Trade any ERC20 token — Introduction to Instex Decentralized Exchange
For the last couple of months, we have been building Instex — decentralized exchange (DEX) on top of 0x protocol. The roadmap will be provided in one of the subsequent posts.
As for today — I’m glad to announce our open beta on Kovan Testnet (you should choose Kovan network in metamask):
Why you should trade on decentralized exchange
No verification overhead
Can’t destroy your privacy with KYC/AML requirements
Can’t deny you service based upon geography
Won’t require submitting FBARs
No deposits/withdraws required
Low fees
No risk
Hacking sustainability
Can’t seize your assets
Doesn’t create systemic risk (target for hacking / DoS)
Worst case scenario — your trade won’t happen
And here is why you should try out our exchange
Ability to trade any ERC20 token
Applying for token listing is a painful process. We don’t want to interfere in user-user trading, so we are giving ability to trade any existing ERC20 token by using it’s address in URL (just like the Etherdelta does). We’ll add UI for it soon.
To become listed on our exchange, we’ll need to manually check the coin (to prevent scam using same name or symbol). The process of listing will be published closer to mainnet release.
Matching relayer strategy, which give us ability to provide you with:
Instant order creation
Free order cancelations
Low transaction fees
No possibility of front running
We decided to go with matching strategy because it offers the best user experience and offers lower fees than open order book strategy.
Unfortunately, that means that we won’t be able to share liquidity (at least at launch) and we won’t use ZRX token as a fee (likely temporary). We’ll explain why later in the post. We will be taking part in 0x community by accumulating and buying ZRX tokens from our trading profits and by contributing to the protocol.
User friendly UX
We took everything we liked from biggest exchanges, while taking in account decentralized part (wrapping Ethereum, unlocking tokens etc). The exchange is developed by 2 developers and we hope to get your feedback how we can make it better.
You can trade on app.instex.io without sending your tokens anywhere.
You can even spend them from your wallet (that will cancel your order).
Fees
All fees will be taken in taker currency.
For example:
buy 10 KIN tokens for 1 WETH — fee taken in KIN
sell 10 KIN tokens for 1 WETH — fee taken in WETHps. If you don’t know what is WETH — here is great explanation.
At launch we won’t be taking fees in ZRX as it would require us to hold a significant amount of ZRX tokens (we don’t have resources for it now), a transaction will cost more, and user experience would be sacrificed.
For now, we are making a tradeoff in temporary not fully participating in 0x economics for providing user-friendly exchange experience. As soon as we’ll be able to provide a competitive solution with ZRX token, we’ll do it.
Here is our fee details (subject to change):
Kovan beta: no fees
Mainnet beta: network fees.
Release: 0.3% trading fee + network fees.Minimal trade: 5 usd.
A note about Decentralized Exchanges and 0x protocol
As we’ve mentioned above, at the beginning we won’t fully participate in 0x economics in sake of providing competitive trading experience.
Main goal for decentralized exchanges today — prove that we can compete with traditional exchanges both in usability and profits.
Even though, recent research has shown that most crypto volume is artificial — total DEX’s trading volume is smaller than a volume of one Argentinian exchange.
Decentralized exchanges are a drop in the crypto sea (not mentioning 0x relayers).
Main limits for DEXs:
- Only ERC20 tokens can be traded
- High requirements for user competence: keeping private keys safe, using metamask, signing orders, wrapping ethereum, etc.
- Terrible user experience in general
- Limited functionality: no margin trading, limitation in order types and lack of market depth
0x team is building a beautiful solution which unfortunately has it’s own limitations.
Lack of atomic matching, fee splitting, high gas consumption — are temporary limitations which will be solved soon, giving ability to provide seamless user experience with all benefits of DEX.
But main limitation — solely ERC20 tokens trading will stay for a long time.
Even though ERC20 tokens are very popular, market requires solution for BTC, LTC, XMR and other major cryptocurrencies.
We are looking into some interesting solutions (atomic swaps, cross- blockchains etc) and we’ll expand our exchange to use them.
Most likely we will separate 0x exchange for ERC20 token trading and cross-blockchain trading platform based on atomic swaps. But there are little use in tattle — for now this is only ideas.
Additional Notes
- To interact with Instex.io you’ll need metamask.
- Ledger support will be added soon.
- We want to provide you with the ability to exchange any of your digital assets without sending them anywhere and to provide you with best trading experience.
- We don’t hold any of your assets, so you can’t lose them due to our failure.
When exchange happens, your assets are directly transferred to the counterparty. - And it goes without saying — we are not responsible for your private key loss or any of your loss-making trading activity.
- No ICO and no token was created in development process
Don’t put your money at risk — use decentralized exchanges 🔥🏦🔥🏦🔥🏦🔥
I hope you’ll love trading on our exchange.
For suggestions, partnerships and help contact us in Telegram (t.me/instex) and Email (hi@instex.io).
Stay updated on Twitter (@instex_0x).
