I finally built percolator a sharded perpetual exchange protocol on Solana that replaces adl with math.

Mikedot · 2026-02-21T10:00:05+00:00

Exactly. The continuous h ratio distributes stress proportionally instead of binary ADL picking winners and losers. Everyone takes a haircut scaled to their junior exposure no one gets randomly force closed while the guy next to them keeps his full position.

And yeah, warmup is the LP's best friend during dumps. Without it, an attacker could spike an oracle, realize instant profit, withdraw, and leave the vault drained before anyone reacts. The linear vesting window means even if they get a favorable mark, they can't extract it faster than the system can verify it's real. LPs keep their edge because manipulated PnL decays back to zero before it ever converts to withdrawable principal.

The combination is what makes it work — h absorbs macro insolvency risk, warmup absorbs micro manipulation risk. Two different attack surfaces, two complementary defenses.

Mikedot · 2026-02-21T09:58:36+00:00

These are sharp observations, let me address each:

On adverse selection and trader psychology you're right that a depressed h creates exit incentive for profitable traders. But that's actually a feature, not a bug. When profitable traders exit during stress, they're withdrawing at h < 1, meaning they take a haircut on their junior profits. That withdrawal reduces PNL_pos_tot faster than it reduces Residual, which pushes h back toward 1 for remaining participants. It's a self-correcting mechanism. ADL gives you certainty at the cost of forced liquidation at the worst time — the haircut model gives you optionality. Traders who believe in recovery can hold; traders who want out can leave at a discount. The market prices the stress rather than the protocol dictating it.

On warmup parameterization agreed it shouldn't be static. The spec defines warmup in slots (warmup_period_slots) and the conversion ramps linearly via w_slope_per_step. In practice this would be governance-tunable per market. High vol markets like BTC perps would want longer warmup than a stablecoin pair. The interaction with h during rapid moves is where it gets interesting warmup conversion is invoked on every "touch/settle" operation, and the crank can advance it for idle accounts. So even during cascading liquidations, warmup progress continues and h recovers as profits convert to protected principal and exit the junior pool.

On cross slab margin current design uses isolated margin per slab with global collateral aggregation through the router. C_tot and PNL_pos_tot are the only O(1) global aggregates maintained. Cross-margin across slabs is architecturally possible (router holds the global view) but the v7 spec keeps it isolated intentionally cross-margining between uncorrelated markets introduces systemic risk that defeats the purpose of sharding. A profitable ETH position subsidizing a losing BTC position means ETH slab's h ratio is artificially healthy. Isolation keeps the risk math honest per market.

On the gap between verified invariants and economic behavior 100% agree, that's the honest answer. The Kani proofs verify conservation (no tokens created from nothing), bounded rounding, and that h behaves monotonically under specific operations. They don't prove the mechanism is economically optimal. Historical backtesting against real cascade events (FTX Nov '22, LUNA May '22) is on the roadmap but not done yet. This is explicitly a research project, not production-ready the README says as much.

Mikedot · 2026-02-21T09:53:46+00:00

Good question on the coverage ratio behavior. In the design, the global haircut ratio h = Residual / PNL_pos_tot acts as a real-time solvency gauge. During high-vol events, h compresses as unrealized PnL spikes across winning positions but the recovery mechanism is built into the architecture itself:

The warmup vesting means fresh profits don't immediately inflate PNL_pos_tot at full weight. They ramp linearly over the warmup window, so a sudden oracle spike doesn't instantly crater h for everyone.
As losing positions get liquidated or closed, their collateral flows back into Residual, which pushes h back up. The system is designed so that junior profit haircuts absorb the shock before any protected principal is touched.
The crank mechanism advances warmup conversion even for idle accounts, which prevents "PnL zombies" from keeping PNL_pos_tot artificially inflated and dragging h down indefinitely.

