v0.3 Mainnet or Bust: Because HL Testnet Clearly Hates Us

The sole reason to launch Rez on Hyperliquid testnet was to provide seamless user experience for our beta testers. But it was anything but smooth.

We launched on Jan 27 with 3 accounts pre-funded with 1000 USDC (testnet). All 3 accounts were drained to 0 by HL, additionally there were rate limits on trading, which caused abrupt & erratic behaviors, leading to poor user experience.

This led to panic because our dashboards were showing portfolio value straight to zero, we went into pitches with that, our testers were confused. We funded one of them with 500 USDC (testnet) and again after few days it was halved to 250. At this point we are counting days to when this would go to zero too.

Some context — we are completely bootstrapped and we know how risky crypto markets are and how easily you can lose reputation if you mess up early. On top of it we are unaudited. Even setting up those wallets was a hassle in itself — you need $5 ARB on mainnet with an active wallet, only then HL would give $1000 USDC testnet.

OK so then we could just keep depositing $5 and keep setting up test accounts, that should work right? That comes with the same issues of rate limits and abrupt draining of wallets and again user frustration.

Moving Forward

How do we solve this? Go mainnet — sounds easy. But going mainnet comes with additional responsibility of making sure user funds are safe. Even though Rez is completely non-custodial, we still need to make sure that our architecture is secure. This necessitates an audit, for which we need sufficient resources.

Also as we had only 3 accounts, the chances of an account being accessed by more than one user is very much possible, which did happen and again it led to a poor user experience. The resulting feedback, while pointed, is entirely warranted and has been invaluable.

Then What?

We would still be in beta and we would put deposit limits, so you won't be able to deposit more than let's say 100 USDC, which is still a lot of money but there's no other way. It won't be public — we will still be working with our private cohort of beta testers to ensure we don't mess up before we go public.

We are also exploring integration with an established perp DEX to leverage complementary infrastructure and support.

Rez has a very lean team consisting of me and my CTO @0xSuhass. Recently @KhanAbbas201 mentioned in his post that experimenting in DeFi/Crypto is expensive. I agree — it's even worse when you're bootstrapped.

Progress

• v0.1 offered paper trading for initial validation.
• v0.2 brought live execution on the Hyperliquid testnet.
• v0.3 will mark our transition to mainnet.

With each version we have validated ourselves & kept improving. We have faced problems in each step, we have taken feedback very seriously and kept moving forward.

So yeah, we're going mainnet early. My bet is simple. Rez will be the only quant you need for perpetual futures.

gRez.

PS: No hate to Hyperliquid — love what they are doing. Working with testnet comes with limitations.