Follow Jack Tan as we delve into the ambitions of the WOO Super App and his vision for the financial world.

Written by: Deep Tide TechFlow

As institutional and retail investors retreat during the bear market, two traders from Carnegie Mellon have built a top-ten Binance quantitative fund with their own capital, only to turn around and open their core strategies to all retail investors.

From Kronos Research to WOO, he is sketching an ambitious blueprint in the crypto world.

He is the protagonist of our interview today: Jack Tan, co-founder and CEO of WOO.

Regarding WOO's positioning, he believes WOO is a decentralized CME, aiming to provide everyone with a fair and engaging trading environment.

"99% of AI trading narratives are false propositions," he says, "the real killer app lies in building an extremely personalized AI—it will anticipate risks earlier than you and understand profit capture better than VCs."

In response to industry questions about "on-chain PVP" and "VC shorting trends," he candidly states: the market is always self-evolving, but value will eventually return.

In this issue, let us follow Jack Tan's insights as we explore the ambitions of the WOO Super App and his ideal financial world.

Entering WOO, a Brand New Financial World

Deep Tide TechFlow: It’s a pleasure to have the opportunity for an in-depth conversation with you. First, could you please introduce yourself?

Jack Tan:

Hello everyone, I am Jack Tan, co-founder and CEO of WOO. I’m glad to have this opportunity to engage in a deep conversation with you all.

I have 10 years of experience in traditional finance and am familiar with various aspects. The other founder of WOO, Mark Pimentel, is my classmate from Carnegie Mellon University. He aims to leverage blockchain technology to create a decentralized CME, allowing everyone to engage in trustworthy and creative trading. I believe this is difficult to achieve in traditional finance, which is why I chose cryptocurrency.

Due to the challenges of fundraising during the bear market, we established Kronos Research with our own funds. About a year later, Kronos Research's trading volume ranked in the top 10 on Binance, and it remains so to this day.

After achieving stable profits, I wanted to create a platform where everyone could participate in our strategies. Initially, we provided liquidity to smaller exchanges, but they often abandoned us once they had their own liquidity. This realization prompted us to offer a complete suite of services—thus the idea of WOO was born.

Through WOO, we want to showcase our ideal of security, the best user experience, and transparent trading methods. Now, WOO has launched CEX, DEX, supports spot and contract trading, and offers a variety of products.

Deep Tide TechFlow: You mentioned that WOO's vision is to become a decentralized CME. How far do you think WOO is from this goal?

Jack Tan:

To be honest, achieving a decentralized CME requires efforts from multiple parties. For example, Orderly is currently providing liquidity for derivatives, allowing users to directly fund their Vaults and create their own contracts. This is essentially the prototype of a decentralized CME, but how far it can go depends on regulation. However, if platforms like pump.fun do not impose restrictions on tokens, it can lead to overly dispersed liquidity, resulting in a poor user experience.

Overall, the current framework is taking shape, but the details still need to be determined. I believe we will see a variety of products this year, and WOO's role is to support these products as an ecosystem.

Deep Tide TechFlow: Since you come from a traditional finance background and WOO's vision is to create a decentralized CME, do you refer more to traditional finance when building WOO?

Jack Tan:

No, our primary consideration is user needs.

From our perspective, when users want to trade a token, there may be several different models: for small tokens, we route users to the corresponding DeFi contracts; for larger tokens like Bitcoin and Ethereum, we provide support through market makers; and there are also cases where users utilize Vaults. These are all different.

For users, they don’t care about these details; as long as they can buy the tokens they want to trade, they will perceive it as a good product. What WOO needs to do is to present this complex system in the simplest way possible to the users.

Deep Tide TechFlow: As a major brand, WOO has many segmented products, such as WOO X, WOOFi, and WOO STAKE. How do you plan the product matrix for WOO? How do you define the overarching WOO brand?

Jack Tan:

We are striving to integrate these different products into a "Super App."

The emergence of these products stemmed from our various ideas, with different teams working on different things. But later, we needed to identify which applications are useful to users, what features they like, and consolidate them into a super app. If users can still feel that these features were developed by different teams, we would have failed.

From a product perspective, WOO X is a CEX, WOOFi is a DEX, Kronos Research provides market-making services, and our partner Orderly drives liquidity. Previously, Kronos Research provided about 100% of the liquidity; now it’s less than 50% as we opened the market to other market makers like Wintermute.

