimination, we slim down the choices till we discover the neatest, most optimum route on your tokens.

What makes Odos completely different is that we don’t simply sew collectively particular person paths one after the other. We run a full optimization over your complete graph of doable swaps and token mixtures. That enables us to constantly discover higher mixtures and ship higher costs to customers.

Proper now, we’re additionally constructing a machine studying layer on prime of all the pieces to be taught from previous trades, make smarter selections quicker, and adapt to altering market circumstances in real-time. So, the system will get higher and higher over time.

When you might immediately enhance one a part of the DeFi ecosystem 10x to learn Odos, what would it not be?

I might 10x the adoption of agentic techniques—agent-based DeFi and intent-driven interfaces. As we transfer away from the click-based DeFi interfaces we use at the moment, customers will more and more depend on autonomous brokers to behave on their behalf.

As an alternative of manually executing each swap, customers will simply categorical intents like “get me the most effective worth” or “rebalance my portfolio.” This may enhance person expertise and scale back safety dangers. Brokers can function 24/7 and do rather more than an individual attempting to navigate all the pieces manually.

So a flourishing agent ecosystem would actually drive demand for precisely the sort of infrastructure we’re constructing at Odos.

How does Odos assess and reply to the challenges of liquidity fragmentation throughout chains and DEXs, particularly with the rise of Layer 2s, appchains, and non-EVM environments?

Liquidity fragmentation has all the time been a problem, but it surely’s getting worse with the rise of Layer 2s and appchains. Proper now, we’re fixing fragmentation inside particular person chains—aggregating as many DEXs and swimming pools as doable to provide customers the most effective execution. However we’re additionally designing for the long run.

We envision a future the place customers—and particularly agent-based techniques—don’t care what chain they’re on. They simply need the most effective final result. So we’re actively making ready for a world the place Odos can function an execution engine throughout environments, dealing with cross-chain intents, messaging protocols, and even permissioned liquidity when wanted.

We don’t imagine in continually transferring liquidity to new chains—that’s inefficient. For instance, have a look at what the OP Superchain is doing to unravel interoperability inside its ecosystem. That’s an important place to begin.

As for deciding which chains to help, we fastidiously monitor the place liquidity and customers are migrating. Not each chain is value integrating straight away. We think about person demand, sustainability, whole worth locked, and the way energetic the ecosystem is. We wish to meet customers the place they’re with out spreading ourselves too skinny.

In what methods does Odos contribute to the general effectivity and worth discovery in decentralized markets? Do you suppose DEX aggregators are under-recognized for his or her affect?

Sure, completely—they’re under-recognized. DEX aggregators like Odos play a crucial position in making DeFi markets extra environment friendly. By routing orders throughout fragmented liquidity, we scale back spreads, unify pricing, and make arbitrage tougher to take advantage of.

We assist be sure that liquidity is used the place it’s wanted most, which improves the person expertise—even for these in a roundabout way utilizing Odos. We act as invisible infrastructure, coordinating movement behind the scenes. Many individuals don’t notice it’s not only a assortment of DEXs—it’s the underlying infrastructure that basically powers DeFi.

How do you identify which protocols and chains to combine with? What requirements should they meet?

We get this query rather a lot from new protocols and chains. We have a look at a mixture of liquidity depth, person demand, technical maturity, and safety. Our north star is all the time person execution high quality—does this integration meaningfully enhance it?

We additionally have a look at composability and the way steady the protocol is, how simple it’s to observe and keep, and whether or not there’s actual financial exercise—not simply farming after which abandonment. We attempt to stability exercise and safety, that are the 2 most necessary components.

Odos has been built-in with a number of main protocols. What defines a helpful or strategic partnership for you?

We outline strategic partnerships by three key issues: significant liquidity, infrastructure innovation, and shared distribution. A very good companion both brings belongings and swimming pools our customers want, provides infrastructure like bridges or intent layers that improve our routing, or helps lengthen our attain to extra customers.

We additionally worth philosophical alignment—companions who imagine in abstraction, composability, and lowering person friction. Strategic worth goes each methods: the protocols we combine into and the platforms that combine us—like wallets, dashboards, meta-aggregators, and brokers. These companions use Odos as a backend engine to ship the most effective trades, which extends our execution flywheel and strengthens the ecosystem.

As DeFi begins intersecting with AI-driven brokers, modular execution, and RWAs, how does Odos plan to remain related and responsive?

We’re already positioning Odos because the execution spine for this subsequent part of DeFi. On the agent aspect, Odos is already getting used behind the scenes by early intent-based techniques. We’re designing interfaces for goal-oriented execution so brokers can request actions like rebalancing or liquidating with out micromanaging each step.

On the modular execution entrance, we’re making Odos composable so it may plug into varied environments—whether or not it’s rollups, shared sequencing, or programmable automation layers.

As for RWAs (real-world belongings), the chance is big. These belongings nonetheless want environment friendly, safe on-chain execution—particularly within the early phases. Whether or not it’s tokenized treasuries or actual property, Odos can guarantee environment friendly transaction routing.

Might Odos evolve into one thing past a DEX aggregator—perhaps a broader execution layer for on-chain finance?

I truly don’t like calling Odos an aggregator, because it suggests we simply acquire liquidity. However we consider it extra as an agentic navigation layer for on-chain finance.

As DeFi shifts towards intent-based and agentic techniques, we’d like infrastructure that may translate high-level objectives into optimized on-chain execution. Excessive-level brokers like LLMs are nice for planning, however they’ll’t handle DeFi’s real-time dynamics. That’s the place Odos is available in—we’re constructing for precisely that future.

What are essentially the most underappreciated technological or structural traits in DeFi at the moment that Odos is making ready for?

One is RWAs and the necessity for permissioned execution. Many companions require KYC/AML-compliant entry to permissioned liquidity swimming pools. We’re designing Odos to help these necessities whereas nonetheless delivering robust execution so institutional customers can keep on-chain fairly than transferring to centralized exchanges or walled gardens.

The second underappreciated pattern is agentic techniques. Many individuals nonetheless consider them as easy bots. Nevertheless, as somebody with an AI background, I see how multi-agent techniques are already altering issues exterior Web3. As soon as AI consultants begin constructing in crypto, how individuals work together with DeFi will likely be a game-changer.

What would a very optimum decentralized buying and selling expertise seem like? What are the remaining obstacles?

It ought to really feel like magic. Customers categorical what they need—the system handles the remaining. Our aim is to turn out to be invisible.

It needs to be chain-agnostic, trust-minimized, and environment friendly. However threat administration and person expertise are nonetheless the most important hurdles. Individuals nonetheless belief centralized exchanges extra, particularly in some nations. They wrestle with wallets, sensible contract dangers, MEV.

However brokers don’t care about belief—they function programmatically. Agentic execution might help take away these psychological obstacles and produce us nearer to a very decentralized expertise.

Are you able to please share the roadmap for Odos?

We printed our roadmap originally of the yr. This yr, we’re centered on cross-chain capabilities—not simply bridging however seamless experiences for DeFi customers. We’re additionally transferring past EVM chains, with Solana on the prime of the listing.

Longer-term—and even inside this yr—we’re making ready for RWAs, working with institutional customers, and understanding what agentic techniques actually need. We’re having fascinating conversations with these companions, and we’re excited to launch new options subsequent yr primarily based on what we’re studying.

About The Creator

Victoria is a author on quite a lot of expertise matters together with Web3.0, AI and cryptocurrencies. Her in depth expertise permits her to write down insightful articles for the broader viewers.

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Victoria d’Este