Can decentralized exchanges match the precision and control that centralized platforms have offered traders for decades? That question sits at the heart of a new integration announced by Kodiak Finance on October 16, 2025.
The Berachain native liquidity platform revealed it has adopted two protocols from Orbs, a Layer-3 blockchain focused on advanced trading infrastructure. The move brings institutional-grade order execution to a platform that already handles significant volume in one of crypto's fastest-growing ecosystems.
Understanding Kodiak Finance and Its Position on Berachain
Kodiak Finance operates as the primary liquidity platform on Berachain, a Layer-1 blockchain that launched in February 2025. The network stands out through its Proof-of-Liquidity mechanism, which connects network security directly to ecosystem liquidity. Traditional blockchains face a problem where staked tokens sit locked up, unavailable for DeFi activities. Berachain's design pushes staked capital into productive use across the network's financial applications.
The approach has generated results. Berachain's TVL surged past $3.26 billion within weeks of launch in late February 2025, ranking it sixth among all blockchains and ahead of networks like Arbitrum and Base. Kodiak emerged as a central piece of this ecosystem. The platform now serves more than 100,000 users and has processed over $4 billion in swap volume. DefiLlama data shows Kodiak holds approximately $250 million in TVL, making it the second-largest protocol on Berachain behind Infrared Finance, the network's liquid staking platform.
What makes Kodiak different from a basic DEX is its vertical integration. Users can swap tokens through the exchange, provide liquidity through automated vaults called Kodiak Islands, and launch new tokens through its Panda Factory. This one-stop approach reduces the friction that typically forces users to jump between multiple protocols to accomplish different tasks. For Berachain, having a native platform that handles multiple liquidity functions helps consolidate activity that might otherwise fragment across competing services.
Breaking Down dTWAP and How It Works
Time-Weighted Average Price, or TWAP, represents a trading strategy that institutional traders have used for decades to move large positions without disrupting markets. The concept is simple but powerful. Instead of executing one $1 million buy order that would push prices higher as it fills, TWAP splits that into 100 orders of $10,000 each, executed every 15 minutes over the course of a day.
Why does this matter? A single large order consumes available liquidity as it executes, forcing the buyer to accept progressively worse prices. The first $10,000 might fill at $1.00 per token, but by the time the order reaches $500,000, lack of available sellers might push the price to $1.15 or higher. The buyer ends up paying an average price far above where the market started. Spreading that same purchase across 100 smaller orders over time allows each one to interact with fresh liquidity, keeping the average execution price much closer to the prevailing market rate.
Orbs' decentralized implementation solves a technical problem that smart contracts face. Blockchains cannot natively execute actions based on time intervals. A smart contract cannot "check back in 15 minutes" to place the next order. The protocol works around this through a maker-taker model. Users create orders specifying the total amount, number of chunks, time intervals, and optional price limits. Independent participants called takers monitor these orders and compete to execute individual chunks, finding optimal routing and offering competitive fees.
The system only needs one honest taker willing to work at minimal margins to function properly. Orbs network validators fill this role through a function that acts as a reliable bidder, ensuring orders execute close to market prices even when other participants are absent or trying to extract excessive fees.
For a trader looking to purchase $100,000 worth of a token, dTWAP might split this into 20 smaller orders of $5,000 each, executed every 30 minutes over 10 hours. This approach serves two primary purposes. First, it reduces the immediate price impact that a single large purchase would create, potentially saving the trader money on slippage. Second, it can function as a dollar-cost averaging strategy where a user accumulates a position gradually, smoothing out price volatility over the accumulation period.
The integration means Kodiak users can now access both dTWAP-Market orders, which execute all chunks at whatever the current market price is at each interval, and dTWAP-Limit orders, which only execute individual chunks if the price falls within a range the user specified. This flexibility lets traders balance speed of execution against price precision based on their specific needs and current market conditions.
Understanding dLIMIT and Its Role in Trading
Limit orders form the foundation of trading in traditional markets, letting participants specify exact prices for buying or selling rather than accepting whatever the market offers at the moment. A trader watching a token at $2.20 might place a limit order to buy at $2.00, betting the price will dip but not wanting to sit monitoring charts all day. If the price never reaches $2.00, the order never executes. But if it does drop to that level, the order fills automatically, even if the trader is asleep or offline.
