Definitive

Definitive is a financial technology company that operates a non-custodial platform for advanced on-chain trade execution and decentralized finance (DeFi) yield generation. Founded in 2022 by former Coinbase alumni Jai Prasad, Dennis Qian, and Blake Arnold, the Los Angeles-based startup aims to bridge the gap between traditional finance and the crypto space by making DeFi more accessible to institutional investors and professional traders. The founding team combines their experience from Coinbase's institutional trading and DeFi teams to build infrastructure that simplifies crypto access.

The company's core offering is an execution platform that provides a Centralized Finance (CeFi)-like experience for DeFi trading. It serves a range of clients, from retail users and high-net-worth individuals to institutional clients like funds, asset managers, and OTC desks. The platform aggregates liquidity from over 100 decentralized exchanges (DEXs) and off-chain market makers across multiple blockchain networks, including Solana and various EVM chains like Base, Arbitrum, and Polygon. This allows users to find better pricing, deeper liquidity, and superior execution from a single interface. The business model appears to be usage-based, with revenue potentially generated from trading fees, which are marketed as being significantly cheaper than competitors.

Key features of the Definitive platform include advanced algorithmic order types such as Time-Weighted Average Price (TWAP), limit orders, and stop-loss, which are common in traditional finance but less so in DeFi. It also offers a "gas-less" trading experience by sponsoring network fees, private order flows to protect against front-running, and detailed P&L and activity tracking for compliance and reporting. For developers and other platforms, Definitive provides an API and SDK to integrate its execution and yield infrastructure. In November 2023, the company announced a $4.1 million funding round led by BlockTower Capital with participation from investors like Nascent Ventures and Coinbase Ventures.

Keywords: on-chain trade execution, decentralized finance, DeFi, institutional crypto, liquidity aggregation, algorithmic trading, non-custodial platform, multi-chain trading, TWAP orders, CeFi experience, crypto asset management, EVM chains, Solana, smart order routing, DeFi yield, blockchain financial services, crypto trading API, gas-less trading, digital asset execution, financial software