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Decentralized Application Interviews

Enterprises tell us what they might do with Cardano. Builders tell us what is actually happening on-chain today. To capture that operational perspective, STORM Partners conducted structured interviews with five DApp/DeFi teams:

  • DeltaDeFi – High frequency trading orderbook and leverage engine.

  • Surf (ex Flow) – Smart order routing layer for swaps and liquidity.

  • Bodega Market – Onchain prediction markets and event trading.

  • SteelSwap – DEX aggregator with leveraged trading support.

  • Strike Finance – Perpetuals and permissionless lending with isolated risk markets.

These teams are shipping contracts, closing audits, fighting latency, acquiring users, and competing with every other chain in real time. Their insights cut through theory and highlight the practical bottlenecks that will shape Cardano’s trajectory to 2030.

Conversations focused on three areas:

  1. What Cardano gets right for building trading and DeFi products.

  2. What blocks them from growing TVL, volume, and users.

  3. What they would need to double down on Cardano over the next 2 to 3 years.

1. Who we spoke with​

  • Early and mid-stage DeFi teams building live contracts deployments on Cardano

  • Founders and core contributors with direct responsibility for product, risk, and growth.

  • Protocols already handling real user funds, audits, and operational risk.

These, alongside many other builders, are the real people currently trying to make Cardano DeFi usable for traders and retail users.

2. What they like about building on Cardano​

Across teams, there is a repeated, strong alignment with Cardano’s technical and philosophical direction:

  • EUTxO model for safety and parallelisation. Builders repeatedly stressed that Cardano’s transaction model is structurally safer for complex financial flows and avoids some historic pitfalls of account-based chains.

  • Low base fees and predictable costs. Gas cost stability lets them offer clearer fee schedules to users, even if absolute throughput is not yet ideal.

  • Long-termism and formal methods. Teams trust that protocol changes are considered and that breaking changes are rare. That stability matters for financial contracts that may need to run for years.

  • Potential of scaling stack. Hydra, Leios, Midgard, and partnerchain work are seen as promising, provided they become production ready with clear messaging and tool support.

In short: builders are not asking for a different chain. They want Cardano to build upon their strengths, and finish what it started in terms of roadmap development while removing practical adoption frictions.

3. What blocks them today​

Despite a strong alignment on vision, all five teams described similar hard blockers.

3.1. Low DeFi participation among ADA holders​

  • Daily active DeFi wallets on Cardano remain low compared to the size of the ADA holder base.

  • Teams see a cultural and trust gap: many ADA holders stake and hold but rarely interact with DeFi protocols, even when risk controls are conservative.

  • Without more users, TVL and volume stagnate, which makes it harder to attract market makers and external liquidity.

3.2. Weak stablecoin and cross-chain liquidity​

  • Deep, CEX-reachable stablecoin liquidity is seen as the primary flywheel.

  • Builders are forced to route trades through thin pools, synthetic assets, or external bridges, which increases slippage and risk.

  • Lack of robust BTC, ETH and other major asset liquidity on Cardano limits the appeal for pro traders and cross-chain users.

3.3. Latency and wallet UX for trading use cases​

  • For leverage, margin and active trading, a 5–10 second delay between clicks and transaction confirmation is described as “simply too slow.”

  • Wallet flows are often multi-step and confusing for non-native users, especially around collateral, UTxO management and signing flows.

  • Some teams resort to non-ideal patterns or offchain workarounds to hide complexity, which creates maintenance and security risk.

3.4. Infrastructure and tooling gaps​

  • Teams mentioned early friction around UTxO selection, minUTxO, transaction building and reliable simulation environments.

  • Indexers, liquidation oracles, congestion-aware risk engines and standardised integration blueprints are still patchy.

  • Projects often reinvent similar infra pieces instead of reusing shared components.

3.5. Funding, growth and communication​

  • Several teams see a misalignment between grant programs that focus on open-source infra and the needs of revenue-seeking DApps that must pay salaries and grow users.

