Marginfi Co-Founder Launches New Product Amid Criticism from Former Colleagues
Marginfi co-founder Edgar Pavlovsky departed from the Solana DeFi project in April due to disagreements over internal and external operations.
Eight months later, he is now a core contributor to Paladin, a Solana client designed to protect validators from sandwich attacks and enhance block reward earnings. Simultaneously, Temporal, a crypto research firm with ties to Marginfi, launched “Nozomi,” a proprietary quic client aimed at preventing sandwich attacks.
Although both projects target similar issues, they differ significantly: Paladin has an upcoming token, while Marginfi has not yet released a native coin. Nozomi focuses on rapid transaction processing by sending transactions only to “whitelisted” Solana validators, promoting democratized trading.
Jakob Povsic from Temporal noted that their experience in trading allows them to enhance execution for users. In contrast, Pavlovsky described Paladin as a fork of the Jito-Solana client, which identifies and removes sandwich attacks from transaction bundles, prioritizing transactions with higher fees. Access to Paladin validators will be gated by the PAL token.
Pavlovsky expressed support for Temporal's efforts, emphasizing that multiple businesses can coexist within the space. However, Povsic criticized Paladin's approach as naive, claiming it arbitrarily blocks transactions and that its token integration complicates matters.
Pavlovsky defended Paladin's anti-sandwich whitelist as systematic rather than arbitrary, stating it is designed for sophisticated players and is undergoing thorough testing against sandwichers. Ben Coverston from Temporal argued that Paladin’s model is extractive compared to Nozomi’s straightforward transaction facilitation.
The PAL token’s role is contentious. Marginfi faces criticism for its points program used for token airdrops without launching a token. Pavlovsky indicated that his departure was partly due to frustration over the delay in launching a Marginfi token, advocating for a release in Q4 2023.