Manifold Trading
A systematic quantitative investment and market-making firm for crypto
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About Manifold Trading
Manifold Trading is a systematic quantitative investment firm focused on cryptocurrency markets. Its core business involves arbitrage between centralized exchanges (CEX) and decentralized exchanges (DEX), exploiting price discrepancies caused by slower blockchain transaction settlement compared to CEX order books.
The firm's competitive edge lies in its engineering capabilities: optimizing gas fees, using efficient data processing, and building low-latency execution systems. It also leverages Aave for on-chain margin to improve capital efficiency. Over time, the firm expanded from simple arbitrage to more sophisticated strategies across multiple chains and DEXs, including those using concentrated liquidity models like Uniswap V3.
The market pain point it addresses is the inefficiency in crypto markets—specifically, the lag between on-chain and off-chain prices, which creates temporary arbitrage opportunities. Manifold's systems are designed to capture these fleeting profits before competitors do.
In the past six months (2026-02-28 to 2026-08-28), the firm has faced increasing competition, which compressed profit margins. The once highly profitable CEX-DEX arbitrage strategy has decayed significantly, with spreads narrowing to levels that barely cover costs. As a result, Manifold has shifted its focus and capital toward other higher-margin trading strategies that operate in the background, while acknowledging that the original arbitrage edge has largely diminished.
Manifold Trading, a systematic crypto quant firm, evolved from a founder-led CEX-DEX arbitrage experiment into a multi-strategy investment institution.
Its early edge came from rapid iteration: a TypeScript prototype validated cross-exchange arbitrage, later rewritten in Go+Solidity for multi-chain scalability. The team expanded across 10-20 DEXs per chain, integrating Uniswap V3-style concentrated liquidity pools. As competition compressed spreads, they built Hydra, an automated cross-chain fund movement system, and later a proprietary on-chain margin trading layer via Aave integrations.
Strategically, Manifold shifted from pure arbitrage to broader alpha capture, deploying capital into high-conviction venture deals. Notable investments include a $525M round for Praxis, $225M for Monad, and early-stage bets on Elixir, Biconomy, and UXLINK. This dual approach—market-making plus venture investing—established its long-term position in the crypto ecosystem.
Co-founders and key executives:
Jae Chung - Founding Partner. Previously served as Head of Trading Operations at Manifold, and Quantitative Researcher and DeFi Trader. Also founded HKEOS (a blockchain company) and worked as Technical Analyst at TomorrowVC.
Sam Kiki - Founding Partner. Co-founded HKEOS with Jae Chung. Background in quantitative investing and blockchain technology.
Ben Friedman - Quantitative Research. Focuses on systematic and quantitative investment strategies.
Nicholas Parasram - Vice President. Contributes to the firm's trading and operational leadership.