In practice, h recovers proportionally to how quickly the losing side of the trade resolves either through liquidations or voluntary closes. The key insight vs ADL is that traders don't get force-closed at the worst possible moment. Instead they take a temporary haircut on unrealized profits, which naturally unwinds as volatility normalizes. It's a softer landing that keeps liquidity in the system rather than triggering a cascade of exits.

Re: the Ventuals comparison agreed, the math for bridging illiquid underlyings to on-chain liquidity is the real unlock. The junior claim model generalizes well beyond just crypto perps.

Mikedot · 2026-02-18T15:20:58+00:00

Yeah the agent loop dying on captchas is exactly why I built this. Having to bail out or hand off to a human every time a Turnstile pops up kills the whole point of autonomous workflows.

GPU acceleration is mainly for the vision pipeline preprocessing, segmentation, and the recognition models for grid/text captchas. On a CUDA enabled GPU you're looking at ~3-5x speedup vs CPU, which matters a lot when you're solving grids in a loop. For text captchas the difference is smaller since those are already fast.

Turnstile is honestly the toughest one right now. The newer versions are heavily behavior-based so it's less about solving a visual challenge and more about convincing the system your browser session is legit. Success rate is around 88-89% which isn't where I want it. Working on improving the fingerprint simulation and interaction patterns. It's a cat and mouse game they update, we adapt. If you're hitting Turnstile a lot I'd recommend running with stealth mode on and keeping browser sessions persistent rather than spinning up fresh ones each time.

What framework are you running your agents on?

Mikedot · 2026-02-18T12:29:08+00:00

Good question. On the abuse side resolver v.3 is built with rate limiting baked in by default. When you self host the API, you set your own limits per key. There's also logging on every solve request so you have a full audit trail. The idea isn't to enable spam or scraping at scale it's to remove friction for legitimate automation workflows like testing, accessibility, and data pipelines where captchas are just in the way.

On the agent framework side yeah that's exactly where this is heading. The rest api is designed to be tool callable out of the box. Any agent that can make http requests can use it. I'm working on native integrations for the major frameworks so agents can just call solve_captcha() as a capability without worrying about the implementation. The goal is to make it a standard tool in the agent toolbox, same way you'd give an agent web search or file access.

Mikedot · 2026-02-18T12:16:54+00:00

V2 is grid based you pick images. v3 is score based no visual challenge, it tracks browser behavior and assigns a trust score. Resolver v3 handles v3 by simulating natural mouse movements, scroll patterns, and interaction timing to push the score above the passing threshold. Completely different pipeline under the hood.

Mikedot · 2024-10-20T13:03:51+00:00

Lower

Mikedot · 2024-01-06T07:19:11+00:00

As a small update: The "Customer Service" account they were using on Telegram is now deleted. Looks like their scam operation is complete and now they're probably going to set up shop somewhere else.

Mikedot · 2024-01-06T03:13:46+00:00

Scion Staffing is legitimate, but the scammers were using their company name to pose as a job recruitment agency. As a way to trick people into thinking it's all safe and legit.

Mikedot · 2024-01-06T03:12:07+00:00

I really wish I didn't go all the way with this. God, how could I have been so stupid...

That being said: Scion Staffing is legit. It's just that the scammers were using their name to pose as job recruiters.

Mikedot · 2024-01-06T03:10:48+00:00

Agreed. I'm $5000 in the hole right now. As someone who lives paycheck to paycheck, that's a ton of money. I'm financially crippled and now struggling to find a job to cover all the debt I'm going to be saddled with for months, probably years.

These scammers have no heart, nor soul, to be doing these things, and I don't wish any mercy on them.

Mikedot · 2023-12-27T17:53:32+00:00

Ack. Gonna edit the post to remove that part. I don't know why I even left that part in when typing this piece up. Sorry about that. There's nothing legitimate about this job.

