Crypto promised us a world of financial sovereignty and transparency, but we ended up with a black box of obscured risk, leverage, and non-custody. Chains, CEXs, massive projects, and funds collapsed last year. Few were left unscathed, and crypto adoption suffered tremendous setbacks.

Our conviction in accelerating crypto adoption led us to bet big and rely too much on trust last year. Unfortunately, time proved our thesis and risk management decisions incorrect— with heartbreaking results.

After months of speaking to creditors to make things right and witnessing the aftermath of the FTX collapse, we felt a duty to take the hard lessons and use them to help the crypto industry.

We believe that founders who reach great heights and then fall learn the most important lessons and, therefore, have the most to contribute. Our responsibility is to use the wisdom gained to build a more robust, open, and transparent financial world for everyone.

In the market collapse, millions of people suffered substantial financial losses. Yet worse still, in the wake of insolvencies, user accounts were frozen/inaccessible, with claims payouts likely to take many years.

A $20 billion market of claimants is desperately looking for a solution. This list includes FTX, Voyager, Celsius, Genesis, BlockFi, Mt Gox, and our creditors.

What was needed was clear: a public marketplace for claims onboarding and trading on order books.

Open Exchange is a solution and home for those harmed by crypto crises, allowing claimants to immediately unleash their locked claims directly into crypto or use them as margin capital.

We will harness our decades of expertise, hard-learned mistakes, and experience navigating the pain of insolvencies, restructuring, and defaults to allow 20M+ claim holders access to their assets as quickly as possible.

As we rebuild, it is crucial to apply the lessons of 2022 to improve upon TradFi— keeping the advantages and doing away with the black boxes that have harmed many.

While CEXs offer an optimal trading experience, they also require users to place their trust in how their funds are managed. In the wake of FTX, no one should ever make this mistake again.

We are building the world's most radically transparent derivatives exchange at Open Exchange.

We will ensure that users do not need to trust what's inside the box because everything about user funds will be completely auditable, transparent, and provably untouched. We will go beyond the typical proof of reserves, which does not prove true security. We will make it public and have real-time cryptographic audits of the leverage in the system— the collateral backing open interest.

We will achieve this by building a zero-knowledge-proof network where all parties can independently confirm that every balance, liquidation, withdrawal, deposit, and trade is correct— allowing anyone to verify that the data is accurate while preserving the integrity and complete privacy of users.

Open Exchange will also have world-class UI and functionality with proven execution by the world's only audited crypto derivatives matching engine— the same engine that’s handled $100+ billion of volume and the same team that’s had zero exchange hacks over 10 years. Additionally, we will work towards building a full proof of reserves and liability, giving users even more peace of mind.

Open Exchange will begin by providing the vital service of claims onboarding/trading, so investors liberate their trapped debt capital. Later, we will expand to a range of innovative products— offering stock trading, FX, and much more— all with radical transparency that redefines how TradFi operates forever.

We do not forget the lessons of the past. We do not forget our community. And we do not stop building. Our vision is to set a new standard for an open, transparent and accessible financial world.