The challenge for decentralized exchanges comes from smart contract limitations. Traditional contracts cannot continuously monitor prices or execute actions when conditions are met. They only act when someone sends them a transaction. Orbs' dLIMIT protocol solves this through the same maker-taker structure as dTWAP. Users create limit orders specifying the token pair, amount, and desired price. The order sits on-chain waiting. When market conditions match those parameters, takers execute the orders and collect small fees. The system eliminates the need for constant price monitoring or trust in centralized platforms to execute orders fairly.
This approach differs from market orders where a trader accepts whatever the current price is when their transaction processes. With a limit order, a user might set an order to buy a token at $1.50 when it currently trades at $1.60. If the price never reaches $1.50, the order never executes. But if the price does drop to that level, the order fills automatically, even if the user is not actively watching the market.
The protocol adds sophistication to decentralized trading that brings it closer to the experience of centralized platforms. A trader can set multiple limit orders at different price levels, creating a strategy that executes automatically based on market movements. Buy orders below current prices catch dips. Sell orders above current prices lock in gains. The approach reduces the need for constant monitoring and allows implementing strategies beyond simple market buys and sells.
For Kodiak users, this means the ability to place an order to buy a token if it drops to a certain support level, or sell if it reaches a particular resistance point, all without keeping the trading interface open or writing custom smart contracts. The system handles the monitoring and execution, charging only standard network transaction fees plus a small taker fee.
The Impact on Berachain's Growing Ecosystem
Berachain entered 2025 with momentum that translated into capital. The project had raised $142 million across two funding rounds valuing it at $1.5 billion. The blockchain's Proof-of-Liquidity consensus creates a system where validators receive BGT tokens that must be directed toward liquidity pools in the ecosystem's DeFi protocols rather than kept. This structure incentivizes deep liquidity across the network's applications, addressing one of the persistent challenges facing newer blockchains: bootstrapping enough liquidity to function properly.
By February 2025, Berachain had accumulated over $3.3 billion in deposits through its pre-launch Boyco program on Ethereum, with participation from more than 166,000 unique wallets. When the mainnet launched on February 6, the network quickly established itself as a force in DeFi, with its TVL surpassing networks like Arbitrum and Base within weeks.
Kodiak's position as the native liquidity hub makes it central to this ecosystem. The platform benefits from Berachain's unique incentive structure where providing liquidity generates both trading fees and BGT governance tokens. The addition of dTWAP and dLIMIT expands the platform's functionality beyond basic swaps and liquidity provision, targeting users who require more sophisticated execution strategies.
The integration addresses a specific gap in DeFi markets where large traders face challenges executing significant positions without moving prices against themselves. Consider a whale trying to buy $1 million of a token on a DEX. That purchase might drive the price up substantially before the entire order fills, effectively raising the average purchase price. With dTWAP, that same trader can spread the purchase across dozens of smaller transactions over hours, maintaining a lower average price by reducing immediate market impact. This matters for institutional participants and sophisticated retail traders who measure success in basis points of execution quality.
This matters for institutional participants and sophisticated retail traders alike. As DeFi protocols processed over $1 billion in daily trading volume across various platforms, the need for execution tools that minimize slippage has grown. Protocols that offer only basic swap functionality risk losing volume to platforms with more advanced features, particularly as traders with larger positions seek better execution quality.
Orbs' Layer-3 Infrastructure and Its Growing Adoption
Orbs operates as what it calls a Layer-3 blockchain, positioning itself as an execution layer that sits between Layer-1 and Layer-2 networks and the application layer. The network launched its mainnet in 2019 and operates through a decentralized network of validators using Proof-of-Stake consensus, with over $100 million in staked value.
The network's design allows it to perform functions that standard smart contracts cannot handle well, particularly tasks requiring continuous monitoring, complex calculations, or external data feeds. Instead of replacing existing blockchain infrastructure, Orbs enhances it by providing additional computational capabilities through its validator network.
This approach has led to adoption across multiple chains and platforms. The dLIMIT and dTWAP protocols have been integrated by more than 15 decentralized exchanges spanning eight different blockchain networks. These integrations include major platforms like QuickSwap on Polygon, Thena on BNB Chain, and Chronos on Arbitrum. The protocols have facilitated substantial trading volume, demonstrating demand for advanced order types in DeFi.
