Feature Fridays: Barter

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.

Q & A with Barter 👇

Could you introduce yourself by sharing your name, prior experience, and current role within your company? Additionally, please briefly explain your company's mission and what it offers to its customers.

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.

How has your company grown and changed since its inception, and what do you have planned for its future?

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.

What inspired you to develop Barter, and how did you conceive the idea?

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.

Can you provide insight into Barter’s progress by sharing any metrics or milestones indicating its traction?

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.

How does your company utilize QuickNode, QuickNode’s products, and what benefits does it bring to your business operations?

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.

About QuickNode

QuickNode is building infrastructure to support the future of Web3. Since 2017, we've worked with hundreds of developers and companies, helping scale dApps and providing high-performance access to 60+ blockchains. Subscribe to our newsletter for more content like this, and stay in the loop with what's happening in web3!