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Start buildingFeature Fridays: Barter
Barter is a blockchain-powered DeFi trading engine that streamlines execution through advanced solver technology, delivering deep liquidity and optimized routing for every transaction.

March 7, 2025 — 4 min read

Welcome back to Feature Fridays! This week, we're thrilled to spotlight Barter, a groundbreaking force reshaping DeFi trading. Led by industry veteran Nikita Ovchinnik—formerly the CBDO at 1inch Network—Barter has emerged as the market’s invisible hand, optimizing trade execution with one of the most efficient solver systems in the space. Founded in 2023 by a tight-knit team, Barter has rapidly transformed complex DeFi operations into streamlined, high-performance trades by delivering deeper liquidity and optimized routing.
I'm Nikita Ovchinnik, and I've been in DeFi for over five years, leading initiatives that have helped shape the industry. As the third employee at 1inch Network, I played a key role in its growth as CBDO. I frequently speak at conferences like Avalanche Summit, Austin DeFi, and Permissionless, and I regularly share my insights on podcasts and in the media.
At Barter, we operate one of the most efficient solver systems in DeFi. Our mission is simple: deliver better execution, deeper liquidity, and optimized routing. While we don’t interact with users directly, we act as the invisible hand of the market, ensuring every trade clears at the best possible price.
Barter started in 2023 with just four of us—three engineering co-founders and me. Back then, calling yourself a solver on CowSwap didn’t get much attention. CowSwap was small, and we were even smaller. But DeFi moves fast. Today, CowSwap is the leading DEX aggregator, and we’ve grown alongside it. Four months after launch, we captured 40% of the market and surpassed $1 billion in trading volume.
We raised a $3 million seed round, brought in top talent, and kept refining our long-term vision for DeFi swaps. Our strategy is simple: secure more routes, deepen liquidity, and elevate product performance. We're forging new partnerships across DeFi, expanding to more chains, and ensuring that every trade we touch is optimized.
We built Barter because we saw a gap in the market. DeFi is overly complex, riddled with hidden challenges like MEV, slippage, volatile gas fees and etc. We wanted to improve the user experience for people like us and help every trader in DeFi save money.
But the vision wasn’t just to build a solver—it was to shape the future of DeFi trading by optimizing execution at every level. We started small, but from day one, our goal was clear: win trades, capture volume, and make Barter an indispensable part of DeFi.
February was a milestone month for Barter. Transaction volume surged, and momentum kept building. We processed 17,263 transactions—a 57% increase from January. Daily volume averaged $36.8 million, marking an 82% jump. Since launch, our total volume on Ethereum Mainnet has surpassed $8 billion.
We're now live on 4 blockchains, integrated with over 50 unique DEXes, and have facilitated more than 200,000 trades across 50,000+ wallets.
We rely on QuickNode to stay synchronized with all blockchain updates, which is critical for our optimal transaction routing. Their enterprise-grade Ethereum nodes deliver consistent 99.99% uptime and great response times, giving us the reliability we need for time-sensitive operations.
QuickNode's comprehensive RPC support enables us to monitor mempool activity in real time, helping our algorithms identify efficient transaction pathways and reduce slippage for our users.
We're extremely satisfied with QuickNode's reliability, speed, and support quality. For any blockchain business requiring dependable infrastructure, QuickNode offers technical excellence that has become an essential component of our stack.
Founded in 2017, Quicknode deploys institutional-grade blockchain infrastructure for developers and enterprises. With 99.99% uptime and support for 80+ chains, teams build and scale onchain applications without compromise.
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