Beyond trading protocols, Orbs has developed additional infrastructure including Liquidity Hub, which aggregates liquidity from multiple sources to improve trade execution, and Perpetual Hub for decentralized derivatives trading. This suite of tools positions Orbs as infrastructure focused specifically on improving the mechanics of on-chain trading rather than competing as a standalone blockchain.
The integration with Kodiak marks Orbs' entry into the Berachain ecosystem. Given Berachain's rapid growth and focus on liquidity, the partnership aligns with both projects' objectives. For Orbs, it provides access to a large and growing user base on a network designed around DeFi activity. For Kodiak, it adds functionality that helps the platform compete with centralized exchanges and other DEXs that have already implemented similar features.
Opinion and Analysis
The integration between Kodiak Finance and Orbs represents more than a feature addition. It signals a maturation of decentralized trading infrastructure where the gap between centralized and decentralized execution continues to narrow. For years, one of the persistent arguments for centralized exchanges centered on their superior trading tools and execution options. Decentralized platforms offered self-custody and transparency but lacked the order types and execution strategies that professional traders required.
That dynamic is shifting. As protocols like Orbs solve the technical challenges of implementing advanced order types in decentralized environments, the distinction between CEX and DEX functionality becomes less about capability and more about user preference. The question evolves from "can DEXs do this?" to "which DEX does it best?"
For Kodiak, this integration addresses a strategic priority. Operating on Berachain, a new network competing for users and capital against established ecosystems, the platform cannot simply replicate what already exists elsewhere. It needs to offer comparable or superior functionality while leveraging Berachain's unique Proof-of-Liquidity mechanism. Advanced trading tools help attract the specific user segments that generate significant volume and liquidity depth.
The timing aligns with Berachain's ecosystem growth. With TVL already exceeding $3 billion and multiple protocols launching or expanding on the network, the infrastructure needs to support not just basic DeFi activities but sophisticated strategies. Traders building positions in new tokens, liquidity providers managing their exposures, and institutional participants exploring the ecosystem all benefit from execution tools that reduce costs and improve outcomes.
However, the integration also raises questions about centralization and dependence. While Orbs operates through a decentralized validator network, the protocols add a layer of infrastructure that users and platforms now rely upon. If Orbs' network experiences issues or validators become unreliable, the trading features would be affected. This represents a different risk profile than purely on-chain execution, even if it remains more decentralized than centralized alternatives.
The broader pattern here involves specialized Layer-3 protocols providing specific functionalities to Layer-1 and Layer-2 networks. Rather than every blockchain attempting to build every feature, a model emerges where foundational layers focus on security and transaction processing while supplementary layers provide advanced capabilities. This modular approach could accelerate development across the industry but also creates dependencies between projects.
Final Thoughts
Kodiak Finance's integration of Orbs' dTWAP and dLIMIT protocols marks a concrete step in bridging the execution gap between centralized and decentralized trading venues. The technical implementation matters less to most users than the practical result, which is access to order types that were previously unavailable in fully decentralized environments.
For Berachain's ecosystem, the integration strengthens its position as a DeFi-focused blockchain that offers more than basic functionality. With over 100,000 users on Kodiak and substantial volume flowing through the platform, the advanced order types provide tools that can help retain users who might otherwise move trades to centralized platforms or other chains with similar features.
The success of this integration will ultimately depend on adoption and execution quality. Technical capabilities matter little if users find the interface confusing, if orders execute poorly compared to alternatives, or if the additional features add too much complexity. The next several months will reveal whether these tools become standard parts of how traders interact with Kodiak or remain niche features used by a small subset of sophisticated participants.
What seems clear is that the direction of DeFi development increasingly involves bringing traditional finance concepts and tools on-chain rather than inventing entirely new paradigms. Time-weighted average price orders and limit orders exist because they solve real problems in financial markets. Making these tools available in decentralized contexts, while maintaining the core benefits of self-custody and transparency, represents progress toward systems that could eventually handle the scale and complexity of global financial markets.
Whether Berachain and Kodiak specifically become major players in that evolution remains uncertain. But the integration demonstrates that the infrastructure and capabilities required for sophisticated on-chain trading are no longer theoretical. They exist, they function, and platforms are implementing them to compete for users and volume in an increasingly crowded DeFi landscape.