Berachain's Crypto Trade Aggregator Ooga Booga Raises $2M

Berachain mainnet isn't even live yet; no traders are trading, or exchanges exchanging, on crypto's latest layer-1. But that isn't dissuading Ooga Booga from fundraising to support both.

The strangely-named provider for a piece of financial infrastructure raised $2 million at a $10 million valuation, co-founder Kevin Liu told CoinDesk. The 19-year old founder said he wants his "decentralized exchange aggregator" to find the cheapest crypto swap for traders by scouring over half a dozen different exchanges.

That kind of service could stand out on a network Liu said is "trying to be the most capital efficient L1." Berachain's novel method for maintaining security, called "proof-of-liquidity," encourages users to provide their assets to the network's DeFi gears so on-chain trading and lending can handle size.

Ooga Booga itself "isn't reinventing the wheel," Liu admitted, explaining trade aggregators "have been done tons of times before."

"But an intrinsic and inherent feature of a blockchain is that liquidity is dispersed through multiple different avenues," he said.

This dispersion of liquidity means a trader who wants to swap one token for another might need to look across many exchanges, and many token pairs, to get the best trade.

Building a trade aggregator instead of an exchange is a change of pace for Liu. He previously ran a DEX on Arbitrum called Gridex. That fully on-chain order book shut down in February after struggling to find product market fit, he said. Now under the auspices of Ooga Booga, he's switched to what he calls a more proven product offering

"Multi-asset swaps, gasless swaps, dollar cost average, limit orders, these are all products which have been proven to be loved by people," he said.

As for the name, it's a reference to the greeting between fans of Berachain.

"Everyone knows ooga booga," Liu said.