Synetics founder Cain Warwick announced to Infinex in mid-May

Synetics founder Cain Warwick has given a date for the “on-chain gateway” Infinex to go live after several delays from an expected Q4 2022 launch.

Infinex is targeting a May 13 official launch, Warwick said at the ETH Global Conference on May 2 in Sydney, Australia.

Warwick will celebrate the May 13 launch of the Infinex account, which is described by the Infinex team as a Web2 authentication method such as an email address, “a set of cross-chain smart contracts that can be controlled, secured and retrievable”.

Warwick said Infinex — a decentralized front-end to access Synthetix's liquidity and trading features — was created to be a broader platform aimed at reducing the barriers that keep people from entering decentralized finance (DeFi).

There is no denying that there is a lot to be done in DeFi or just on-chain. From a product perspective, or a feature perspective, we have more features on-chain than a centralized exchange can replicate.

While on-chain applications are more diverse, Warwick notes that crypto users are still using centralized exchanges (CEXs) for crypto-related financial transactions by a “large margin.”

Although the shortcomings of CEXs have been highlighted by events such as the collapse of the now-defunct crypto exchange FTX, crypto investors still haven't jumped into DeFi and are instead choosing to go to competing exchanges like Binance and Coinbase.

For Warwick, the barriers preventing users from onboarding to DeFi cannot be derived from products alone or fall back on additional security promises. Instead, these onboarding issues are primarily driven by user experience issues.

Infinex describes it as acting as a “UX layer,” providing users with a more centralized exchange-like interface to run decentralized applications on various blockchain networks, including Ethereum, Base, Optimism, Polygon, Arbitrum, and Solana.

“It's a very difficult thing to do well, but I think we're getting very close, at least on the Infinex side.”

Warwick added that Infinex uses social passwords to allow users to sign in with Web2 applications — such as Google Accounts — and typically reduces “collision” with the standard Web3 user experience.

“The main part is that you have an account that you own — it's self-sustaining — but you can log into that account through Web2,” Warwick said.

“First point [Infinex] You can have an account and then you can deposit into that account to earn management points,” Warwick said. After the opening, there will be a month-long point-farming game, he added.

On March 13, Infinex suffered a security breach, which saw Warwick quickly take over as head of the project's working group.

Speaking to Cointelegraph, Warwick said the security vulnerability is “part of the reason” the launch of Infinex – initially targeted for Q4 2023 – has been delayed.

The security vulnerability is a social engineering attack where hackers can gain access to password storage, Warwick said. You can then access the protocol's DNS repository and edit Infinex's DNS.

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“It wasn't money that was at risk because we weren't alive – but just learning some kind of lesson – it couldn't be just that before we were alive,” he said.

“I went in and brought in two other guys and we burned all the systems to the ground and rebuilt everything from scratch. It's one of the safest environments I've ever worked in.”

Warwick said the May 13 launch date is the planned launch date for Infinex's governing DAO – the Infinex Council – which still needs to vote on-chain to approve the launch.

He said he was confident the council would approve it – but the decision would start and end with the council.

Following Infinex's work, Warwick hopes to see $50 million locked in gross value and attract 10,000 real users in the first 30 days.

“We have 200,000 people on the waiting list, but most of them are sibyls, airdrop farmers, and bots. We think there are 10,000 strong.” [genuine] Users on this list,” he said.

“If we have 5,000 to 10,000 people and 50 million TVL – I feel like we've done something right.”

Warwick added that if the current market cycle remains aggressive, he expects to see “hundreds of thousands” of users join Infinex within a year of launch.

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Additional reporting by Felix Ng.

Update (9:12 am UTC): This article has been updated to include more details of the Infinex platform.