Atul Agarwal

Protocol Engineer & Builder

5+ years shipping DeFi protocols end-to-end. Now building AI agents that execute onchain.

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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 shipped smart contracts across Ethereum, Avalanche, and Aptos — co-founding Moar Market, a leveraged lending protocol that peaked at $7.5M TVL, and building the core contracts for Hubble Exchange, a perpetual futures DEX that did $100M+ in cumulative volume.

The common thread 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, and picking up Move to build on an ecosystem most developers considered too early. I've coordinated audits end-to-end with Dedaub, Sherlock, Code4rena, and MoveBit — with no critical loss-of-funds findings — and increasingly use LLM agents for first-pass code review and pre-audit security analysis.

Most recently I've been building at the intersection of AI agents and DeFi — an MCP server that exposes on-chain execution strategies as tools callable by LLM agents, letting them plan and run trading workflows end-to-end. I'm open to roles across smart contract engineering, security & audits, backend engineering, and AI tooling for fintech. If you're building something ambitious on-chain, I'd love to talk.

Experience

Moar Market
Co-Founder & CTO
2024 – 2026

A leveraged lending protocol on Aptos — collateral vaults, variable-rate interest models, oracle integrations (Pyth, Switchboard), and a liquidation engine. Peaked at $7.5M TVL with $174K cumulative fees and $54K protocol revenue.

  • Designed and shipped the full protocol in Move: collateral vaults, variable-rate interest models, oracle integrations (Pyth, Switchboard), and liquidation engine — peaked at $7.5M TVL with $174K cumulative fees and $54K protocol revenue
  • Defined cryptoeconomic risk parameters, collateral factors, and liquidation incentive curves for multi-asset markets — publicly highlighted by the Aptos Foundation at the $5M TVL milestone
  • Coordinated end-to-end security audit with MoveBit (no loss-of-funds findings); used LLM agents as first-pass PR reviewers and for pre-audit security analysis
  • Built backend distributed systems in TypeScript: indexer pipeline, liquidator bot, risk monitoring, and REST API with retry logic, state management, and failure handling for production reliability
Move / Aptos TypeScript Leveraged Lending Liquidation Engine Security Audits
moar.market
Deploy Trade
Side Project
2026
  • Built an MCP server that exposes DeFi execution strategies as tools callable by LLM agents, enabling agents to plan and run onchain trading workflows end-to-end
  • Underlying execution layer: event-driven grid trading bot on Hyperliquid perpetual futures (TypeScript, RabbitMQ, PostgreSQL, WebSocket-based order lifecycle management)
  • Designed for production reliability: state persistence, retry logic, and order reconciliation across bot crashes and exchange disconnects; observability and tracing instrumented across critical paths
MCP Server TypeScript Hyperliquid RabbitMQ PostgreSQL
GitHub
Hubble Exchange
Protocol Engineer
2021 – 2024

Perpetual futures DEX on Avalanche with $100M+ in cumulative volume. Built a decentralized limit order book (DLOB) on Hubblenet, a custom Avalanche Subnet, in V2 — after proving the model with a Curve-style vAMM in V1. Coordinated three external audits (Dedaub, Sherlock, Code4rena) with no critical findings.

V2: Decentralized Limit Order Book (DLOB) on Avalanche Subnet
  • Owned all Solidity smart contracts for the order-book DEX on Hubblenet — a custom Avalanche Subnet (10M+ transactions) where validators doubled as order matchers
  • Built a LayerZero cross-chain asset bridge (lock-mint) that secured multi-million-dollar transfers with no incidents over 2+ years
  • Built liquidator bot, order-matching service, and monitoring infrastructure; coordinated Sherlock and Code4rena audits end-to-end
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; coordinated Dedaub audit end-to-end
Solidity Avalanche Subnets DLOB LayerZero Bridge CurveCrypto vAMM Security Audits
@HubbleExchange
DefiDollar
Smart Contract Engineer
2021

Developed Solidity smart contracts for DUSD, a stablecoin index on Ethereum (later expanded to BSC) — aggregated yield-bearing stablecoins into a diversified, risk-adjusted token. Product suite peaked at ~$45M+ TVL, with audits by PeckShield and Quantstamp. First production Solidity role after transitioning from hardware engineering.

Solidity Ethereum / BSC Yield Aggregation
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
  • TypeScript / Python — backend services, bots, APIs
  • Go, Rust — systems & subnet tooling

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

Security & Audits

  • Audit coordination — Dedaub, Sherlock, Code4rena, MoveBit (scoping → triage → remediation → re-review)
  • No critical loss-of-funds findings across any audit coordinated
  • Code review — reentrancy, oracle manipulation, overflow/underflow
  • LLM-assisted first-pass review and pre-audit security analysis

AI / Agents

  • MCP servers — on-chain strategies as agent-callable tools
  • LLM tool-calling & agent orchestration
  • LLM agents for code review and security analysis

Chains & Infrastructure

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

Backend & Tooling

  • Node.js, PostgreSQL, RabbitMQ, Docker, observability
  • Event-driven & distributed systems — WebSocket listeners, message queues, state machines, retry/failure handling

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 roles in smart contract engineering, security & audits, backend systems, and AI tooling for fintech. Based in Goa, India — fully remote, any timezone.

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