The beginner trader complains that DEX’es are hard to use and lead to costly mistakes— and there isn’t adequate support to help, when it happens. The advanced trader is unsatisfied with the basic functionality and how slow they are.

What’s more, most DEX’es are confined to their native blockchains and its tokens. And for cross-blockchain transactions, most existing DEX solutions escrow the cryptocurrency and release their own smart token to represent it in trade— an IOU of sort, that is vulnerable to manipulation and still leaves the real cryptocurrency out of your personal control (consider the scandal with Tether, a smart token from Bitfinex that represents USD).

The solution

Enter second generation de-centralised exchanges, such as Aphelion, built on more scalable blockchains and capable of Atomic Swaps.

Aphelion, which is both a wallet and a DEX, is built on the NEO blockchain as a decentralised application (DAPP). It aims to be among the pioneers of DEX residing completely within a blockchain, requiring only an open source user interface to trade digital assets, even from — and between — other blockchains.

This is achieved through Atomic Swaps that permit cross-blockchain transactions without the need of vulnerable intermediaries— the role so far carried out by centralised exchanges — or smart tokens — as is the case with current DEX’es.

Although revolutionary, Atomic Swaps have been slow to develop and require extensive coding for each blockchain. So far, Lightning Network makes it possible for Bitcoin-derived cryptocurrencies and a swap has already been performed between Bitcoin and Ethereum, for example.

In order to become a comprehensive cryptocurrency exchange through Atomic Swaps, Aphelion seeks to step up the game by a mile and bring this capability to the many other blockchains out there too.

Aphelion thus strives to permit cryptocurrencies to exchange owners as blockchain intended — users retain control and exchange their cryptocurrency peer-to-peer, right on the native blockchains, safely and privately without third party tampering or exorbitant fees. In addition to this, the NEO blockchain promises scalability and speed not witnessed so far in DEX’es.

2018 is believed to be the year of Atomic Swaps. It’s clear that moving away from centralised exchanges will benefit not just users, but the cryptocurrency movement itself. Supporting projects, like Aphelion, is therefore a priority that everyone in the crypto-verse should support and help develop.

Let true de-centralised exchanges become the first successful and widespread real-life use cases for cryptocurrencies.