A conversation with Nexus founder and CEO Daniel Marin at ETH Denver
ETHDenver this year felt different. The speculative energy of previous cycles had cooled, and the conversations had shifted toward something more durable: sustainability, real economic value, and the long-term design of blockchain systems.
For Nexus founder and CEO Daniel Marin, that shift is a healthy one.
“Whenever there’s a bear market, the true builders remain. It’s always good to see more signal than noise in this landscape.”
During a conversation at ETHDenver, Daniel shared how Nexus is approaching the next generation of blockchain infrastructure. His view is that the industry is entering a new phase — one defined not just by scalability or throughput, but by the ability to create systems that generate real economic value.
“Our core thesis has always been that there is space for a fundamentally new design of a layer-one blockchain based on the rapid advancements in verifiable computation and zero-knowledge cryptography.”
Verifiable computation has advanced rapidly over the past several years, particularly through the development of zero-knowledge proofs. These technologies allow complex computations to be verified without needing to re-execute them, opening the door to new blockchain architectures that are both scalable and provably correct.
Nexus was built around this technological shift. At the center of the system is the Nexus zkVM, a general-purpose zero-knowledge virtual machine designed to enable scalable, verifiable computation across the network.
But Daniel is quick to emphasize that technology alone is not enough.
“Just better technology and more scalability isn’t enough in today’s market. You need to bring value to users and institutions.”
Rather than creating another general-purpose chain competing purely on performance, Nexus is designed as an integrated financial engine. The protocol combines a programmable blockchain environment with core financial primitives built directly into the architecture of the network.
“Nexus is seeking to build what you may consider a next-generation economic machine—a verifiable economic machine.”
The design introduces a new dual-core architecture. In most blockchains today, decentralized exchanges are deployed as smart contracts running inside a general-purpose virtual machine. While flexible, this structure imposes performance constraints that make it difficult to support the speed and tooling required by professional traders.
“If you submit a trade on a typical decentralized exchange, you’re subject to the latency of the underlying blockchain,” Daniel explained. “On Ethereum L1 that might be fifteen seconds. For high-frequency trading, that just doesn’t make sense."
Nexus addresses this limitation by separating responsibilities inside the blockchain itself. The network includes an EVM core that supports general-purpose applications alongside a dedicated exchange core designed specifically for high-performance trading. These two components communicate closely while remaining specialized for their respective tasks.
The goal is to replicate the performance and feature set of centralized exchanges—while maintaining the decentralized, non-custodial properties that make blockchains unique.
“The question is how to replicate the performance of centralized exchanges while preserving decentralization, permissionlessness, and programmability.”
Alongside the exchange, Nexus is introducing a native stablecoin that plays a central role in the protocol’s economic structure. The stablecoin will serve as the quote asset for the Nexus exchange, meaning perpetual markets will be denominated in it. But it also enables a broader economic design.
Daniel points out that in many blockchains today, the core protocol does not meaningfully capture value from the economic activity happening on the network.
“In traditional blockchains, it doesn’t really matter how much volume or TVL you have. The core protocol isn’t capturing that value.”
Nexus attempts to change that dynamic. The exchange captures revenue through trading volume, while the stablecoin captures yield from total value locked within the ecosystem. Together, these mechanisms allow the blockchain itself to participate directly in the economic activity it hosts.
This structure also opens the door to something rarely discussed in blockchain design: a protocol-level monetary policy.
“A blockchain should think of itself like a nation state. It should manage its own monetary policy and measure its progress by the value it creates.”
With both trading revenue and stablecoin yield feeding into the system, Nexus can coordinate incentives across the network in a way that more closely resembles an economic system than a simple infrastructure layer. Applications deployed on the chain could potentially be rewarded based on the liquidity and activity they generate, aligning developers and the protocol around shared growth.
Beyond financial infrastructure, Daniel believes the next wave of innovation will also be shaped by automation and artificial intelligence. As AI agents become more capable, they will increasingly interact with financial systems autonomously, executing strategies and managing capital at speeds that human traders cannot match.
Blockchains, Daniel argues, are uniquely suited for that future.
“We think machines will be moving most of the capital in the world. And blockchains are their natural environment.”
Once decentralized systems achieve parity with traditional financial infrastructure in terms of performance and usability, entirely new possibilities begin to emerge. The programmable nature of blockchains allows financial primitives to combine in ways that simply do not exist in traditional markets.
“Once parity with traditional finance is achieved, the properties of blockchains—composability and programmability — unlock entirely new financial applications.”
For Nexus, the immediate focus remains execution. Over the coming months the team plans to launch the Nexus EVM mainnet, followed by the deployment of the exchange and the rollout of the protocol’s stablecoin.
Despite the complexity of the system being built, Marin describes the protocol’s mission in straightforward terms.
“Our job as a protocol is simple. Everything we do should focus on growing TVL and volume — and the applications that generate them.”
If that vision succeeds, Nexus may represent a new category of blockchain architecture: not just a platform for decentralized applications, but a verifiable economic machine designed for the future of global finance.
Nexus
