Thank you, Cindy.
Today, Cindy Leow steps down from Velocity (prev Drift). We want to thank her for the five years she | Hanami
Thank you, Cindy.
Today, Cindy Leow steps down from Velocity (prev Drift). We want to thank her for the five years she gave to this protocol, and especially for the last six months. Now, the rest of the team she helped build over those years will continue to run Velocity and the protocol.
It has been more than 5 years since Cindy, David, Chris & Zane founded the company as Drift, now Velocity, when running a fully on-chain perpetuals protocol was still unproven. Drift launched on Solana in 2021 as one of the first fully on-chain perpetual exchanges and grew into one of the biggest venues on the chain, with more than $150B traded since. The team built everything from the ground up, from the matching engine to the account system, vaults, and earn products. The protocol itself grew alongside the community. Cindy has put years of her working life into this protocol, and we want to thank her for that work.
Since April, we've undertaken a huge effort: rebuilding in public and preparing and executing a plan to support users and help the protocol recover. On 16th April, Drift secured a support package from Tether.
In July, the exchange returned under a new name, Velocity, and this month, Velocity Beta went live with five markets. The team also put the protocol through a full audit with OtterSec, working toward one plain goal: an exchange people could trust again. The audit of the protocol’s code has been published, and the code has also been open-sourced. The team is now working on significant under-the-hood improvements, including a new order flow system that will improve user experience and order-matching speed, and will continue adding new features, markets, and collaterals the community requests.
The future of the protocol will now be run by the team that helped rebuild it. David continues to work without remuneration with Drift Foundation on asset recovery and coordinating the law enforcement efforts; Kevin is on product; Noah on protocol engineering; Tracy on business development and partnerships; and Naman on growth, alongside the rest of the team and the community. The direction remains the same: a leaner, safer decentralized protocol for perpetuals trading on-chain, with crypto today and equities next.
Thank you, Cindy, for helping build this protocol and getting us this far with the Velocity Beta relaunch.