Atul Agarwal

Protocol Engineer & Builder

From chip design to DeFi protocols to AI and finance. I like building things in hard, unfamiliar domains.

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About

I started my career designing chips at MediaTek, taught myself software engineering, and made the jump to DeFi in 2021. Since then, I've co-founded two protocols from zero to production — a perpetual futures exchange on Avalanche and a leveraged lending protocol on Aptos that peaked at $7M TVL.

The common thread across everything I've built is going deep on hard problems: porting Newton's method solvers to Solidity for on-chain AMM pricing, designing a custom Avalanche Subnet where validators act as order matchers, or picking up a new smart contract language (Move) to build on an ecosystem most developers considered too early.

Currently exploring the intersection of AI and finance — particularly the agent economy, where autonomous AI agents transact, manage assets, and operate as independent economic actors. I'm interested in building financial infrastructure that treats agents as first-class users: programmable credit, inference insurance, and machine-to-machine payment rails.

Experience

Moar Market
Founder
2024 – Present

Built a leveraged lending protocol on Aptos from scratch. Integrations with Hyperion, Tapp, and Panora across the Aptos ecosystem.

  • Live protocol with $2M TVL, peaked at $7M in January 2026
  • Owned all Move smart contracts: collateral vaults, interest rate models, oracle integrations, and liquidation logic
  • Co-built backend: indexer, liquidator bot, risk monitoring, and API layer serving the frontend
  • Defined risk parameters, collateral factors, and liquidation incentives for safe multi-asset markets
Move / Aptos Leveraged Lending Liquidation Engine
moar.market
Hubble Exchange
Co-Founder & Protocol Engineer
2021 – 2024

Co-founded a decentralized perpetual futures exchange on Avalanche. Built a decentralized limit order book (DLOB) on a custom Avalanche Subnet in V2, after proving the model with a Curve-style vAMM in V1.

V2: Decentralized Limit Order Book (DLOB) on Avalanche Subnet
  • Owned all Solidity smart contracts for the order-book DEX on a custom Avalanche Subnet where validators doubled as order matchers
  • Built cross-chain asset bridge using LayerZero (lock-mint mechanism) for seamless L1-to-subnet transfers
  • Co-built liquidator bot, order-matching service, and monitoring infrastructure
V1: Virtual AMM Perpetuals
  • Implemented Curve-style vAMM using CurveCrypto invariant — ported complex math (Newton's method iterative solver) to Solidity for on-chain price computation
  • Designed margin engine, funding rate mechanism, and multi-collateral vault system
Solidity Avalanche Subnets DLOB LayerZero Bridge CurveCrypto vAMM
@HubbleExchange
DefiDollar
Smart Contract Engineer
2021

Smart contract development for a stablecoin index protocol on Ethereum — aggregated yield-bearing stablecoins into a single diversified token. First production Solidity role after transitioning from hardware engineering.

Solidity Ethereum Yield Aggregation
Deploy
Side Project
2026

MVP for an automated grid trading bot on Hyperliquid perpetual futures. Event-driven TypeScript engine with RabbitMQ, PostgreSQL, and WebSocket-based order lifecycle management.

TypeScript Hyperliquid RabbitMQ PostgreSQL
MediaTek
Chip Design Engineer
2017 – 2020

Designed digital circuits for production SoCs at one of the world's largest semiconductor companies. Worked on timing closure, RTL verification, and physical design across multiple chip tapeouts.

VLSI / RTL SoC Design Timing Closure

Skills

Languages

  • Solidity — Foundry, Hardhat, EVM internals
  • Move — Aptos framework, resource model
  • Rust — systems-level blockchain tooling
  • TypeScript / Python — backend services, bots, APIs

Protocol Design

  • Perpetual futures exchange — funding rates, margin systems, liquidation engines
  • Lending & borrowing platforms — leveraged lending, interest rate models, collateral management
  • Order book architecture — DLOB on custom L1/Subnet
  • Cross-chain bridging — LayerZero, lock-mint patterns
  • AMM invariants — StableSwap, CurveCrypto, Newton's method solvers

Chains & Infrastructure

  • Ethereum / EVM ecosystem
  • Avalanche — custom Subnets, validator operations
  • Aptos / MoveVM

Backend & Tooling

  • PostgreSQL, RabbitMQ, Docker, monitoring
  • Event-driven architecture — WebSocket listeners, message queues, state machines

Writing

I write technical deep-dives on DeFi protocol mathematics and mechanism design.

Education

Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi
Master of Technology (M.Tech)
2017
Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Jodhpur
Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech)
2015

Let's Build Together

Open to engineering and founding roles at the intersection of finance and technology. Based in Goa, India — fully remote, any timezone.

Location:
Goa, India (Remote)
Twitter:
@0xshinobii
Download Resume