NEST Protocol is a decentralized trading infrastructure that strives to provide a different approach to asset and return trading with uncertain values. It is composed of three modules: NEST Oracle, NEST Assets, and NESTcraft. NEST Oracle intends to provide decentralized on-chain prices, while NEST Assets are generated and burned by the NEST smart contract, providing currency units for transactions on NEST. NESTcraft, on the other hand, intends to convert various on-chain random sources into a function library, providing a variety of customizable trading options. NEST Protocol also includes NESTFi, a decentralized perpetual exchange built on NESTcraft that uses smart contracts as the counterparty for traders.

NEST Protocol operates by eliminating the need for market makers and liquidity providers (LPs) through the use of smart contracts and risk sharing. It uses a martingale trading paradigm, which is a low-cost and efficient trading paradigm for assets and returns with uncertain values. The NEST Oracle provides decentralized on-chain prices, while NEST Assets are generated and burned by the NEST smart contract. NESTcraft, on the other hand, converts various on-chain random sources into a function library, providing a variety of customizable trading options. NESTFi, a decentralized perpetual exchange built on NESTcraft, uses smart contracts as the counterparty for traders, intending to maintain liquidity for trading.

NEST Protocol has a wide range of potential use cases. It can be used to develop decentralized exchanges, financial derivatives supermarkets, on-chain and off-chain risk hedging, and the economic framework of Metaverse and GameFi. It can also be used for lottery and prop synthesis, among other unique applications. NEST Protocol's martingale function library, NEST Craft, can be used to create a variety of new financial derivatives, such as barrier options, Asian options, two-way options, and a type of interesting income such as square-root return, squared return, and exponential return.

NEST Protocol was introduced with the intention of addressing various challenges of on-chain trades in a decentralized manner. It was designed to utilize the blockchain’s technical characteristics of first confirming the existence of assets and then the ownership relationship. The protocol was built on public chains like Ethereum, and it is a completely decentralized protocol based on smart contracts. Initially, all NEST tokens were generated by oracle mining, and their distribution gradually became decentralized as they circulated in the market.