Where 2024 established that Carbon DeFi and the Arb Fast Lane functioned as designed, 2025 established their necessity. Core systems that were already live were used in production and relied upon in practice, with adoption across multiple chains by increasingly sophisticated participants.
Over the course of the year, execution translated into sustained adoption, and adoption sharpened strategic direction.
What Execution Looked Like in Practice
On Celo, Carbon DeFi surpassed two million transactions by year end. Activity accelerated materially over time. In the final three months of 2025, trading volume on Celo was nearly 10× higher than in the preceding quarter, indicating sustained and increasing reliance rather than episodic use.
On Sei, Carbon DeFi trading volume progressed steadily through successive thresholds of $60M, $70M, and $80M dollars. Across deployments, cumulative trading volume exceeded $170 million.
The Arb Fast Lane scaled alongside this growth.
- $630M+ in trading volume
- 3M+ total transactions
- Five performance records broken on Sei in just three months
A Record-Breaking Run for Bancor’s Arbitrage Infrastructure
That momentum culminated in a series of new all-time highs.
In just one week, the Arb Fast Lane set three new records for daily transactions on Sei:
- October 10: 15,546 transactions
- October 12: 19,660 transactions
- October 17: 20,820 transactions
https://medium.com/media/2a542125c65ece55a93b7fb9f6c8fe79/href
The same pattern emerged following deployment on TAC. From launch, the Arb Fast Lane ranked #1 network wide in both gas consumption and transaction count. It remained the top consumer of gas through November and finished December ranked third across the network.
https://medium.com/media/536a6dfb56381b9bb339fe041d60839a/href
This level of sustained activity is characteristic of infrastructure performing continuous, necessary work within core market operations. Sustained top tier gas usage reflected continuous operation as part of the network’s core market infrastructure.
Arbitrage as Embedded Infrastructure
In 2025, arbitrage was delivered as market infrastructure through the Arb Fast Lane; trades were continuously routed across chainwide liquidity, maintaining price alignment and helping ensure Carbon DeFi orders were filled efficiently as strategies remained active.
For blockchains, this distinction is operational. Gas consumption reflects real demand on the network and indicates which systems are supporting market activity. Sustained arbitrage activity therefore signals infrastructure that is integral to a chain’s functioning, not peripheral to it.
As Dr. Richardson has noted, deployment marks the beginning rather than the end of this process. Systems are released to production, observed under real market conditions, and continuously optimized in response to both market behavior and the evolution of the underlying blockchain stack. Continued record setting activity in the arbitrage layer reflects that process in practice.
https://medium.com/media/e602c1cf129dbe7c4d02f9f035306203/href
When we bring these products to new blockchains, it’s with this sort of unspoken understanding that we’re never complacent.
We get it to the state that we think is required for it to meet the minimum quality assurance, but that’s really the beginning of the work. Right after that, we wait to see how the market reacts to things. We wait to see what the blockchains that we’re deploying these products on are doing with their own technology stack, and then we react to those forces.
So it’s a constantly evolving organic thing. And the fact that we’re continuing to break records in the arbitrage component of what we bring to these blockchains is testament to that.
If it were the case that we were ever satisfied with anything that we’ve built as is, then we wouldn’t expect it to continue breaking these records. It should plateau off. But very much contrary to that, we — specifically with respect to the arbitrage infrastructure — have continued to optimize it.
When Token Projects Became Market Participants
In 2025, token projects began using Carbon DeFi as market infrastructure. Token teams assumed direct responsibility for market structure and liquidity onchain.
GVNR provided a clear example of this shift. Upon launch of its token, the project built its primary market directly on Carbon DeFi. Programmable liquidity was used to define market behavior from inception, including explicit bid and ask expression, permissionless access, and alignment between market activity and protocol mechanics.
https://medium.com/media/71f82c0f35e332c826104835f444f137/href
As GVNR Project Lead Benjamin Whitby noted Carbon DeFi enabled teams to structure trading activity onchain with a level of control unavailable in other toolsets. Asymmetric liquidity, adjustable price logic, and transparent execution were implemented without reliance on centralized intermediaries.
