White Paper
Monolith Research Vol. 2 — published on SSRN under Monolith Systematic LLC.
Overview
The Vela technical white paper, published as Monolith Research Vol. 2, provides a formal treatment of the protocol design, performance benchmarks, and the theoretical foundations of the optimistic-ZK verification approach. It is available on SSRN at ssrn.com/abstract=6579199.
Key Contributions
Fixed-Point CLOB Semantics
The paper formally defines the matching semantics of Vela's CLOB, including the fixed-point arithmetic representation, price-time priority ordering, and the conditions under which each order type (GTC, IOC, FOK, Post-Only) produces fills or rests in the book. The formal semantics are the foundation for the fraud proof system: a fraud proof is valid if and only if it demonstrates a deviation from these semantics.
CoW Cache and Delta Replay
The copy-on-write execution model allows the engine to attempt order execution speculatively and commit or roll back atomically. The paper analyzes the correctness properties of delta replay and proves that the resulting state is equivalent to a naive re-execution of all orders from genesis, modulo determinism of the ordering.
MM Credit System
The credit system formalism defines the invariant that must hold at all times: the total notional value of open orders for a market maker, across all markets, must not exceed the product of deposited collateral and credit ratio. The paper proves that the engine enforces this invariant atomically for every state transition, including the edge cases of partial fills and concurrent cancellations.
Performance Analysis
Benchmarks are conducted on a realistic market maker workload — continuous two-sided quoting across multiple markets with frequent cancel-and-replace. Results are compared against Pulse, a reference CLOB implementation, at both the per-operation and throughput levels. Vela achieves 0.68 μs p50 match latency and 1,430,000 ops/sec sustained, approximately 11.6× faster than Pulse on a per-operation basis.
Optimistic-ZK Trust Model
The paper characterizes the trust assumptions of the current beta and the target trust model after on-chain fraud proof verification is deployed. In the current beta, users must trust the operator for liveness and correctness. After M6, the trust assumption reduces to: the operator can delay withdrawals (liveness failure) but cannot produce incorrect balance states without being detectably slashed.
Citation
Monolith Systematic LLC. (2025). Vela: A High-Performance Verifiable Spot CLOB DEX. Monolith Research Vol. 2. SSRN. Available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=6579199