Ark: The Only Borderless, Self-Custodial Platform for Permissionless Trading, Lending, and Options—Integrating TradFi Scale with DeFi Freedom

Major platforms like Binance, Robinhood, and Revolut started with a single, focused product before scaling into integrated, user-centric solutions. Ark will follow this path: delivering a unified, borderless experience for trading, borrowing, lending, and options—true permissionless DeFi, built from the ground up to empower users rather than intermediaries. The era of siloed, fragmented DeFi is over—Ark is the future of integrated finance.

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TL;DR for Investors

Robinhood, Binance, and Revolut each started with a single product, then won by delivering unified, integrated financial experiences—proving users value all-in-one access. Today, DeFi remains fragmented: siloed protocols force traders to juggle separate apps for spot, lending, or options.

Ark ends this, built from the ground up on one simple reservation primitive—making integrated spot trading, borrowing, lending, and options natural, seamless, and permissionless, across any asset and chain.

As trillions in real-world assets (stocks, bonds, ETFs) get tokenized and come on-chain, Ark is purpose-built to be the first destination for frictionless trading, leverage, and yield—no borders, no barriers.

• For users: Better pricing, more products, and the freedom to manage and hedge risk—previously impossible assets/structures, delivered with TradFi-quality execution and open, permissionless access.
• For price makers: Maximum capital efficiency—no pre-parked assets or fragmented pools. Recent advances in AI tooling now empower a new wave of independent price makers: anyone with a risk model (not just institutions or quants) can now compete to price loans, options, and volatility products—creating market-driven rates and better user outcomes.
• Why now: DeFi TVL reached $237B in 2025, proving strong product-market fit. Simultaneously, real-world assets (S&P equities, commodities, private credit) are being tokenized and brought on-chain for the first time—projected to exceed $10 trillion by 2030. Regulatory clarity (MiCA in Europe, emerging US market structure frameworks) legitimizes on-chain finance for institutions. AI and open protocols have democratized sophisticated pricing—anyone with a model can quote as a price maker.
• Problem: DeFi protocols are architecturally locked into atomic settlement, forcing capital into rigid on-chain contracts with exploitable, public formulas. Result: failed fills, uniform risk pricing (safe loans cost same as risky ones), and cascading liquidations. Price makers hemorrhage capital managing fragmented liquidity across chains while MEV bots and informed traders prey on transparent on-chain inventory. Users can't access integrated solutions permissionlessly—they stay on centralized platforms
• Solution: Ark’s universal reservation primitive lets prive makers post bonds once, quote prices privately/off-chain, and guarantees execution (or pays the user)—solving fragmentation with a truly market-driven mechanism. Ark finally gives market makers the privacy and flexibility needed to trade on their edge, not on public exposure—making the on-chain experience genuinely competitive and capital-efficient.
• Three Products, One Primitive:
  • Seal - gasless spot & limit orders, bond-backed execution
  • Hedgehog - physically-backed options on any tokenized asset, permissionless market pricing, zero capital pre-deployment
  • Squirrel - fixed-term fixed-rate loans with individual risk pricing, no liquidations, transparent terms
• Team: Built and scaled $20B+ TVL DeFi protocols, operated validators attracting 550K+ delegating wallets with $200M+ TVL, and self-funded for three years—proving capital discipline and execution. Deep expertise in TradFi (Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan), protocol architecture, and institutional compliance.
• Raise: $3M via SAFE at $30M pre—funding contract security, scaling, onboarding partners, and platform launch. </aside>

Executive Summary

Ark is a single reservation primitive—Trade Now, Settle Later—that powers three entirely new product categories in DeFi: omni-chain aggregation with deferred settlement, physically-backed options markets, and fixed-term fixed-rate loans without liquidation risk. DeFi protocols have been built in silos, each optimized for one product, making it economically impossible for them to integrate and rebuild on a shared primitive. Ark fills this gap by building from scratch on one elegant foundation—delivering TradFi-quality execution, capital efficiency, and permissionless access across all three products simultaneously.

Market Opportunity & Addressable Market

• Spot Trading: $4.5T annual volume, 25% DEX market share. Uniswap locks $4.5B TVL for tight spreads—inefficient. Ark sources capital at settlement, 5-10x better efficiency.
• Lending: $22T global credit market, but DeFi only $38B (0.17% penetration). Pool-based models offer only variable rates; $90T mortgage market is fixed-rate. Ark delivers fixed-rate + individual risk pricing.
• Options: 340K daily contracts in Q3 2025. DeFi options limited to BTC/ETH; TradFi scales to hundreds of assets. Ark enables RFQ pricing on any token, zero capital pre-deployment.
• RWA: Projected $10-30T by 2030 (50-160x growth). Current DeFi infrastructure can't price institutional RWA scale. Ark is the unified settlement layer.

*Source: https://defillama.com/*

Why These Products Don't Exist in DeFi Yet:

Robinhood proved traders want integrated experiences. Binance showed that centralized exchanges can dominate—offering spot, options, futures, and lending in a unified app, even with permissioned non custodial limitations and restrictive token listings. Jupiter exposed the demand in DeFi: users want seamless, permissionless access to all markets.

Yet none of these platforms solved the fundamental gaps.

• No one delivers true omni-aggregation—spot trading with “trade now, settle later.”
• No one offers physically-settled options across all assets, available permissionlessly.