Case Study · Blockchain & DeFi Infrastructure
AUUM: A Rust Layer-1 Blockchain, Built From Scratch
Not a fork, not a testnet-in-name-only -- a Rust blockchain built around one bet: process the primitives you actually need (a token, an AMM, a perpetuals engine) as first-class state transitions in the chain's own state machine, in the spirit of Hyperliquid, rather than compiling everything to bytecode and running it in a general-purpose VM.
~374 tx/s
Signed transfers, measured live
ed25519
Every AUUM action, authenticated
Rust
No VM -- native state transitions
EVM side
Solidity contracts, secp256k1-signed
The challenge
Ethereum-style chains hand you a general-purpose VM and let you deploy arbitrary logic as smart contracts -- flexible, but every operation pays interpretation overhead, and correctness rests entirely on the contract author rather than the chain itself. A chain built to do a small number of things extremely well can instead process those things as native operations: no bytecode, no VM dispatch, the same code path whether the action came from a wallet click or a curl command. That's the bet AUUM makes, at a scale proportional to what it actually needs to prove.
What we built
Native State Machine
No VM, no bytecode
Transfers, AMM swaps, and perpetuals opens are Rust enum variants handled directly by one apply() function -- the exact same code path a wallet click and a raw API call both go through, with no interpretation layer in between.
A Genuinely Signed Token
Every AUUM action carries a real signature
An AUUM account is its ed25519 public key -- transfer, mint, approve, transferFrom all require a valid signature over a canonical message, checked by every node before the action can touch state. Not a demo primitive with free-text account names -- real cryptographic authentication, cross-checked against three independent ed25519 libraries.
Gossip Mesh & Fork Resolution
Every action finalizes immediately, no mining step
Nodes gossip finalized blocks directly over TCP and sync via longest-chain-wins, with a deterministic lowest-hash tiebreak so every node converges on the same tip. A stake-weighted leader-rotation upgrade -- closing the rare race where two nodes finalize at the same height -- has been built and independently verified in a fully isolated test environment, ahead of a staged production rollout.
When it's used
- A CEX & custodial wallet system trading its own AMM & Perps natively, with real on-chain settlement.
- Stake-weighted validators earning rewards through a real Staking contract, with block-proposal rights following soon.
- Anyone building against a real RPC -- MetaMask-compatible
eth_*JSON-RPC alongside native REST endpoints. - Anyone who wants to run their own node -- the binary is downloadable straight from a live node.
How to use it
The reference wallet signs entirely in your browser -- a private key you enter or generate there never leaves the page. Claim testnet AUUM from the faucet, send a signed transfer, and watch it finalize in real time.
- Open the wallet and generate or import a key
- Claim testnet AUUM from the faucet
- Send a signed transfer and watch it finalize
Want a chain built around your own primitives?
Let's talk about what a purpose-built blockchain could do for your product.