Cryptocurrencies and decentralized technologies are booming. The numbers speak for themselves — market capitalizations have gone through the roof, transaction volume has skyrocketed, and adoption from individuals, corporations, and governments has reached a global scale.
Thanks to blockchain technology, we are moving toward a trustless economy, with no need of third parties to exchange goods. Yet today’s digital currency exchanges are centralized. They have proven to be vulnerable to hacks, to react poorly to unusual blockchain events like hard forks, and often run with a high regulatory risk. Centralized exchanges keep their systems off-chain, meaning they operate as escrows for their clients, and transactions are not recorded on the blockchain. This leads to massive breaches of security and unsafe storage of information, funds, and private keys.
Trading comes with risks, but traders should not face any other risks than those they are already willing to take.
Blockchain entrepreneurs understand this, and some of them are working hard on what many believe will be the future of trading: decentralized exchanges.
Decentralized exchanges — or DEXes — aim to tackle the problems that impede centralized structures by building peer-to-peer marketplaces directly on the blockchain — Ethereum mostly — allowing traders to remain custodian of their funds. However, building a fully decentralized and efficient exchange remains today something of an utopia. Exchanges are centralized because it is the simplest way to proceed, and it is either too costly or technically complex to build fully decentralized platforms — for now, at least.
Throwbacks and inefficiencies of centralized exchanges leave the model with only few advantages. Many semi-decentralized exchanges are coming into action. They are hybrid models between centralized and decentralized marketplaces, trying to deliver the best of both worlds. There is an increasing number of such exchanges, following up on a need expressed by the crypto-community.
This “state of decentralized exchanges” begins with major cryptocurrency numbers and centralized exchanges, which currently monopolize the market. Decentralized exchanges are building the future of cryptocurrencies trading, and this “state” aims to pave its way with its rough listing of projects in the making. We should pay attention to them as they are shaping the way cryptocurrencies trading will operate in the future.
Disclaimer: I am part of VariabL (a derivatives trading platform on Ethereum) and ConsenSys (one of the largest global blockchain specialists).
I. Cryptocurrency Market Overview and the Flaws of Centralized Exchanges
2017 Cryptocurrency market in numbers¹ :
+3400%*=Market cap of cryptocurrencies is experiencing an exponential growth:
From less than $18B to more than $600B in 2017.
More than 99% of cryptocurrency transactions go through centralized exchanges.
II. Centralized Exchanges
Let’s first define what centralized exchanges are: platforms and apps that enable traders to buy, sell, and exchange cryptocurrencies against fiat currencies or other cryptocurrencies. They are marketplaces for tokens, and are essential to the ecosystem, since many of them enable payments with fiat currencies , i.e. non-crypto holders are able to buy crypto using USD, EUR, etc.
Among most well-known and trafficked centralized exchanges are Bithumb, Bitfinex, Bittrex, Poloniex, Kraken, GDAX, Coinbase and Gemini. Hundreds already exist, but the goal here is not to focus on their number, but rather on their limitations and potential for improvement.
Centralized crypto-exchanges may soon become obsolete as they lose the opportunity to leverage blockchain technology to improve their capabilities and efficiency.
Insecurity, risk of fund loss and thefts due to their centralized functioning. They are legally accountable and a custodian of users’ funds. 73% of centralized exchanges take custody of user funds, while 23% let users control keys⁴. They represent honeypots for hackers as they are responsible for billions of trades per day and store most of them on their servers.
A lack of liquidity: large orders struggle to be matched. Even at an all-time-high, volumes remain low (compared to traditional markets).
A fragmented (not to say decentralized) market: divides the global liquidity into a few main marketplaces. No clear market leader in terms of volume, which increases the liquidity problem.
A high level of risks for users due to potential performance issues, market manipulation, hardware failures, latency problems, and many other inherent problems when it comes to dealing with large volumes…
A lack of trust and transparency: actual costs and processes of trading are opaque and involve high trading costs, often higher than announced fees and higher delays due to peaks of demand badly managed. Plus, they can front-run orders, which is illegal.
A lack of educated users: markets are flooded by pure speculators unaware of safe ways to deal with cryptocurrencies.
