Mat

I see a lot of this reasoning on why Vest is so trusted and has 0 chance of going down, however that is very far from the truth. Here is what Vest's backing actually means: Jane Street wrote a small seed check. Vest's March 2025 seed was $5M total, split among five named investors including Jane Street. Whatever Jane Street put in is a fraction of that, and tiny for a firm that made a record $39.6B in trading revenue in 2025. It's an early bet on a startup, not a promise to stand behind the product. Coinbase Ventures is not Coinbase. It's a venture arm that has made 600+ investments across 420+ companies, typically at $500K to $10M a check. The seed announcement doesn't even name Coinbase. Being on a cap table doesn't mean anyone will backstop your funds. FTX had 60+ investors, including Sequoia, SoftBank, Paradigm, Thoma Bravo and Coinbase Ventures, and went to zero. Terra was also backed by Coinbase Ventures. Investors hold equity, not your deposits, and they get fooled or lose money all the time. What they funded isn't what you may be using. The seed was for a risk engine and a perp exchange, not a prop firm. Vest was a dying DeFi exchange before the prop program, which came later and is issued by a Panama corporation (Vest Exchange Inc.). The seed was for a risk engine and a perp exchange, not a prop firm. That exchange was already dying before the prop program: TVL fell from a high of about $31M in October 2025 to roughly $188K now, a drop of over 99%, and last month's web traffic was little to none. My assessment is that this prop push was a last-ditch effort to save a dying product. They claim all these trades are A-book, which could not possibly be true and of course it isn't verifiable since its all on their own exchange.