However, the core idea remains: prioritize user needs.

Deep Dive into WOO's Vision: How We Succeed

Deep Tide TechFlow: You just mentioned that Kronos Research's trading volume still ranks in the top ten on Binance, but the market is more focused on your core products WOO X and WOOFi. Can you share the rankings or user data for these two products?

Jack Tan:

I don’t focus on rankings because the volatility in the cryptocurrency market is too high.

But on a data level, WOO X had an average daily trading volume of $500-600 million last quarter, while WOOFi had around $100 million. However, this data still has significant volatility with the changing bull and bear cycles. If we want to stabilize the data, we might need to introduce some less volatile products like stocks.

Deep Tide TechFlow: I want to ask a deeper question. Since WOO has many different products, you may face competitors in different sectors. What are the competitive advantages of WOO X and WOOFi in their respective sectors?

Jack Tan:

We are research-driven. We have neutral and high-quality research reports, allowing new users in crypto to quickly capture current market trends through our research. We treat all chains and sectors equally; whenever an opportunity arises, we inform our users.

We are also investing in AI. AI can not only retain memory and provide ideas but also offer "extreme personalization." Some users may only need a chatbot and do not want to deal with lengthy order books; others may prefer to find detailed information through AI and make judgments alongside it.

I believe this is a new direction for personal finance and a trend that WOO is moving towards.

Deep Tide TechFlow: WOO is currently deployed on EVM. Are there plans to deploy on other chains in the future?

Jack Tan:

If we have enough development resources, we are willing to experiment on various chains. But right now, we are primarily considering whether to benchmark against other exchanges or to create something that others haven’t done before. Our choice is the latter.

Deep Tide TechFlow: At this Consensus, we noticed an exchange called SynFutures launched an AI named Synthia, which can execute bullish/bearish operations based on conversations. I think this might be the prototype of the chatbot you just mentioned.

In the AI+DeFi direction, besides bullish/bearish predictions for an asset, what other feasible scenarios do you think exist?

Jack Tan:

I think a very important direction is "customized interfaces."

AI can point out risks based on users' trading histories. For example, some people trade large volumes but only use market orders; AI can combine historical data to inform them, "Your slippage is too high." Or some users may have no concept of funding rates, and AI can help them calculate it. I believe AI's greater role is to provide suggestions. For instance, before an FOMC meeting, AI can remind users that trading volume might be high that week and suggest actions that could yield good returns.

Deep Tide TechFlow: Current AI agents have significantly lowered the barriers to trading. Do you think AI agents can further integrate the series of actions of "research, suggestions, and execution"?

Jack Tan:

It will eventually be integrated, but it’s still too early. Maybe in a year? Although AI is developing rapidly now, it still cannot cover the complex factors that need to be considered in trading. In this case, I think the best use of AI is to explain its logic to you, and only execute once you agree.

Deep Tide TechFlow: There is a sector called DeFAI, which is DeFi + AI. What are your thoughts on this sector?

Jack Tan:

I have always believed that DeFi/blockchain is not meant for people; it’s too complex.

DeFi and blockchain should interact with AI, and then people can utilize them through AI. Now everyone is talking about DeFAI, and I think this is a very good trend. When an AI becomes easy enough to use, the popularization of Web3 will not be far behind.

However, how to ensure asset security while allowing AI to have private keys is a problem that needs to be considered.

Deep Tide TechFlow: I want to add that for those unfamiliar with DeFi, for example, if I want to interact with a certain chain or provide liquidity for a protocol, DeFAI can tell me how to do it or list various feasible methods. I think this is also a boost for the popularization of Web3.

Since you have a deeper understanding of traditional finance, I’m curious to know if you’ve seen any promising DeFi + AI projects from your perspective?

Jack Tan:

I don’t think there is currently an AI in the crypto market that I need to use every day.

I might use DeepSeek, GPT, or Grok3 daily, but there isn’t an AI in crypto that provides the same value. However, I believe one will definitely emerge within the next six months.

At the same time, I think such AI will definitely emerge from quantitative firms like Kronos, Citadel, and Jump Trading, just as DeepSeek originated from hedge funds rather than Alibaba. Only companies that are genuinely making money using AI have the capability to produce DeFAI.

Deep Tide TechFlow: I want to extend this question. Why do many quantitative teams create an AI to share their strategies? When more people start using the strategies, is there a risk of the strategies becoming ineffective?

