Kuru Labs Shakes Up DeFi: Ditches AMMs for On-Chain Orderbook, Snags $11.6M from Paradigm

Hang onto your hats, crypto fans! Uniswap's model might be old news. Kuru Labs is betting big, backed by Paradigm's cash, to flip the script on AMMs with a wild plan for an on-chain orderbook. If they pull this off, DeFi trading could be in for a total makeover!

July 7 was a big day for Kuru Labs, the daring startup crafting a decentralized exchange on Ethereum's sidekick, Monad. They just scored an $11.6 million Series A, with Paradigm leading the charge.

This cash injection, hot on the heels of a $2 million seed round last year, is set to turbocharge the development of what could be the first fully functional on-chain central limit orderbook for the EVM. Big names like Viktor Bunin, Zagabond, and ex-FTX product lead Tristan Yver jumped in, showing the crypto world's got faith in Kuru's game plan.

Building for a post-AMM future

That $11.6 million from Paradigm? It's gonna speed up Kuru Labs' top two goals: beefing up the engineering team and rolling out their hybrid orderbook model on Monad's upcoming mainnet.

Kuru's not your typical AMM-based DEX. They're mixing a central limit orderbook with a fallback automated market maker, aiming to squeeze those spreads tighter while keeping the liquidity flowing. At least, that's the plan. Their platform's a one-stop shop for liquidity, complete with a discovery terminal, token launchpad, and tools for both the go-getters and the laid-back traders.

Kuru's team thinks they've got the key to simplifying the DeFi trading stack into one slick interface, something they reckon the old-school DEXs just couldn't pull off.

"We're stoked about the trust our investors have shown, and the awesome support from the Monad and Kuru communities," the team declared. "Get ready for our mainnet launch, because we're building the ultimate decentralized liquidity hub for the Monad ecosystem!"

Kuru's going all in, challenging the DeFi status quo that AMMs, despite their flaws, are the only way to trade decentralized. Bold move, right?

Orderbooks have been the big dogs in traditional finance, giving you pinpoint pricing and deep liquidity, but they've had a tough time on-chain thanks to Ethereum's lag and gas costs. Even Solana's speedy DEXs like Phoenix use off-chain tricks, so Kuru's fully on-chain CLOB is a high-risk, high-reward tech bet.

Kuru's whole game plan rests on Monad's tech promises: 10,000 transactions per second and one-second block finality. Current EVM chains like Ethereum and Arbitrum just can't cut it for a working orderbook - gas fees and slow blocks make market makers hesitant to update quotes often.

Monad's parallelized EVM execution and slick state database are designed to bust those bottlenecks wide open, making it the first chain where an on-chain CLOB might just be able to go toe-to-toe with centralized exchanges.