An analysis of all known decentralized exchanges | Hacker News Reader

An analysis of all known decentralized exchanges

medium.com

54 pointstheantonio13 comments

As someone not in crypto, I was really surprised to learn how excited people still are about the space. Three podcasts that a) have me wondering if this is whole thing is real or fake and b) if it’s real, will it really be huge

1) Chris Dixon from a16z’s crypto fund discussing how crypto aligns both user and investor interests (and why Google and Facebook don’t). Expands the discussion on Twitter’s alternative fate if crypto existed when it launched. Also highlights there will be an inflection point in which your digital life will matter more than real life: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/a16z/id842818711?mt=2&i=...

2) CZ from Binance (mentioned in this article) actively dismissing the US market and any locations with regulatory uncertainty (e.g. the US) or negative regulations toward crypto: http://unchainedpodcast.co/how-binance-became-the-most-popul...

3) Travis Klinger, a former equities trader, discussing quant funds as big as DE Shaw using their traditional trading techniques on nascent crypto exchanges to destroy unsophisticated retail traders: https://player.fm/series/off-the-chain-2428336/travis-kling-...

I haven’t fully clarified my thoughts on everything going on other than it’s absolutely fascinating. It seems like there’s a whole world getting built and is globally attracting all sorts of traditional players while creating entirely new applications, infrastructure, and needs.

The problem with this space is the signal vs. noise ratio which makes very difficult to distill the reality. The fundamentals are that Bitcoin (and other decentralized blockchains) were a breakthrough but if there is no concrete utility / network effect (beyond speculation) it will not work or be reduced to a very limited set of use cases. Regulations is or will be an important issue if KYC/AML/accredited-investor regulations are enforced (for exchanges supporting fiat money) almost everywhere because at the end a centralized or federated service can have the same user experience features.

I think in the worst case these blockchains could end like Torrent, a super interesting protocol that never caught up and services like Spotify reduced ther impact even more.

Being in crypto I have created my own signals to differentiate signal from noise.

One of the most exciting things are the sheer activity in Ethereum ecosystem. I use Gitcoin [1] (which is a crypto based bounty app built on Ethereum itself) where I look at the kind of issues for which projects are issuing bounties. I presume that if you are issuing a bounty on an issue then that is a demonstrated preference (rather than mere stated preference) about what you are doing.

Then I use AngelList's [2] job search, if a project is hiring (and also for what) it indicates and demonstrates their claim backed by action. Like from this I learned about FOAM [3] trying to build a secure GPS (which is basically a cryptographic signing wireless beacon which would sign your request, thereby demonstrating that you were at a certain physical location) by hiring an electronics engineer.

The only problem with these signals is that if they become too popular then people might start faking it, though the gitcoin one is hard to fake. If you are a developer, then you can always look at their codebase to see how much of real work is actually going into it.

1. https://gitcoin.co/explorer 2. https://angel.co/ 3. https://foam.space/

its very exciting to be a dev within crypto right now

> 2) CZ from Binance (mentioned in this article) actively dismissing the US market and any locations with regulatory uncertainty (e.g. the US) or negative regulations toward crypto

I'll answer this one: They are serving US customers through VPN and begged crpyto (usdt, true usd, etc...).

This is valuable, thanks: the list of decentralized exchanges:

https://distribuyed.github.io/index https://github.com/distribuyed/index

Odd that it doesn't mention probably the most interesting and usable decentralised exchange: https://bisq.network

I do understand the point about UX; I wouldn't exactly describe Bisq's interface as "pretty". However it is very usable, and lacks all the shiny faffery usually associated with a crypto project these days. I don't think they even mention the word "partnership" on their website.

Finance articles keep using the word "liquidity". What is liquidity and where can I get it?

Quote:

Liquidity Is a Slippery Slope

The two major challenges with most DEX’s today are liquidity and UX. The DEX that will win over the masses in the next couple of years is going to be the one that has the liquidity of Binance and the UX of Coinbase. The problem is that there is a lack of standardization across DEXs — no common trading and liquidity protocol. This is the reason that most DEXs have low liquidity and volume — they simply do not share a common liquidity pool. There are many projects trying to solve this protocol problem today. The leader by number of DEX integration partners in this space currently is the 0x protocol and has a great chance of becoming that standard in 2019.

My understanding is that an asset is liquid if it can be sold for cash in little time.

Liquidity is provided by a sufficiently large pool of buyers.

This just showed me how little I know about... this. Most of the words don't make any sense to me :/

I've read 512 headlines in this format to learn not to care.

Here are 5 reasons why you should care!

Or...

kowdermister didn't want to care, here is how we fixed it!

I love clickbaity titles for articles. I think that at some point I learned to subconsciously skip them.

TLDR : "These are the hurdles of what it will take to be #1."

The TLDR is supposed to give you a summary of the article, not to be a catchphrase to make me read it

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