Jack Tan:

Because it’s a win-win situation.

For a hedge fund, more trading volume means more profit sharing. For example, if a strategy generates a profit of 1 unit when only the fund participates, but if 100 people participate, the profit becomes 100 units. Additionally, they can sell this signal to users, but that would come later, which would be another source of income. Meanwhile, a hedge fund running its own money has a higher risk-reward profile. If it deploys its strategies in the market using market funds, its Sharpe ratio (a measure of risk-adjusted return) can become outstanding.

Deep Tide TechFlow: Let’s return to WOO. In the entire WOO ecosystem, do you have plans for new attempts/products?

Jack Tan:

Actually, we have been launching various fun new products. But I think the current issue with WOO is that it’s too specialized or has too much of an institutional flavor. Moving forward, we will make WOO more accessible to retail investors in the market and listen to their real needs.

The Impact of Macroeconomic Policies on WOO and the Industry

Deep Tide TechFlow: In the last part, let’s talk about macroeconomics. Recently, Trump’s return to power is undoubtedly the biggest macro event. What do you think the positive/negative impacts of this event on crypto are? Is there anything we need to pay attention to?

Jack Tan:

In the long run, it’s definitely optimistic.

Trump’s team consists of supporters of free markets, which is exactly what crypto needs. Just like in 2017 and 2018, when policies were very loose, a lot of innovation emerged. After that, as policies tightened, many things faced restrictions. Now, this trend is starting to shift back towards looseness.

However, the market has been somewhat traumatized by Gary Gensler, and it will take some time to recover.

What will happen in this process is still uncertain. Just like when Trump took office and immediately started a trade war and tariff policies, which led to a decline of over 20% in traditional financial markets. The cryptocurrency market sometimes has a strong correlation with traditional markets, but at other times it moves independently.

But there is a consensus that if the vast majority of people expect the market to move in one direction, that’s when caution is warranted.

Deep Tide TechFlow: What do you think about the SEC dropping the lawsuit against Coinbase?

Jack Tan:

This is indeed a positive signal. But I think the most important factors right now are tariffs, labor, and immigration policies, which we still need to wait for the Federal Reserve's response to.

Additionally, with Elon Musk’s government efficiency department planning to cut $2 trillion in spending each year, the reduction is actually in economic growth, right? This might prompt the Federal Reserve to react, potentially easing monetary policy even with high inflation.

Deep Tide TechFlow: Recently, there has been a lot of enthusiasm for on-chain PVP and shorting VC tokens on Binance. Some believe this trend will continue, while others think it’s just temporary, and the market will continuously filter out truly valuable tokens. What’s your take?

Jack Tan:

First of all, I believe that a free market does not have fixed patterns. If tokens on Binance are continuously shorted, eventually they will stop being listed; similarly, if VC tokens are consistently shorted, VCs will stop investing. Everything will change. The current situation arose because VCs previously invested too much money; the market needs time to digest it.

As for memes, I think their cycle is basically over. I still believe that value tokens will go further. Memes can make money, but most will suffer significant losses. If WOO users want to trade, we can provide meme coins, but we hope users understand what they are doing and are aware of the associated risks.

Deep Tide TechFlow: This year is the first time Consensus has come to Hong Kong, and you also participated. How important do you think the Asia-Pacific market is? Will WOO make any strategic changes for the Asia-Pacific market?

Jack Tan:

Currently, WOO primarily targets English-speaking users, but we cannot overlook the importance of the Asia-Pacific region. Hong Kong is becoming increasingly open, but now the whole world wants to become a crypto hub. If Hong Kong wants to advance further, I think its policies need to be further relaxed. This would benefit not only exchanges but ultimately the users as more tradable products come online.

The most important factor is the attitude of regulators. If a regulator has a very traditional mindset and is unwilling to analyze competitors, it is likely that there will be no market in the future.

Deep Tide TechFlow: One last question. As crypto continues to evolve, more newcomers will enter this market. What advice do you have for these newcomers?

Jack Tan:

We have some great tutorials on YouTube covering WOO’s products, how to analyze the market, and our thoughts on the environment. However, learning is just one aspect; the most important thing is to try—how to open an account, how to properly secure private keys, and so on.

But I believe that the entry barriers to crypto will continue to lower with the emergence of new products, which is a very good evolutionary process.

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