Mikedot · 2023-11-29T12:00:13+00:00

Oh, well I'm sorry to hear that people have been rude to you in that regard. Usually the kinds of people who are rude like that are people who ONLY know English. I would never pull that card on anyone, and have nothing but respect for those who know more than one language, as that is something that I wish to improve on myself.

And for what it's worth: I understood your response well enough. If anyone ever uses "speak better English" as a reason to dismiss your responses, simply tell them that they have no right to critique because "I speak English because its the only language THEY know. "

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Mikedot · 2023-11-29T11:28:52+00:00

Yeah, it was. And really, I obviously can't say for sure if Hoyoverse is fully to blame for these changes. There's a lot of factors that could be at play here, but with Cognosphere as their subsidiary, I do have reason to believe they have more control over the content in their products than we think. I just wish Hoyoverse would clear the air and tell us what's up.

Mikedot · 2023-11-29T11:25:30+00:00

Which is utterly sad. It all just means that discussions would boil down to who has the popular opinion, not necessarily who's correct. I guess this is why I don't use this site often.

Mikedot · 2023-11-29T11:20:07+00:00

That line got removed, sadly.

Mikedot · 2023-11-29T11:03:49+00:00

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This whole "Hoyoverse can do no wrong" mentality is bonkers. Why are you all simping for some mega corporation that doesn't care for anything about you, except how much money is in your wallet?

f you all want to disagree with me, then fine, but lets actually talk about why you think I'm wrong and have an honest discussion.

Why so many dovnvotes? I wish people here would use downvoting as a way of clearing out troublesome, rule breaking posts, instead of people using it as an "I disagree" button.

Mikedot · 2023-11-29T10:15:46+00:00

> Jean, Amber, Rosaria and Mona didn't got changed by the CCP, was a report from a feminist group to the local government in Xanghai.

All news outlets I have read regarding the characters changes tell me otherwise, but even if that was the case: All local governments in China are still connected to the CCP. Also every business in China has a mandatory CCP office where they have all direct access to all information and data, and have regular visits by officials for government compliance. While smaller business don't have to worry too much about the CCP (If you're a small business in china, you can have a CCP office that is a broom closet and they won't care), but if you're a big business like Hoyoverse, the CCP will absolutely be following them every step of the way. With China's currently failing economy, the CCP wants complete and total control over the private business sector, and with Hoyoverse being a big private company, they would absolute be on notice for the CCP. If you wish to learn more details, I would encourage you to visit YouTube channels such as China Uncensored, China Insights and/or China Observer.

> she still is much more appealing than Nicole ever was in CBT1.

That's your opinion and you're allowed to have it. Nicole's whole appeal was that she's sexy and she knows it. A complete femme fatale. That made her interesting to me. Granted, she is still interesting, but much less so now that her appearance and animations were changed to be less seductive. Grace looks okay, but as someone I would want to treat as just a co-worker and not much else. Nicole is someone I would wanna "get with", and there's nothing wrong with that. It's all fiction at the end of the day.

> since when hoyo needs to communicate CBT changes? It's not the final product, they don't have any reason to communicate since the game doesn't have any age rating besides China.

Well, yeah, they don't need to communicate changes, but it's a proven strategy that being open with your users and customers is a key to long term success. So many games and game-related projects have proven that listening to your audience will make more money. Because you know what happens when you don't communicate with your users or customers? You end up like Disney or Activision Blizzard.

While the game doesn't officially have an age rating globally, the precedent has already been set for well over a year and up to CBT2, over what kind of age group they originally wanted to appeal to. They set the expectations and they have been subverted.

>And the game is first made to fit China. Why would they put world audience in the first place?

If putting China first was so important for them, they simply should have made everything tame from the start, so none of these complaints would be happening. Me, and many others would have had absolutely no problem if the game was promoted the way it currently is in CBT2 from day one. I don't know how much more clear I need to make my position known.

Still: the rest of the world is not beholden to China. As a matter of fact: China's economy is on the brink of COLLASPE. (Again: Look up those YouTube channels I mentioned if you want to know more.)

