Edgar Pavlovsky, co-founder of Marginfi and Solana DeFi, abruptly left the project in April.
It wasn’t exactly a friendly split. “I don’t agree with the way things have been done internally or externally,” Pavlovsky wrote about X in the past.
Pavlovsky has been a key contributor for eight months to Paladin. This client of Solana is designed to help validators defend themselves from sandwich attacks. “earn more in block rewards.”
Temporal, an online crypto shop run by multiple marginfi members, started advertising around the time. “Nozomi,” A proprietary Quic client that is intended to help prevent sandwiches attacks.
Legally, Temporal and mrgn are separate entities. Temporal claims that most of their staff have never worked for marginfi.
The Temporal researcher who I spoke with has been critical of his former colleague’s project. According to both sides, the products are not the exact same. However, they both target the same niche. There’s one notable difference though — Pavlovsky’s Paladin has a token, while marginfi, controversially, has yet to debut a native coin.
Temporal’s Nozomi is designed to deliver transactions as quickly as possible. The system also protects against sandwich attacks, by sending only transactions. “whitelisted” Solana Validators are well-known for their non-aggression towards users. This project is marketed as a means to democratize the trading.
“We have a ton of experience from our trading arm getting the best execution for what we want to do,” Jakob Povsic is a Temporal developer. Temporal is “getting this level of sophistication for basically anyone.”
Pavlovsky explained that Paladin is a fork from the Jito-Solana Client. It identifies sandwich attacks and removes them. In addition, it helps Solana Validators to prioritize transactions with fees of high priority. Paladin’s validators access will ultimately be restricted to the yet-to launch PAL token.
Pavlovsky was asked if he felt more competitive because he built a similar product to that of his former colleagues at Temporal.
“No, man, they’re like my children,” Pavlovsky said, laughing. “I’m stoked for them to win, stoked for them to build.” He stated that the blockchain infrastructure builders tend to adopt a “winner-takes-all” mentality, when multiple businesses are capable of success at once.
Povsic displayed less goodwill. “I applaud them for going after sandwiching since [it’s] a big problem, but their approach is naive and very [self-serving] from what we are seeing,” He said about Paladin. Povsic said Paladin “arbitrarily” Some transactions will be blocked based on an extensive set of criteria. However, sophisticated players may still manage to make sandwiches. But “forcing” Povsic made the situation worse by adding its token to the equation.
Pavlovsky replied to criticisms by saying its whitelist was anti-sandwich. “obviously systematic, not arbitrary.”
“[P]aladin is designed with sophisticated players in mind (and being tested comprehensively against sandwichers on the whole network). [W]e’re always happy to discuss tradeoffs,” Pavlovsky wrote in a document.
“[We] think [Paladin] is extractive and would rather focus on open-source initiatives rather than sending a % of priority fees to [Bloxroute], who own 20% of the token supply. Nozomi is quite different in that it’s simply a product to help land transactions fast,” Ben Coverston, co-founder of mrgn and temporary partner at mrgn Research, said:
It is interesting to see how the PAL token fits into this equation. Marginfi is often criticized for its “points” program, which tracks the contribution of users to the platform. Token airdrops often use points, but marginfi was one of the few major Solana DeFi protocol to not release a token. Pavlovsky did not mention the absence of a token for marginfi in his April 2024 departure letter.
I asked him if his frustration that the platform had not launched a token was a factor in leaving. “[I] am pro token and think the right time to ship one was [Q4] 2023,” Pavlovsky responded.
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