Part 1 of 12 諸々moromoro
The Origin of moromoro
もろもろ: the many and various, and a router that belongs to none of them.
By MoroMoro · · 3 min read · moromoro and the Stance of Great Emptiness
In everyday Japanese, もろもろ (諸々, moromoro) means “all sorts of things,” “the many and various.” It is the word you reach for at the end of a list, when naming each item would take too long: the errands, the details, everything else. It is a modest word. It does not point at one thing; it gathers many.
That is the first reason for the name. MoroMoro is a DEX aggregator on HyperEVM. When you ask for a quote, it looks across the many and various places where liquidity lives (different DEXes, different pool types, different fee tiers) and, where it returns more, splits one trade across several of them. The name describes the work: gathering もろもろ into a single result.
A second reading
The name has a second layer. In this series we follow a swordsman called moromoro through a reinterpretation of the 五輪書 (Gorin no Sho, “The Book of Five Rings”). Its central problem is the relationship between form and formlessness: having a stance, and not being possessed by that stance.
「構は有りて構なきと云ふ理也」
“The principle is that there is stance, yet there is no stance.”
The teaching of 有構無構 (ukō-mukō) does not ask the swordsman to abandon form. It asks him to place the sword according to 敵の縁 (the relationship with the opponent), 所 (the place), and けいき (the condition of the moment). The sword is positioned according to reality, not according to a rigid diagram.
A router without a favorite stance
A router faces a similar question. It is easy to build one that is attached to a single venue: a favorite DEX, a fixed path, a default it keeps returning to because it always has. That router has a stance, and the stance has it.
The idea behind moromoro is different. A route should have structure (every hop is a real pool with real pricing), but no loyalty to any one of them. It should take its position from what is actually there: the liquidity each pool holds right now (縁), the chain and venues it operates on (所), and the price and timing of this particular quote (けいき). When those change, the route changes with them. That is why a quote is fetched fresh and refreshed, not remembered.
None of this makes software wise, and we would not claim a router has attained anything. The essay’s own warning applies: emptiness that comes from not knowing is only 迷い (mayoi), confusion. Useful non-attachment comes after the work, after knowing each pool, each fee tier and each path well enough that no single one needs to be preferred.
Reading the moromoro series
The articles that follow tell the philosophy in order, from the five stances to emptiness. They are about the sword, not about swaps, and each can be read on its own:
- 2.Form Appears, Yet the Mind Is Not Imprisoned by Form構
- 3.The Five Stances五方の構
- 4.Form Is Necessary. Attachment to Form Is Not.有構無構
- 5.When the Mind Becomes Fixed居付く
- 6.The Center That Does Not Become a Prison中段
- 7.Emptiness空
- 8.“Great Emptiness” Does Not Mean Having No Form色即是空
- 9.The Eye That Perceives, and the Mind That Waits観の目
- 10.The Stance of Great Emptiness無構
- 11.The Gate Between Form and Emptiness五方 → 空
- 12.The Way of Exchange: Stance, Release, Next Stance構 → 捨てる → 次の構
We keep them here because they describe what we want the name to stand for:
Master the form.
Release the form.
Let the form remain, without allowing it to become the prison of the mind.
Part 2 begins where the essay does: with an image of a swordsman who has a stance without being possessed by it.
The series ends by returning to exchange itself. The Way of Exchange reads the rhythm 構 → 捨てる → 次の構 into how a route takes a position, releases it, and forms the next one.