Kasper Rasmussen of Bitfinex talks about combining that platform’s expertise with the scalability and speed of EOSIO

How would you describe your DAPP?

Kasper Rasmussen: EOSfinex is the first high-performance, trustless trading platform to be built on EOSIO technology. EOSfinex will combine the scalability and speed of EOSIO with the expertise accrued at Bitfinex to provide the space with an on-chain exchange experience based around instantaneous, transparent and trustless trading of digital assets. The purpose of EOSfinex is to innovate within EOS as well as to provide a platform for the research and adoption of EOS technology focused around security and scalability. We envision EOSfinex and related developments to fundamentally alter the way value is exchanged between parties around the world.

Where did your initial idea come from?

Kasper Rasmussen: Bitfinex were early supporters of the EOS ecosystem and members of our team were quick to communicate the immense potential of EOSIO technology. As an exchange, Bitfinex remains dedicated to leveraging the latest developments to continue offering our users and the greater community a sophisticated trading experience. Our initial foray into EOS made clear the ability of EOSIO technology to meet the rigorous requirements of a high-volume, instantaneous trading platform, and that’s where the initial idea came from. We feel that an exchange setting, such as Bitfinex, provides the ideal platform for battle-testing within EOS due to the stringent speed and security requirements needed for success.

Can you tell us about your team?

Kasper Rasmussen: The EOSfinex team is composed of a highly versatile development team and passionate industry advocates. We’re small, agile and make it our mission to build and break to as great a degree as possible. The goal of our entire team is to grow the open-source nature of the decentralized digital asset space and we see EOS as the perfect mechanism for doing so. We’re actively looking to grow our team within a range of functions — from marketing and design to experienced developers — and we would love to hear from anyone who’s passionate about EOS.

Participants at the recent Bitfinex hackathon in London

What stage is the project at and what are your plans for scaling up?

Kasper Rasmussen: EOSfinex is nearing the end of its initial development stage. The first public demonstration of the smart contract took place at the recent Bitfinex hackathon in London, and was applied to a number of fantastic pitches. All three EOSfinex components were available to participants — the EOSfinex exchange smart contract, a Nodeos plugin (with websocket market data and order entry support), and SunBeam (an EOSfinex Node.js library). We’ve also released SunBeam as an open source project. SunBeam provides basic order entry and market data support. The contract and plugin code will also be released once the code is finalized. Interested developers can find SunBeam on Github and make use of it as they see fit!

Why did you decide to use blockchain technology, and specifically EOSIO?

Kasper Rasmussen: We have made it our mission to identify and sandbox innovative technologies that allow for unprecedented change in the financial technology space. Our underlying aim is to explore methods of pushing trustless, non-custodial and high-performance / high-throughput exchange, and development taking place on EOS has made the potential for synergy very clear. EOS, with a vision of processing thousands of transactions per second whilst minimising associated fees / confirmation times, represents the ideal breeding ground for such innovation.

How has the EOS Community responded to your project?

Kasper Rasmussen: We’ve spent the past few months very engaged with the community, who have been fantastically receptive. Our CTO, Paolo, was invited to explain our vision at EOSLondon, which was swiftly followed by a Bitfinex AMA on the official EOS subreddit. On top of this, our hackathon in London featured a range of prizes and challenges laid out specifically for the EOS developer community. At the hackathon we were joined by Brendan Blumer, Serg Metelin and a range of fantastic EOS developers, and we couldn’t have been more pleased by how it went. We’re looking forward to becoming a more ingrained part of the EOS dev community.