III. Decentralized Exchanges and Open Protocols
Due to the lack of security, transparency, and efficiency that centralized exchanges have demonstrated, a strong demand for decentralized exchanges have surfaced. Scores of new actors are tackling these problems and addressing an obvious need by the community. Projects like 0x, Ethfinex, ShapeShift.io (not decentralized but not custodian) and EtherDelta have emerged and generated a strong interest.
One of the oldest projects in the field is EtherDelta, a platform with a simple user-interface and basic trading features (no margin trading), which has already gained sufficient traction to generate up to 25 million USD-equivalent of daily transactions⁵.
Definition
Decentralized exchanges differ from centralized exchanges as they enable users to remain in control of their funds by operating their critical functions on the blockchain: they leverage the technology behind cryptocurrencies themselves to enable a safer and more transparent trading. It solves the main limitations faced by cryptocurrency markets (see above), since there is no single point of failure, aligning them with what has made the blockchain technology so powerful in the first place.
Most decentralized exchanges are not fully decentralized, but semi-decentralized (full decentralization is today more of an ideal, due to limitations listed hereunder). In most cases, servers (centralized) still host order books (among other features) but do not hold private keys.
Another central aspect is that decentralized exchanges present the characteristics, benefits and limitations, of their underlying blockchain.
Main DEX Benefits
Trustless, which means that users’ funds and personal data are safe.
Security and privacy are well preserved.
Main DEX Limitations
Maintain the same scalability problems as the underlying blockchain.
Most are not easily usable, struggle with liquidity, do not provide fiat payments etc.
(more details in a section below)
Decentralized Exchange Mapping
Disclaimers:
This “state of decentralized exchanges” may not be fully exhaustive and did not assess all of those projects’ viability nor teams’ legitimacy. However, an effort has been made towards making an exhaustive mapping. Abandoned or scammy projects might be included. It should be taken with a grain of salt and you should conduct your own due diligence before using or investing in any of those.
All the projects below are or contain decentralized exchanges functionalities in their global offers. Many are not limited to exchange services. For the sake of that study, and since there are not (m)any fully decentralized and working exchanges, semi-decentralized exchange will be included.
Some exchanges offering advanced financial products such as futures or derivatives like dYdX or VariabL are voluntarily excluded of this benchmark since there is another article in the making for these ones.
The vast majority is in production/beta; this report aims to list all of them and assess their current state of development. I included their website and Medium accounts when available, which provide most of projects’ updates.
Decentralized exchange enabling cryptocurrencies trading and fiat currency gateways through cross-chain atomic swaps and cross-chain data transfers (In production)
Decentralized exchange that provides instant order placement and execution, free order cancellation, and real-time order book updates. (Live on the Ethereum MainNet)
Decentralized exchange on NEO with an off-chain matching engine including payment services. (in production, trading platform launch expected in Q3’2018)
Crypto-platform for asset/custom token issuance, transfer and trading on the Waves blockchain, with centralised order matching and decentralised settlement. (Live since June 2016)
Decentralized exchange providing price stable cryptocurrencies and banking services on the blockchain (Live since 2014) [Probably the oldest decentralized exchange sill working]
0x relayer and liquidity pool for trading Ethereum-based token (Beta)
IV. Open Protocols for Decentralized Exchanges
Definition
Open Protocols are setting up and running decentralized applications (dApps) on a common basis: some are designed especially for decentralized exchanges (ie. 0x), others also seem suited (ie. Omise). Both will be mentioned below.
They create synergies by allowing “anyone” to build their own services on top of them: it fosters innovation and is essential for native dApps to interact with each other. For decentralized exchanges, open protocols present the benefits of creating common pools of liquidity by allowing any project built on top to interact with each others.
Peer-to-peer protocol for trading Ethereum tokens, without orderbooks (to be open in the future)
V. What May Slow Down the Adoption of Decentralized Exchanges?
Security benefits, by allowing users to remain custodian of their funds, seem obvious and emphasized by all these hacks stories. So why everyone is not using them?
Some aspects are slowing down their adoption: Education and Technology.
Education
Users are not aware of:
Drawbacks and security issues of Centralized Exchanges
Security measures to undertake (how to manage private keys etc.) since it is users’ responsibility
Existence of Decentralized Exchanges
Advantages of Decentralized Exchanges
Technology
Usability: DEX are not user-friendly enough (very solvable problem, linked to early stages of projects)
Scalability: Possible blockchain bloat with ethereum network congestion and scaling pressure (with Token sales and a slow gas price adaptation…)
Speed: Transactions take time to be validated on blockchains
Cost: There is a potential high costs per trade
Liquidity: Chicken and the egg problem. Traders do not join because traders are not already on the platform to match their orders; getting liquidity through a large adoption by the ecosystem is a long process.