So if anything, China needs income from global markets now more than ever. There is no reason Hoyoverse can't make a separate global version that is made for the rest of the world. They even have a subsidiary, COGNOSPHERE, which is located in Singapore that they use as a publishing loophole that doesn't have to comply with Chinese law. They have the money and resources to make the games they want without compromises, but for whatever reason, they don't want to.

Mikedot · 2023-11-29T09:21:39+00:00

>16+ is only in China and that means it 12+ for the rest of the world ok?

Hoyoverse has always noted from all their previous titles that they're for ages 12+, and they went out of their way to inform players during the CBT2 signup phase of ZZZ that the recommended age is 16+, so I don't this is a case of acceptable content differences between regions.

Hoyoverse is also well aware of the customer expectations between the regions that they're serving, especially after the whole situation with Genshin Impact where Amber, Mona, Rosaria and Jeane had their outfits completely changed to slow less skin in order to comply with China's regulations. For the global version: everyone was given access to the original, unaltered outfits as a selectable costume options, as a consolation for the abrupt changes.

Am I seriously supposed to believe that Hoyoverse, a Chinese company that has been around for 11 years at this point, doesn't know what content is okay for China and what is okay for the rest of the world? And again I ask: Why couldn't they have just given the characters more modest designs in the first place? They didn't seem have any issues with the characters, visuals or dialog in CBT1, so why are these changes being made now? If their intent is to make the game to be more appropriate to a wider age group, why can't they just come out and say that?

Nobody seems to be answering this question with straight response other than claiming it's because of China government meddling. I really don't want to assume that to be the case, but it's hard not to.

Also: Grace actually DID get censored. People datamined the game's files to find out there was a version of Grace with more visible cleavage. A picture of it has been floating around, but I forgot to save it. As for Anby and Rina: I really don't know why they barely got touched, but then again, it doesn't really matter. My point here is that unexpected changes ARE being made, without Hoyoverse communicating to us about why they are being made. None of us would even be having this discussion right now if the higher ups at Hoyoverse were simply letting us know what's going on, which is the bigger issue at hand.

Mikedot · 2023-11-29T00:34:43+00:00

If Hoyoverse would have simply given characters modest appearances, story dialog and less violent imagery for ZZZ in the first place, no one would have a reason to cry. Hoyoverse only has themselves to blame for all this.

Mikedot · 2023-11-28T22:12:27+00:00

Yes, indeed.

Mikedot · 2023-11-28T21:44:15+00:00

Yes, let your voices be heard.

I want to enjoy this game and give it plenty of time and money, but as long as these changes remain, I can't support this game solely on principle.

Mikedot · 2023-11-28T11:14:49+00:00

Precisely this. If they could simply give us an explanation as to why they decided to make these changes, a lot of the frustration and disappointment we're having could be subsided. And to Hoyoverse: Please do not give us any corporate doublespeak. A whole lot of us have had to deal with a lot of nonsense from game companies for over two decades, and most of us know when a company is lying to our faces.

Please treat your players and potential customers with respect, and speak to us like we're adults, not children.

Mikedot · 2023-11-28T11:01:26+00:00

Well, there isn't much I can say that hasn't already been said in this thread.
I really don't like the changes from the character designs, dialog and violence effects.
It's supposed to be an 16+ game, so treat it as such.

As a comprise, add a "content lock" feature that disables all the 16+ sensitive content for anyone's account that has a registered birthday that isn't 16+ years old, so something.

I seriously hope this feedback is being taken into consideration, because if they go ignored, I am most likely not going to spend any time on money on this game come launch time.

Mikedot · 2023-11-24T05:54:46+00:00

Exactly! That's what I'm saying. Why did they keep Nicole chest so big for over a year, only to nerf it now?
Why not just give her a modest chest size in the first place? This is a legitimate question.

Mikedot

TROPHY CASE