Protocols for Decentralized Exchange

Note: This information is most likely out of date.

This is a list of protocols for peer-to-peer exchange of cryptographic assets. The architecture of these protocols can be quite different from one another. In some cases, they are built as smart contracts that anyone can use. In other cases, they are closed, but still implemented as smart contracts that are publicly verifiable and auditable. Other projects have chosen to create their own blockchain in order to build a protocol for exchange. The approach to liquidity varies as well. Some protocols, like Bancor, have built-in logic for counterparties to find each other. Other protocols, such as 0x, architected the protocol to allow for off-chain liquidity pools, meaning counterparty discovery happens off-chain.

For our purposes, DEX is short for Decentralized Exchange.

[1] The OmiseGo white paper claims “this high-performant distributed network enforces exchange across as-set classes, from fiat-backed issuers to fully decentralized blockchain tokens (ERC-20 style and native cryptocurrencies).”

[2] The Enigma Catalyst white paper proposes an architecture for cross-chain atomic swaps using layer 2 solutions (also known as state channels). As far as I can tell, this is not currently being developed by the Enigma team.

[3] Bitshares claims that you can trade collateralized SmartCoins on the Bitshares blockchain. Bitshares claims to hold the collateral for these SmartCoins.

[4] https://blog.komodoplatform.com/everything-you-need-to-know-about-atomic-swaps-and-how-komodo-is-advancing-the-technology-cadaec50da7c

[5] Investors send funds to the “fund manager” and then receive a proportional number of the fund’s shares in return.

[6] A company called Aphelion is developing this protocol in order to build their own DEX on top of it. I could not determine from the white paper if they are planning to open this protocol up to others or not. It is unclear from the whitepaper just how many assets this protocol will support.

[7] “Manage Offer” is an example of a function native to Stellar’s scripting language https://www.stellar.org/developers/guides/concepts/list-of-operations.html#manage-offer

[8] https://developers.ripple.com/transaction-formats.html#offercreate

[9] This work-in-progress document outlines the use of payment/state channels with atomic swaps and the decentralized orderbook approach of Exchange Union. All chains with BIP 199 compatible payment channels can be supported directly, others need a HTLC atomic swap implementation via smart contracts or similar.

[10] https://docs.komodoplatform.com/barterDEX/list-of-all-coins-tradable.html

[11] https://docs.komodoplatform.com/whitepaper/chapter6.html