Building the Team Behind an AI-Native DEX

The Brief

A stealth-stage crypto project needed to build a decentralised exchange from scratch, designed from day one for AI trading agents as core users rather than an afterthought. They needed 10 developers with genuine depth across on-chain infrastructure, low-latency systems, and AI integration. No generalists, no time to waste.

The Challenge

This wasn't a typical crypto hire. The team needed engineers who were genuinely strong in three areas at once: decentralised systems, high-performance trading infrastructure, and AI agent tooling. That combination doesn't really exist as a labelled talent pool. There was no shortcut here, the team had to be built one relevant engineer at a time.

The Approach

Rather than running one generic blockchain developer search, we sourced across three overlapping pools: core DeFi and L1 protocol engineers, low-latency trading infrastructure specialists, and AI agent and tooling builders.

We prioritised engineers with public, verifiable work, audited contracts and open-source contributions, over resume claims alone. We also screened for genuine belief in what this space is trying to build. Crypto moves fast and attracts people just chasing the next thing, so commitment mattered as much as raw skill.

Technical assessments were built around real system design problems, order book architecture and settlement guarantees, rather than abstract coding tests that don't tell you much about how someone actually thinks.

The Result

10 engineers, one team, three disciplines covered properly. The build launched with enough technical credibility to be taken seriously by market makers and trading firms from day one, in one of the hardest talent markets in tech right now.