NEO’s first decentralized exchange project, ‘Switcheo’, has finally gone live.

Switcheo’s launch has been highly anticipated, raising $8.5 million in its ICO; Crypto Globe reported that the exchange has seen an average $2 million trading volume in its first week. The exchange has reportedly risen to become the fourth-largest DEX (decentralized exchange), following Ethfinex, Idea, and Cobinhood.

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Although there are already a number of successfully-operating decentralized exchanges on the market, the majority of them only allow users to ERC20 trade tokens built on the Ethereum blockchain (ie Idex and EtherDelta). Switcheo is the first decentralized exchange to operate on the NEO blockchain, allowing users to trade NEP5 tokens.

Plans for the Future: Accepting Fiat Currencies; Cross-Chain Capabilities

“With the increasing popularity of projects developed on the NEO Blockchain, Switcheo will strategically start trading NEP-5 Token contracts for the NEO Blockchain first, before moving on to QRC20 Tokens (QTUM),” reads the Switcheo whitepaper. “Using the dynamic call functionality of the NEO blockchain, users will be able to list and buy tokens the moment they are available for transfer on the blockchain.”

According to the Switcheo whitepaper, the exchange will not initially accept fiat currencies. Instead, the exchange will “first work towards a multi-chain decentralized cryptocurrency exchange platform where users may perform trades of virtual tokens and assets trustlessly (i.e. without the need to trust a centralized third party).”

So far, the exchange supports the trading of more than 20 different cryptocurrencies. Switcheo also has its own native token (the Switcheo Token or ‘SWH’) which can be used to pay trading fees at a discount. At press time, the Switcheo token was trading for roughly $0.026.

Decentralized exchanges are, by nature, more secure and less expensive than centralized exchanges. Let’s hope that the Switcheo platform is just a single step in a larger movement towards global decentralization across industries.