PAX Launches: A Crypto Exchange on a Chip, Faster and Smaller Than a Datacenter.
"PAX makes high frequency faster and every trade cost less."
Founded by Pete Stevenson & Benjamin Kilimnik
Pete and Ben have years of experience trading across traditional and non-traditional markets. They are building the technology that they wished they had as HFT practitioners.
Pete (link) helped build the world's fastest futures trading strategy using custom silicon at Citadel Securities, and more recently, he worked with a small team running quant research for crypto HFT across multiple CEX and DEX venues.
Ben (link) was a high frequency crypto and smart contract trader. He’s worked on distributed systems at Pixie Labs (acq. by New Relic) and was a cryptography/systems researcher at Brown.
Exchange on a chip, not a datacenter
PAX is a new crypto exchange and is the first – in all capital markets – to operate from a single chip rather than an entire datacenter. PAX moves traders to within nanometers of the exchange – closer than ever before possible.
Such proximity unlocks unprecedented value to high frequency customers and PAX shares this value by offering zero-fee with cash-back to every other market participant on every trade. PAX is to exchange as Robinhood was to retail brokerage: the first in the industry to “go to zero” and a complete game changer for every asset class.
The value of speed & proximity
Across all financial markets, there is an arms race for speed. High frequency trading (HFT) firms spend billions of dollars to minimize latency, i.e., to sit as close as possible to exchanges (co-locate) and respond as quickly as possible to new exchange-published market signals.
Faster than any exchange, for any asset, anywhere
PAX is building core exchange technology into a chip. PAX is faster than NYSE, NASDAQ, Deutsche Börse, EDX, Crossover, Binance, OKX. Name any exchange: PAX is faster – not by a little, but by orders of magnitude.
The fastest exchanges today boast a 30 microsecond round-trip latency. PAX crunches that to 30 nanoseconds (1000x faster).
The PAX λ API: programmatic access to ultra-low latency
In trading, speed is king. The PAX λ API provides the fastest tick-to-trade latency possible.
The λ API enables traders to programmatically launch orders from within the same chip that hosts the PAX exchange. This proximity to the market – placing participant trading logic nanometers from the exchange – is extremely valuable and de-risks HFT market making strategies.
https://pax.markets/blog/lambdas
https://pax.markets/blog/lambda_use_cases
Zero-fee + cash-back: sharing the value & building liquidity
Trading at PAX is faster, and costs less. Their baseline price is zero, with cash back on every trade.
How can they do that? They sell speed: zero-cost trading with cash-back is financed by their opt-in fee based λ API. They look at it like this: PAX is selling speed and buying order flow.
https://pax.markets/blog/rebates
Better market structure
PAX offers fresh insight into how capital markets should be structured. Behind the technology (exchange on a chip) and the new business model (zero-fee + cash-back) is a nuanced thought process. PAX market structure provides a better alternative to existing systems by adding price competition alongside incentive mechanisms.
https://pax.markets/blog/pfof
Exchange integrated AI
Yes, PAX is an AI startup, too. PAX is building AI models for HFT and integrating the model inference results (price predictions) into its λ API.
Top trading firms use AI models to gain an edge. PAX is building the same technology and will sell the inference results as λ programs, while making the models themselves open source. The model inference is fastest at the source of the data, and its value is realized only in that one instant.
https://pax.markets/blog/lambda_use_cases/
Driving market efficiency across all assets
PAX is just getting started. Crypto is growing and evolving – it is an asset class with early adopters. PAX will relentlessly pursue its technology beyond crypto: in all electronically traded assets, markets, and geographies.
PAX tears down a key barrier to competition by lowering the cost of high-speed trading. When the cost of deploying an HFT strategy is reduced, HFT competition increases. Increased competition creates better markets with better prices and deeper liquidity.
Simply put: better global markets, through competition.
A preview of their “next year” Super Bowl spot
Learn More
🌐 Visit pax.markets to learn more.
🤝 Join the waitlist to get early access here.
👣 Follow PAX on LinkedIn & X.
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