Kestrel Swap started in 2023, after one founder swapped part of her salary into stablecoins each month and paid the same 0.3% fee on a thin pool as on a deep one. She thought the fee should fall as a pool fills up, and built a small exchange with two pools to test the idea.
In 2025 the ecosystem fund matched a $600,000 seed round with $600,000 of its own, paid against three milestones. The money covered an audit, the fee curve on mainnet and routing across pools. Kestrel now handles $41M in volume a month.