This is incredibly beneficial, next level in terms of really sophisticated tools available, equivalent to a much more sophisticated market maker type activity.
And the real beauty of it from a protocol perspective is the protocol can utilize it in terms of its trading activity.
I’m almost lost for words just how cool it is and how important it is for people to realize just what a game changer Carbon is in the marketplace.
Institutions Entered the Picture With Requirements
In 2025, Carbon DeFi began to be adopted by institutional platforms as part of their core infrastructure, and adoption reflected institutional execution requirements.
Aureus, a platform focused on bringing regulated real world assets onchain, licensed Carbon DeFi as part of its production technology stack. During a public discussion on institutional adoption, Aureus emphasized the need for execution frameworks capable of handling large ticket transactions under controlled conditions.
https://medium.com/media/8bc3f5d1510a6b1fe59d0e77072d6528/href
As Aureus noted, infrastructure for institutional markets must support asymmetric liquidity, predictable execution, and programmable market behavior. These characteristics enable large ticket transactions to be executed in a manner consistent with institutional operating models.
Aureus stated it plainly:
Carbon DeFi was the missing piece.
How Bancor Is Thinking About What Comes Next
By the end of 2025, Bancor’s direction had become clear. The focus is on building infrastructure that other teams rely on, including blockchains, token projects, and institutions.
Bancor’s core systems are designed to work together.
- Carbon DeFi provides a framework for intentional trading and market making.
- The Arb Fast Lane enforces execution efficiency, both within Carbon DeFi and across the broader blockchain environment in which it operates.
- The Vortex manages long term protocol economics.
Each component addresses a distinct function. Together, they form an integrated system for onchain market infrastructure.
A New Layer of Innovation Taking Shape
In parallel with execution and adoption, 2025 included substantial foundational work on future market infrastructure.
Late in the year, Bancor prepared to file a new provisional patent comprising approximately 550 equations across more than 150 pages.
https://medium.com/media/1fb048613553641245d240ae5396b56a/href
While the specifics remain as-of-yet undisclosed, the work extends the underlying framework, advancing how programmable markets, execution logic, and decision processes can be expressed directly within smart contract systems.
Its scope reflects a formalization of a new technical direction, grounded in years of production behavior, live market data, and observed constraints across blockchains, token markets, and institutional use cases.
The work followed the same operational cycle that defined 2025. Systems were deployed, observed in production, refined, and generalized.
As Dr. Richardson has noted:
The idea is to keep innovating, and I’ve been working very hard on what the next leg of the product development cycle ought to look like.
When Carbon DeFi was released, it was very new. I don’t think anyone totally understood what Carbon gives you in terms of decision making and that sort of thing. I think in a year, year and a half I won’t be satisfied unless we’ve continued to push the envelope with respect to what a decentralized exchange based on smart contract infrastructure is capable of.
It has to be imaginative, it has to be new. And it has to be surprising. It has to be something that people thought couldn’t be done or that no one ever thought to do.
https://medium.com/media/253677422f0745d15d2a43b9055af9d7/href
Bancor
Bancor is a pioneer in decentralized finance (DeFi), established in 2016. It invented the core technologies underpinning the majority of today’s automated market makers (AMMs) and continues to develop the foundational infrastructure critical to DeFi’s success — focusing on enhanced liquidity mechanics and robust onchain market operation. All products of Bancor are governed by the Bancor DAO.
For more on Bancor
Website | Blog | X/Twitter | Analytics | YouTube | Governance
Carbon DeFi
Carbon DeFi, Bancor’s flagship DEX, enables users to do everything possible on a traditional AMM — and more. This includes custom onchain limit and range orders, with the ability to combine orders into automated buy low, sell high strategies. It is powered by Bancor’s latest patented technologies: Asymmetric Liquidity and Adjustable Bonding Curves.
For more on Carbon DeFi
Website | X/Twitter | Analytics | Telegram
The Arb Fast Lane
DeFi’s most advanced arbitrage infrastructure powered by Marginal Price Optimization, a new method of optimal routing with unmatched computational efficiency.
Website | Research | Analytics
Simply Powerful Trading — Powered by Bancor
2025: A Year of Execution, Adoption, and Direction was originally published in Bancor on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
