Barter Co-Founder Nikita Ovchinnik on Liquidity Without Lockups and What DeFi Needs Next

Barter operates as a solver across intent-based DEXs and aggregators such as CoWSwap, Uniswap, Velora Delta. It helps optimize trade execution by improving pricing and reducing costs behind the scenes. Its infrastructure plays a role in routing Ethereum transactions with better pricing and lower costs.

On March 31, the team introduced Superposition, a liquidity primitive that removes the need for deposits or lockups. In this interview, co-founder Nikita Ovchinnik unpacks the design behind Superposition, and how it aims to expand access while reducing friction in DeFi participation.

BeInCrypto: You’ve described assets in Superposition as being in “two states at once” — accessible and productive — and referenced Schrödinger’s superposition as inspiration. However, what does that analogy really mean to you in terms of user control and liquidity behavior?

Nikita Ovchinnik: Traditional DeFi forces users to choose between availability and productivity. If your tokens are earning, they’re locked. 

In Superposition, that binary breaks. Barter’s Distributed Liquidity Layer allows assets to stay in the user’s wallet while simultaneously being used to capture yield, just like in quantum superposition, where a particle holds multiple states until observed. 

There’s no need to deposit into pools and mint LP tokens. Once a trade intent is received, the backend selects wallets, signs a quote, and the trade executes — all while the LP remains in control. It’s a fundamental shift in how we view liquidity. You avoid paying gas to move funds in and out of pools, and trades are executed in a MEV-resistant manner via an off-chain quote that’s verified on-chain.

BeInCrypto: Since Superposition doesn’t rely on traditional LP incentives, what behaviors are you designing for, and how do you align long-term liquidity availability with short-term trade execution without lockups or bribes?

Nikita Ovchinnik: Even though trades are executed directly from your wallet, you still receive the usual LP incentives, like trading fees, the moment a swap completes. There is no claiming required.

Superposition offers various liquidity strategies tailored to different preferences. Users can choose from Stablecoin Yield swaps, AMM-like replication, advanced limit orders, or full-fledged market maker pricing. 

To earn yield on stablecoins, users can select our Stablecoin Yield mode. This mode automatically handles the move into more rewarding stablecoins, all with a constant-sum approach that eliminates slippage. 

For those who are comfortable mirroring existing curves, our AMM-like strategy replicates popular pool dynamics while bypassing the overhead of deposits or withdrawals. Limit orders give you precise control over the traded price, and can be adjusted for additional flexibility. 

Finally, anyone looking to replicate pricing from CEXes or specialized market makers can leverage our Market Maker Pricing mode, which dynamically tracks external order books. 

As we only “borrow” your tokens at the moment of a swap, you’re effectively generating yield whenever your liquidity gets tapped without continuous restaking. LPs earn through actual activity rather than depending on conventional emissions or lockup-based incentives, and in which day-to-day operations become frictionless.

BeInCrypto: Superposition relies on precise, just-in-time execution to deploy liquidity only when it’s needed. From a technical standpoint, what’s the biggest challenge in getting that timing right, and what happens when it isn’t?

Nikita Ovchinnik: Timing is about precision in coordination. With Superposition, we don’t need to “catch the moment” because token allowances are already granted by LP wallets. That means we can use the liquidity at any time, but only when conditions are met. 

Selecting the right wallets for each trade remains an active area of development, and we’re continuously working to optimize a fair and effective strategy.

Overall, off-chain, we construct a route, choose which wallets will be used, encode that into a signed quote, and hand it off. When the solver receives that quote, it calls the Distributed Liquidity Layer contract, which simply executes what’s already been defined, pulling liquidity from the right wallets exactly as specified.

BeInCrypto: Barter’s asset managers adjust liquidity parameters dynamically without user intervention. What measures have you taken to ensure this system stays transparent and accountable, especially for users who may not fully understand what’s happening under the hood?

Nikita Ovchinnik: To maintain transparency and accountability, Superposition offers detailed statistics that show how effectively asset managers handle your liquidity, making it easy to assess their performance. 

Asset managers are also required to maintain collateral to further safeguard capital, protecting LPs from malicious or dishonest behavior. With built-in price checks, Superposition ensures that no transaction is executed if it significantly deviates from the market rate, keeping your trades accurate and aligned with fair pricing.

While asset managers can optimize liquidity parameters, they do so strictly under the conditions you select. You always have the option to revoke allowances, change, or adjust your strategy, which ensures you stay in control of your funds. 

For the newcomers, the most straightforward approach might be to choose a strategy that replicates existing AMM or PMM pricing logic, like a Uniswap v3-style curve or a Balancer multi-token pool. By utilizing unique pricing mechanics in AMM and PMM pricing logics, Superposition protects LPs from undesirable asset rebalancing, reducing impermanent loss. At the same time, traders will be assured that the execution environment is MEV-protected and has the best exchange rates. 

BeInCrypto: Superposition tackles custody, slippage, and active liquidity management, but DeFi still has plenty of room for improvement. What are some areas you believe need meaningful rethinking in the space?

Nikita Ovchinnik: DeFi has made incredible progress, but much of it still replicates TradFi mechanics with added complexity. Custody, slippage, and liquidity management were the low-hanging fruit, and Superposition addresses those. But beyond that, we believe the biggest rethinking should happen around who is actually participating in liquidity. 

Right now, most LPs are either passive retail users or sophisticated market makers playing entirely different games. We need models that support a new middle ground: dynamic, strategy-driven LPs with customizable preferences—people who don’t just park funds in a pool and hope for the best, but also aren’t high-frequency arbitrage firms. These middle-ground LPs need easily accessible tools to deploy advanced strategies without having to code or navigate complicated multi-step workflows. 

By providing a simpler, more transparent framework, Superposition makes it possible for ordinary LPs to compete effectively with professional market makers, helping ensure that more value remains within the broader ecosystem.

In addition, incentive design remains a frontier we cannot ignore. Instead of masking inefficiencies with token emissions, the space should move toward sustainable economic structures where utility, not speculation, drives engagement. If DeFi pushes forward on these fronts—participant diversity, user-centric design, deeper on-chain transparency, and stable value generation—DeFi can become more than just an alternative.

Superposition v1 is currently in active development. For updates and launch announcements, follow @BarterDeFi on X. To understand how it works, the Superposition Whitepaper breaks down the architecture and design in detail.

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