Mangrove

About Mangrove

Mangrove is a decentralized exchange (DEX) operating on a novel order book model designed to enhance capital efficiency within the decentralized finance (DeFi) space. The company was established in 2021 by a team of researchers, including co-founders Vincent Danos and Jean Krivine. The founding team observed that traditional market makers often borrow capital rather than using their own, which inspired Mangrove's core concept.

The protocol secured a $2.7 million seed round in July 2021, backed by investors such as Wintermute Ventures, QCP Soteria Node, and Stake Capital. This was followed by a $7.4 million Series A round in February 2023, co-led by Cumberland and Greenfield Capital, to further product development and research. Mangrove operates as a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO), with governance mechanisms for its token holders.

Mangrove's key differentiator is its "offer-is-code" approach. Instead of locking assets into liquidity pools, which is standard on many DEXs, liquidity providers on Mangrove post "smart offers." These are essentially smart contracts that act as promises to deliver liquidity only when an offer is matched. This model allows providers' assets to remain productive elsewhere on-chain—for example, earning yield in lending protocols—until a trade is executed. This reactive liquidity mechanism addresses the issues of capital inefficiency and fragmentation prevalent in DeFi, where billions are often dormant in various pools. The platform is built to be non-custodial, meaning users always retain control of their funds.

The protocol serves three main types of users: Makers, who provide liquidity by populating the order book with smart offers; Takers, who consume this liquidity by placing market or limit orders; and Keepers, which are bots that maintain the order book's integrity by canceling failed offers in exchange for a bounty. This structure enables advanced trading features, such as providing a "last look" to cancel offers under unfavorable market conditions and amplifying liquidity by using the same capital across different markets. The protocol first launched on Polygon and plans to expand to other EVM-compatible chains.