  • Communication about protocol R&D and scaling (for example around new versions of core components or other types of work) is described as opaque or sporadic.

  • Builders want more proactive outreach from governance bodies and committees, not just passive funding forms.

4. When they would double down on Cardano​

Teams were clear about what would make them commit even more strongly to Cardano over the next cycle.

  • Production-grade scaling and messaging. Hydra, Leios or other scaling solutions need to cross the line from “promising research” to stable, documented products with clear owner messaging and support.

  • A deliberate stablecoin and liquidity strategy. Builders asked for a coordinated initiative around stablecoin liquidity, listings and cross-chain assets.

  • Wallet and UX upgrades focused on trading. Streamlined flows for approvals, margin management and batch transactions would immediately reduce friction and support more complex products.

  • Business-oriented support. Examples include co-investment lanes for revenue-seeking DApps with legal wrappers, BD introductions to market makers and CEXs, and shared marketing or growth pilots aimed at DeFi user acquisition.

  • A real builders forum or consortium. Teams want a structured way to align on shared infra needs, avoid duplication and give direct feedback into Product and Governance committees.

5. Implications for Vision/Strategy 2030​

The builder interviews line up closely with the Cardano Vision/Strategy 2030 draft: they mostly validate the direction, while sharpening where execution will matter most for DeFi.

Three links stand out:

5.1 DeFi as a core vertical is validated, but must be executed around liquidity and UX​

Strategy 2030 already names DeFi as a high value vertical and sets ambitious KPIs for TVL, MAUs and protocol revenue. Builders confirm the logic, but stress that success will hinge on:

  • Deep stablecoin and blue chip asset liquidity that traders and market makers actually use

  • Faster, smoother wallet and transaction UX for trading style use cases

  • Shared infra components (indexers, risk engines, oracles) that protocols can plug into instead of rebuilding alone

In other words, the DeFi pillar is directionally right, and these interviews clarify where the practical bottlenecks are likely to be.

5.2 Critical infrastructure programs are tackling the right structural gaps.​

The emerging Cardano Critical Infrastructure Budget is targeting most of the categories that builders flagged as out of reach for individual teams, and highly beneficial for DeFi growth: tier 1 stablecoins, bridges, oracles, analytics, and institutional grade custody and wallets.

If these integrations land, they will directly support several Strategy 2030 pillars:

  • Pillar 1 (Infrastructure & Research) on interoperability, security and observability

  • Pillar 2 (Adoption & Utility) on secure liquidity onramps and better enterprise grade UX for financial products

From the builders’ perspective, it seems these features are necessary enablers for the DeFi and trading goals written into their product roadmaps.

5.3 User and liquidity activation needs to be treated as a first class workstream.​

The strategy targets 1M monthly active users, higher transaction volumes and materially higher TVL by 2030

The Cardano Interviews show a clear risk: Cardano can have strong infra and thoughtful governance, yet still underperform in these metrics if most ADA holders continue to stake and hold without ever touching DeFi.

Teams repeatedly pointed to low DeFi engagement as their main growth limit. To close that gap, it would be consistent with Strategy 2030 to:

  • Make “first DeFi action” flows a design focus inside the Experience and Community pillars (simple, guided, non degen entry products)

  • Align incentive programs, education and wallets around a small set of audited, blue chip protocols that can safely onboard non specialist users

  • Track adoption metrics that builders care about, such as active DeFi wallets as a share of total MAU, stablecoin share of volume, and cross chain inflows reaching Cardano DApps.

Conclusion​

Taken together, the DApp interviews do not argue for a different Vision or Strategy. They reinforce the existing focus on DeFi and critical infrastructure, while highlighting a complementary priority: turning more ADA holders into confident DeFi users so that the infrastructure, KPIs and governance work translate into visible liquidity and usage on the network.