The decentralized finance sector has truly achieved a lot in the past few years, but it has an exposed Achilles heel in security issues. To address this issue once and for all, we need a robust blockchain network and ecosystem built from scratch with security in mind.
We recently had an opportunity to speak to Sean Ryan, founder, and CEO of Glitch Finance, who is building a purpose-built blockchain and DeFi ecosystem created with this exact aim. He talked to us about the security issues hindering the growth of DeFi and how the GLITCH protocol is bringing trust back to this industry.
Our conversation with Sean Ryan is shared below.
Crowdfund Insider: Please share what brought you into crypto and how you ended up working on Glitch Finance.
Sean Ryan: I have been a crypto enthusiast and advocate since 2015—the prospect of a financial system that is fully decentralized always excited me. I closely followed the market and observed the growth of this space. I was also involved in advising multiple projects at the seed and private level stages. I saw and learned that many of these layer-one blockchains followed a common theme: they were inadvertently focused on immediate profits and gains, trying to set foot in everything possible.
A “jack of all trades,” if you will. I have also seen many protocols disregard the correct safety measures needed before launching correctly, such as smart contract audits and more. This has created an unstable industry with premature protocols vulnerable to security threats and can easily be manipulated.
So, there was a dire need to build a network focused on security, scalability, and ease of use. My focus quickly changed to democratization and finding unique and creative solutions to provide more economic opportunities. And from there, Glitch was born.
Crowdfund Insider: What is GLITCH, and what is your vision for the project?
Sean Ryan: GLITCH is a purpose-built interoperable network designed explicitly for permissionless money market applications. Instead of setting our foot in every possible aspect of DeFi and focusing on quick profits, we’ve significantly niched down with our network. Our goal with GLITCH is to build a robust, secure blockchain that addresses real problems of DeFi like scalability and high gas fees while rewarding every participant. With this, we aim to lower entry barriers to DeFi to ensure that this new industry becomes enticing to everyday users.
It has become a new trend in DeFi to rely on layer-2 protocols for scalability. This makes the blockchain networks more complex and unsuitable for average users. So, we’ve decided to tackle scalability head-on and achieve it on a Layer-1 itself.
GLITCH is capable of processing a minimum of 3000 transactions per second, achieving unmatched scalability. Even the transaction costs are minimal. In turn, users of our platform are incentivized through a revenue-sharing model that rewards all network participants, which the GLITCH protocol will be most known for.
The GLITCH protocol will also be well known for the unprecedented levels of security it brings to the DeFi space. Thanks to our internal QA team and our testing partners at Kurtosis, we’re working to build a network that practically has no vulnerabilities.
Crowdfund Insider: Explain the security problem in DeFi and how it is a threat to future progress.
Sean Ryan: Exchange hacks and asset thefts have become a recurrent theme of DeFi. I’ve recently read reports that DeFi hacks accounted for 76% of all hacks worldwide. Most of the hackers have turned their attention towards DeFi because it is easy to take advantage of faults in smart contracts and the pseudonymous nature of operations. This raises serious questions about investors’ safety within the decentralized framework and snubs the innovations coming out of this space.
Without a proper solution to this problem, we cannot expect the mass adoption of cryptocurrencies to become a reality. Because at the end of the day, people are more concerned about the safety of assets than the profits they can make out of it.
Crowdfund Insider: How does GLITCH solve the security problem? Please share insight into your core architecture.
Sean Ryan: As mentioned before, with GLITCH, we aim to build a network that does not have any vulnerabilities. To achieve this, we take a no-rush approach to building our protocol and smart contracts. We have also decided to conduct rigorous internal and external tests to ensure no missed bugs.
To help us with our testing, we’ve partnered with security firms like Kurtosis and Cyber Unit. Kurtosis has also helped Chainlink, Solana, and Ava Labs with their testing orchestration, and we’re proud to be joining those ranks.
Along with this, our underlying architecture combines the power of Substrate with a decayed DPOS consensus algorithm to ensure that security is never compromised. In the decayed DPOS consensus, delegators stake their tokens to elect 21 validators per epoch.
These validators are responsible for verifying the blocks per epoch, and the engine randomly picks block verifiers. We also have various slashing mechanisms in place to remove bad actors. With the decayed DPOS consensus, the voting power reduces with time to ensure fair governance, requiring more GLCH to be bought and then staked.
Crowdfund Insider: You seem to be building quite an extensive ecosystem. Explain in brief the different offerings of GLITCH.
Sean Ryan: Along with the blockchain itself, our initial ecosystem will consist of a decentralized exchange GEX. GEX is truly permissionless and peer-to-peer in nature. It allows users to trade, swap, send and receive crypto with super-charged speeds and low costs and will feature token wrapping bridges.
This exchange is an integral part of our revenue sharing model and redistributes revenue generated on transaction fees. The GEX will kickstart revenues generated on the network, and in the future, we plan to have an ecosystem of decentralized money market applications all tied to the vault.
Our ecosystem will also include a browser extension wallet, a decentralized autonomous organization, and a governance interface explorer. GLITCH’s virtual machine is very similar in function to the Ethereum Virtual Machine and allows the development of secure dApps.
Crowdfund Insider: The GLITCH Token seems to be doing well already. Tell us more about its tokenomics and its utility within the ecosystem?
Sean Ryan: GLITCH Token ($GLCH) is the native token of our platform and is used mainly for governance and reward purposes. We have a total supply of 88 million GLCH, of which 71.5 million tokens are already circulating. 50% of the team and treasury tokens are locked via Unicrypt for transparency purposes.
While we did see a recent 300% surge in the token’s price, its significant value accrual will occur once the mainnet + GEX + revenue share combo is activated. By then, the GEX will be facilitating an ongoing GLCH token buyback that, in turn, get redistributed to stakers as rewards. Traders, bots, and all sellers will be competing with the GEX over the long term. Revenues generated are also utilized to scale the network, almost eliminating transaction costs for the user.
Crowdfund Insider: What does the future look like for Glitch? Any major roadmap updates you’d like to share?
Sean Ryan: At the moment, we’re gearing up for the launch of our mainnet, GEX, and browser-extension wallet. In the near future, we plan to fund more developers interested in building on GLITCH through our Glitch Grants Program and get official decentralized financial applications up and running generating revenues, that of which include an L2 privacy coin, stablecoin, NFT marketplace, and many more.
Crowdfund Insider: On the whole, how do you think Glitch Finance can contribute to the growth of DeFi?
Sean Ryan: With GLITCH, we’re taking a very responsible approach to building and launching a blockchain network and DeFi ecosystem. We want to ensure that DeFi has an ecosystem accessible to the majority of the users and affordable and fully secure. Beyond that, GLITCH is more than just a blockchain.
It’s a movement backed by contrarians—people who are tired of using outdated, expensive technology and relying on centralized intermediaries that monopolize value. GLITCH brings a whole new level of trust and innovation into the DeFi and gears the industry for the explosive growth that is to come.