MITOSIS MATRIX VAULT: Restoring Trust to DeFi Ecosystem

"... we can also be whales if we provide liquidity together"

These were part of the words of Jake, co-founder of Mitosis on the Mitosis x Theo fireside chat held on X, formerly known as twitter, on the 27th of February, 2025. I found it captivating because one of Mitosis plans for their inaugural Matrix vault is to bring yield-bearing investments exclusively available to institutions, to retail liquidity providers in a transparent manner.

1.0 INTRODOCTION

When developers or founders say they are delay the launch of a core product associated to their ecosystem or project due to bearish market conditions, thereby distorting timelines of their already stated events, what does this mean?

• It could mean that the bearish market conditions would amount to less liquidity flow to through the product when it launches.
• It could mean they - the developers and founders – are delaying the inevitable due to the bearish market conditions. The skepticism that the product would not be well received due to market sentiments and users might be afraid to commit their assets to work.
• It could also mean the developers and founders do not believe that their product would be successful under such conditions, which signals somehow a lack of trust or believe which could inturn impact on their community members.

I could go on and keep extrapolating more reasons but the bottomline is that actions like this which obviously distort timeline of events (this does not mean that ALL slight change in timeline of events is bad, especially when proper communication channels are utilized) would lead to negative sentiments amongst community members, thereby impacting the "trust" they have for such project.
Enter the Mitosis Matrix Vault in collaboration with Theo’s network, details of this yield-bearing mechanism and collaboration have been thoroughly written about and explained either through the mitosis blog and the university. Some of its unique features are the aiding of integration and maximum composability of users liquid position on mitosis chain, where tokenized positions can evolve to be tradable and users can trade their yield positions, make swaps and bridges into different supported and assets chains using Automated Market Makers (AMMs). Also they can deploy their assets as collateral into lending protocols to borrow other assets. This is in stark contrast to the default traditional vaults where assets stay idle with rigid lock ups. The Matrix Vault lock-ups is flexible as users or liquidity providers can withdraw their assets at any given time but with certain conditions.
Another unique characteristic of the Matrix Vault is that Mitosis aims to bring yield-bearing investment opportunities that have been exclusively available to the whales and big institutions (through backdoor or non-transparent means) to retail Liquidity Providers in a transparent and efficient manner, that addresses the liquidity needs of protocols and users.

1.1 MATRIX STRADDLE LAUNCH: THE PRELUDE
Away from the technical aspect of the vault to focus on the central theme of this article. Two months back, Mitosis co-founder, Luke, took to X, formerly known as twitter, to post something within the lines of, “Builders don’t care about prices…”, when the market was bearish and exactly two months later - 13th of March - the Matrix Vault was launched, also in the same bearish market conditions! It is important to note that Matrix Vault wasn’t launched momentarily, it went through series of events like Mitosis teasing the partnership with Theo’s network on 10th of February on X, releasing a blogpost on the Mitosis website announcing and explaining in details the intricacies of the partnership with Theo’s Network on the 25th of February. Shortly after this was a fireside chat with Theo’s core team on the 27th of February, where more insights and explanations were given in regard to this partnership from Theo Network founder. On the 1st of March, Mitosis released a detailed eligibility criteria of depositors on phase by phase basis on X, spamming into four phases and prioritizing long term expedition depositors and loyal users who have the Morse NFT (the genesis NFT of the Mitosis ecosystem). On the 6th of March, Mitosis released a detailed thread on X, on how to efficiently deposit supported assets (weETH and miweETH) into the vault. On 11tth of March, an important partnership with OKX was formed with regards to vault deposit. Users would be able to trigger a 0.5% when they deposit in the matrix vault using their OKX wallet and on the 13th of March, 4:00pm UTC, the Mitosis Matrix Straddle Vault went live ushering in the first phase of deposits. They were also other inbetween activities and announcements on Mitosis official platforms; website, x and discord platforms. This shows the team efforts and commitments to properly educate and carry the community members along, breaking down the entire process into bits that even non-technical DeFi users can easily understand with less stress.

1.2 MATRIX STRADDLE LAUNCH: THE POSTLUDE (…for now)
Despite the persistence of the bearish and bleeding market, Mitosis still went ahead with the Matrix Vault launch, one of their core and most important products, with significant importance to the Mitosis project and ecosystem overall. The phase one Vault deposit support three chains with capped deposits for each of them. For Ethereum mainnet the miweETH/weETH cap is 800 while for Arbitrum and Linea chains, it is 600 and 1600 respectively. The linea chain cap, despite having the largest amount was filled up after some hours after launch, arbitrum chain followed after some days while that of ethereum mainnet was filled to some reasonable degree.

This showed and signal a strong belief and trust by the Mitosis community towards the Matrix Vault product, despite the bearish market sentiments. The implication of this move by the Mitosis team to go through with the launch, shows their commitment to deliver their one of their core products in a timely manner, shows they have strong belief and trust in it to be successful regardless and irrespective of the bearish market sentiments and by doing so, gained community member trust in the will and zeal of the team to deliver on timely basis and entrust the Matrix Vault with their assets.
“Trust” is one of the most important commodity or sentiment in web3/DeFi and business as a whole and one of the ways to gain trust of community members and users of a product is to deliver the product as to when communicated, deliver on the details of the product and communicate properly if they will be a shift on the product delivery, so as to carry the community members along. The Mitosis team have pulled this off once again and continue to demonstrate that this is a community heavy and focused project. A good lesson for other builders in the web3/DeFi space to emulate so mutual trust can be improved upon and great again.

Arguments could be made that the bullish market would have been the best time for the launch of the Matrix Vault, due to increased inflow of liquidity in the DeFi space. Due to the reoccuring volatility of the crypto markets, most people cannot confidently place their hands as to when this 'green candles' would happen, so postponing in view of this might even lead to more reduced trust. Futhermore, the results from the Matrix Vault launch has been pretty solid so far, despite the bearish market and beyond that, ''trust" from community members have been earned no matter how subtle. So Kudos to the Mitosis team on this regard.

Thanks alot for reading

Gmito and May the Morse be with you chads!