Full decentralization: Some services have to remain off-chain and have to suffer from limitations of centralized infrastructures (ie. onchain orderbook are expensive not efficient enough)
Front-running risk: miners can preview transactions, since they validate them, and can have consequences on any DEX (market manipulation)
Interoperability: need for cross-chain exchanges, and more blockchains/dapps interoperability for decentralized platforms to interact with each others.
Accessibility: Need for fiat integrations and stable tokens for lower volatility.
On the matter, Kyber’s chief executive and co-founder, Loi Luu stated:
“…centralized exchanges are potentially unable to handle large volumes of users, touting decentralized trading platforms as a better alternative. However, decentralized exchanges are not as user-friendly as centralized options, and may not have the funds to support mass trading due to small numbers of users.”6
Conclusion
99% of cryptocurrency transactions still go through centralized exchanges; this trend is expected to be reversed in the coming years. Switching to decentralized exchanges is necessary for cryptocurrency users to exploit their full potential, aligning with the decentralized nature of blockchain itself. Education is arriving, and most technological hurdles we face today will probably be overcome very soon.
Differences between projects’ value propositions are hard to spot in this field, and most of them will probably not exist in a close future. However, the trend towards decentralized exchanges is clearly evident.
Centralized exchanges will shift toward decentralized technologies sooner rather than later, but improvements have to come from both sides. Users to learn how to protect themselves, and platforms must provide better security tools, as well as education around common issues and best practices.
“Ultimately, I believe that centralized and decentralized exchanges will co-exist as they each provide their own unique benefits,” says Linda Xie, who sums up the situation pretty well (talking about 0x). Will Warren (0x Co-Founder) goes even one step further by stating that “centralized exchanges will continue to play a critical role in the cryptocurrency ecosystem, because they offer fiat on/off-ramps.” This is one function that fully decentralized exchanges, by definition, do not allow.
If some factors are slowing down adoption, the above-mentioned open protocols (for decentralized exchanges) are fostering development by lowering entry barriers to their implementation and adoption. 0x is probably among the best projects working on the matter. However, even the 0x protocol may suffer from problems like efficiency and scalability, which still represent massive hurdles for the whole blockchain, Ethereum and exchange ecosystem. Solutions in the making, such as State Channels, or Sharding/Plasma, will allow scaling, albeit with certain sacrifices.
From a wider perspective, decentralized exchange adoption will follow the adoption of the (Ethereum) blockchain itself, alongside better educated users and technological breakthroughs. As mentioned, centralized/decentralized hybrid models will most likely get their break first. Fully decentralized exchanges remain an ideal, towards which most of those projects are aiming.
Some questions remain: does everyone want to take care of their own private keys? Probably not, but they should at least have the choice. Friction for new users switching from centralized exchanges to decentralized ones also remain a big hurdle; even the process of switching represents a considerable effort for most users…
Is the switch is going to happen any time soon? People like Vinny Lingham(Civic) say that some centralized exchanges will soon close, and think this will accelerate the adoption of decentralized exchanges.
If the causes and triggers are matters of debate, we can hardly argue that decentralized exchanges are and will continue to grow as a hot topic of 2018 and potentially an essential pillar of the blockchain ecosystem.
Footnotes:
https://coinmarketcap.com
https://localethereum.com/ belongs to another type of cryptocurrencies marketplaces not mentioned here but also trending: local P2P token market places. Other examples: https://localbitcoins.com/fr/ or Dether
https://blog.localethereum.com/centralised-exchanges-are-terrible-at-holding-your-money/. More hack stories hacks stories: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=576337
“GLOBAL CRYPTOCURRENCY BENCHMARKING STUDY” Dr Garrick Hileman & Michel Rauchs (2017)
https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/etherdelta/
Loi Luu (Kyber Network): https://www.coindesk.com/uc-berkeley-kybernetwork-partner-for-decentralized-exchange-research/
从Sushiswap宣布的信息看,它邀请Trail of Bits、PeckShield、OpenZeppelin、Consensys、Certik、Quantstamp中的其中一家对其合约进行审计。但目前为止还没有完成正式审计。这里是有潜在风险的。即便完成了审计,任何流动性挖矿都存在潜在的智能合约漏洞风险。
Zcash is in the same category as other so-called “privacy coins” such as Monero, PivX, and Verge. The creators of Zcash want to use the underlying technology of Bitcoin and improve it by giving their users the ability to make their transactions untraceable and thus maintain their privacy. The privacy coin market is highly competitive and Zcash sets itself apart with its focus on science-backed technology and a team that is dedicated to decentralization and privacy.
