Hippo Labs: Aptos’s First DeFi Aggregation Layer

Move language on Aptos has been one of the strong catalysts for the thriving number of projects on Aptos thanks to its accessibility and expressiveness as a programming language.

Hippo Labs, amongst the top OG projects on Aptos Network, is often regarded as the first-ever Aptos Aggregation Layer. This article will take a deep-dive into this unique project and how its aggregation-focused approach makes it stand out.

TL;DR

• Hippo Labs believes that while liquidity aggregation is essential, there is also a strong need for dev infrastructure to ensure the speed and reliability of the Web3 industry.
• Hippo Labs is therefore a DEX and money market aggregator on Aptos. It also builds an SDK and other tools to allow other dApps to access their aggregation layer.
• The project started in early 2022 but it has managed to gather more than 16K Twitter followers and a supportive community on Discord with 8.5K+ members.

What is Hippo Labs?

• Hippo Labs consists of a DeFi veteran team of builders, product designers, and marketers building an Aggregation Mechanism.
• Hippo Labs came into the scene to propel open-source development and collaborative efforts within the Aptos Ecosystem.
• This focus on open-source and aggregation toolings from Hippo allows Aptos developers to build Dapps which are composable by default.
• Far from an ordinary aggregator, Hippo Labs product suite, therefore, bears out a number of innovative and practical solutions in two folds:
• For developers: A set of SDKs, and compilers supporting developers & validators to focus on developing dApps on the Aptos ecosystem.
• For users: A DEX Aggregator to provide the best trading rates and experiences

Key Highlights

• On 12th September 2022, Hippo Labs launched its testnet stage for its aggregation platform.
• As of now, it has managed to reach a total trading volume of more than $60 million
• It recently scored an integration with PancakeSwap, bringing more cheap trading routes to Hippo Labs users from PancakeSwap.
• The platform impressively supports $70K at 0.5% slippage and it aims to improve this to $100K at less than 0.5% slippage in the upcoming month.

Integration Capabilities

As an Aggregation Layer, it is important to see how expansive the number of projects with which Hippo Labs has been integrating. This is also an indication of how Hippo pushes the DeFi composability, hence, creating a parallel financial system within Aptos. [1]

As of July 2022:

As of August 2022:

It is pretty impressive to see the growth of Hippo Labs ecosystem across different sectors in almost less than a month. Wallet and LaunchPad projects observed the most dramatic growth. Hippo Labs delivered on its DeFi-focused promise where major DeFi players are being integrated namely Pontem Network, Econia, Tsunami Finance, and Aries Markets. Major bridge collaborations on the Hippo ecosystem are also in place such as Layer Zero and Wormhole to bring out the cross-chain interoperability for Aptos projects.

Product Overview

Hippo Labs prides itself on the ability to iterate on new infrastructure in order to deliver useful open-source development tools and compossible DeFi infrastructure in a timely manner.

Regarding retail users, its product suite offers: [2]

• Trade Aggregator: It is built to cater to the rising number of DEXs on Aptos, Hippo goes under to integrate with multiple DEXs to ensure users will get the best trading rates in Aptos.
• Open-sourced Swap: Multiple swap implementations are included such as Constant-product swap, Stable-curve swap, and Piecewise constant-product swap
  

(Transaction Settings and Best Rate Option)

Regarding developers, HippoLabs provides: [3]

• Move to Typescript Transpiler (move-to-ts): This allows automatic TypeScript SDK generation from developers’ move contracts. This is especially powerful for quote generation and multi-hop trades that connect multiple DEXs in just a single transaction.
• Transaction Simulation API: Allowing wallet developers to provide better user experiences with features:
• Wallet Estimation Gas Cost where users will understand their anticipated gas expenditures.
• Wallet Preview Transaction Outcome to prevent users from scam-prone mistakes with a clear display of how the wallet balance will be affected after the transaction.
• Aptos Wallet Adapter: It supports many major wallets in the Aptos Ecosystem. Thus, allowing frontend developers to import this library and provide support for multiple Aptos wallets out-of-the-box.

Roadmap

Hippo Labs, as an aggregator, is on a very clear trajectory to elevate its product suite. It takes great pride in utilising infrastructure as means to bring out more value-added features for developers in the decentralised world.  

In the Web3 world where speed is of the utmost importance, the team is actively working on features like Hardhat-like CLI Workflow which will allow developers to automate their workflow. Other upcoming features such as Event Streaming and Upgraded Transaction Simulation are also aiming to boost the developers’ productivity. [4]

How is NodeReal Helping?

As an aggregator on Aptos, Hippo Labs is essentially the bridge between users and numerous Aptos projects. Not only Hippo handles speedy frontend requests but also it needs to maintain a stable backend performance. Wherever there is a need for both speed and stability, NodeReal can always lend a helping hand with our one-stop infrastructure solution for developers who want to build on Aptos.

MegaNode: Aptos node service is based on our flagship product of Meganode, which adopts the cloud-native architecture and has flattened the on-chain data which could provide fast and reliable service compared with full nodes.

Enhanced API: Besides the standard API service, we provide the developer tools like an explorer and enhanced APIs, that will allow developers to avoid the complexities of data indexing and maintenance.

Aptos Explorer: TraceMove explorer is the Aptos explorer product we provide to developers and users of Aptos. In fact, everyone can use TraceMove from Hippo Lab to check the details of their transactions.

Concluding Remarks

Hippo Labs is on a mission to take on the elegance of the Move Language, creating a better developer experience for scalable and future-proof applications. [5]

The project’s vision is imprinted and reflected through its product suite which is both user-friendly and developer-focused. It is laying the groundwork for an open-source and collaborative approach for not only Aptos Developers but any budding Devs who want to explore the beauty and the innovation that the Aptos system got to offer.  

Uniquely positioning itself as an aggregation layer with a DeFi-focused, Hippo Labs is playing a strong role in not only elevating but also solidifying the Decentralise Finance prospects on Aptos.

References:

[1]:https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/composable-defi

[2]:https://medium.com/@hippolabs/introducing-hippo-the-aptos-aggregation-layer-caefc1a7fc2d

[3]: https://hippo-labs.gitbook.io/dev/

[4]:https://hippo-labs.gitbook.io/dev/move-to-ts/coming-soon

[5]: https://aptosfoundation.org/currents/why-aptos-8-innovations-powering-aptos-network