Polygon Partners with Quant Firm to Bring Institutional Execution Standards to DeFi

Collaboration introduces data-backed liquidity improvements, tighter spreads, and professional market structure across Polygon's DeFi ecosystem

ZUG, Switzerland, Oct. 28, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Polygon Labs, the core development team behind the Polygon ecosystem, has engaged Manifold Trading, a family office and quantitative investment firm, to apply institutional-grade liquidity management to decentralized finance (DeFi).

As institutional players move deeper into DeFi, liquidity fragmentation and inconsistent pricing remain major barriers to large-scale adoption. Polygon and Manifold are tackling this head-on by introducing traditional market makers' level of execution standards, transparency, and data-driven liquidity strategies into onchain trading environments.

"Access to deep, stable liquidity is foundational to any mature financial system," said Maria Adamjee, Head of Investor Relations at Polygon Labs. "Manifold's ability to actively manage spreads, size, and responsiveness across multiple venues makes them an ideal ecosystem partner as we continue scaling institutional-grade DeFi across the Polygon ecosystem."

Manifold will deploy quantitative market-making and on-chain arbitrage strategies across major Polygon DEXs to enhance price efficiency, reduce cross-venue dislocations, and ensure continuous two-sided liquidity. The firm will also collaborate with emerging DeFi protocols to ensure new markets launch with sufficient depth from day one, a critical requirement for institutional trading activity.

"Polygon has become one of the most active venues for DeFi innovation," said Noah Hanover, Quantitative Developer at Manifold. "We're focused on supporting market stability and depth at scale, so that traders, protocols, and capital allocators can operate in a liquid, reliable environment."

Professional liquidity firms like Manifold anchor traditional finance by keeping spreads tight and execution costs low, standards now coming onchain. For a $1 million trade, compressing spreads from 50 basis points to 5 basis points can save roughly $4,500 in execution costs, demonstrating how professional liquidity infrastructure can make DeFi markets investable at institutional scale.

The collaboration marks a key step in Polygon's strategy to modernize DeFi market structure, complementing infrastructure upgrades such as AggLayer, which unifies cross-chain liquidity, and the upcoming gigagas update, which will reduce transaction finality to under five seconds.

"This partnership reflects Polygon's vision to build the rails of a decentralized financial system where liquidity, transparency, and performance can match or exceed traditional markets," Adamjee added.

SOURCE Polygon Labs