Who Is Behind Zcash?
As the origins of Zcash lie in academia it’s not particularly surprising that the team behind the cryptocurrency contains a number of experienced computer scientists and cryptographers. This highly experienced team used cryptography to design a way to “shield” ZEC transactions and thus protect user privacy. Zcash gives users the ability to engage in two types of transactions. The first is a transparent transaction, which works essentially the same way as a Bitcoin transaction. Users also have the option to store and send their currency from a shielded address. This allows users to hide the metadata behind their transactions and thus maintain control over their privacy. zcash shielded wallets. A user can send money to a shielded wallet from a transparent wallet and this will only reveal the funds sent and not the funds received, this also works in reverse.
What Is Zcash’s zk-SNARK?
These shields are created using zk-SNARKs (the acronym stands for Zero-Knowledge Succinct Non-Interactive Argument of Knowledge). This is an interesting form of zero-knowledge cryptography. They allow one party (the prover) to prove to another (the verifier) possession of data (e.g. a secret key) without ever revealing the information or directly interacting with each other. Zcash is a privacy-focused cryptocurrency. See our cryptocurrency guides on Monero, Dash, and Verge — these are also known as privacy-oriented coins. This means that rather than directly validating the sender and receiving addresses, Zcash is able to validate a transaction without revealing any of the underlying information.
What Proof Is Required To Validate A Zcash Transaction?
In order to validate the transaction, the sender of a ‘shielded transaction’ constructs a proof to demonstrate that: The input values sum to the output values for each shielded transfer. The sender proves that they have the private spending keys of the input notes, giving them the authority to spend. The private spending keys of the input notes are cryptographically linked to a signature over the whole transaction, in such a way that the transaction cannot be modified by a party who did not know these private keys. A shielded transaction is also able to verify that a user possesses enough ZEC in order to process the transaction by using “commitments” and a corresponding nullifier.
What Are Zcash’s Unique Identifiers?
These commitments are all given a unique identifier called an “rho”, which is used to verify the payments. When a shielded transaction is spent the sender publishes a nullifier, which is the rho’s hash from an unused commitment. This provides a zero-knowledge way to demonstrate that they are authorized to make the transaction. The team behind ZEC insist that their blockchain is truly independent and decentralized, despite accusations that it is a corporate coin. They argue that because the protocol behind Zcash is open-source, they don’t have any control over the mining and distribution of ZEC, nor have access to any special shielded features.
Bitcoin vs Zcash: Similarities And Differences
How does Zcash compare to the leading cryptocurrency Bitcoin? What are the key differences? See below for our head-to-head comparison:
The Brief History Of Zcash
The precursor to Zcash started its life in form of Zerocoin. This John Hopkins University (Baltimore, USA) project was designed to address one of the primary drawbacks of Bitcoin, its lack of privacy. This eventually led to collaboration with cryptographers from MIT and Tel Aviv University in 2014, who improved the underlying protocol of Zerocoin. In 2015 the first mentions of collaboration between the Zerocoin team and Zooko surfaced and the coin was rebranded Zcash and released on October 28th, 2016 by the Zcash company.
How Was Zcash’s Launch Welcomed?
The launch of the coin was met with a lot of hype that resulted in the cryptocurrency being worth more than 6 Bitcoins (over $5,000) on the day of launch. This speculation quickly died down and since then ZEC has grown at an organic rate. The original launch was met with some controversy. Zcash was created using a “Parameter generation ceremony”. This involved 6 individuals who each created a fragment of the eventual “master passkey” necessary for Zcash to work. These keys were described as toxic waste.
How Do Zcash Master Keys Work?
A master key requires all 6 shards. This requires a lot of trust in the 6 individuals involved and the ceremony has been described as little more than security theatre. If the passkeys were somehow leaked or the individuals involved had colluded then it is theoretically possible for somebody to acquire the master passkey, which would give them the ability to create their own ZEC. It is impossible to prove the process worked. That being said, the security surrounding the event was particularly tight and there were no reported problems, bar a journalist’s phone acting very strangely.
How Could Zcash Be Compromised?
Despite the potential problems, it is also worth keeping in mind that only a single participant needs to have successfully destroyed all traces of their shard in order to ensure the ceremony was a success. So in order for someone to gain access to the master key, it would require all six participants to either be dishonest or compromised. By May 2017 the Zcash foundation had launched as “A non-profit organization, serving the Zcash community and promoting financial privacy”. This was a major milestone for Zcash which had always maintained that the currency was decentralized to serve the public’s interests, despite claims to the contrary.
How Is Zcash Made?
Zcash is mined in a similar way to most other cryptocurrencies. Governments or banks are centralized institutions that physically print money. Instead, Zcash and other cryptocurrencies take a decentralized approach. ZEC is created by its community through mining. The principles of the basic technology behind Zcash are the same as the technology behind Bitcoin. Both coins are mined through solving algorithms using computing power. The blockchain is secured through a consensus mechanism called Proof-of-Work (POW).
How Does Zcash Mining Work?
A miner uses their computer in order to solve complicated equations. Once the equation is solved, a new block is added to the chain and the miner is rewarded with ZEC. This reward system serves two purposes. The first is to encourage miners to devote computing power in order to complete transactions on the Zcash blockchain. Ethereum is now moving from using a proof-of-work (PoW) mechanism to implementing a proof-of-stake (PoS) protocol. The second is to regulate the creation of new ZEC, which is then distributed by the miners.
What Is The Zcash Founders’ Reward?
Zcash differs significantly from other cryptocurrencies because until 2020 the founders will receive a “founders reward” of 20% of all ZEC created. They have agreed to set aside 10% of this in order to create the Zcash foundation. This means that until 2020 miners receive 80% of all coins produced, the founders receive 10% and the Zcash foundation receives the other 10%. After 2020 the reward will halve and miners will receive 100% of all ZEC produced.
What Do Experts Say About Zcash?
As with most cryptocurrencies, the short-term price outlook for Zcash can be described in one way — volatile. The cryptocurrency market is still young and therefore still unstable. You should expect fairly big peaks and troughs in the short term. In the medium, to long-term, you may see Zcash experience a slow and steady increase in value as it has in the past. You will see ups and downs and while some do buy low and sell high, this is a more risky approach than holding for the long term.
Edward Snowden’s Opinion On Zcash And Privacy Coins
Zcash has proven to be fairly divisive amongst experts. Some, such as Edward Snowden, have argued that Zcash is important because it is one of the few privacy coins developed by actual cryptographers. Snowden has argued that this makes Zcash safer to use than Monero which he has described as “amateur crypto” pointing to traceability issues and design errors with Monero. “Zcash’s privacy tech makes it the most interesting Bitcoin alternative. Bitcoin is great, but if it’s not private, it’s not safe.” Edward Snowden
Manfred Karrer On Zcash
Regulation And Competition Others have also come out in support of Zcash and privacy coins in general.
Manfred Karrer, Developer and Founder of Bitsquare said: “I expect three things. One, regulations on cryptocurrency exchanges will come. Two, the war on cash, gold, and cryptocurrencies will accelerate. And three, privacy-protecting technologies like Monero and Zcash will elevate in importance.”Manfred Karrer, Founder of Bitsquare Despite these positives, there are a number of experts who believe that Zcash is too centralized to be considered a true privacy coin.
社区认可还体现在精英的认可上。早在 17 年,莱特币创始人 Charlie Lee 就明确发表过推特说“Decred 基本上是正确版的 Dash,做到了 Dash 想做的,我真的相信 Decred。”,同时他后来也在推特公开恳求币安上线 Decred。另外,币圈著名的估值理论专家 Placeholder Capital 创始人 Chris Burniske,也是胖协议作者 Joel 的合伙人,他也是 Decred 的死忠。另外还有上文提到的 Coinbase 的 Max Bronstein 等一批币圈精英表达过对 Decred 的喜爱和认可。