Kyber Network is often viewed by investors and community members as a decentralized exchange (DEX). But this is a misconception. It is true that the main features of Kyber are similar to other decentralized exchanges. The Kyber Network team also manage a decentralized exchange.

But that’s not all of Kyber’s features and use cases. Kyber has a lot of other features and functionalities that aren't being marketed in official channels.

Kyber team is primarily focused on finished products instead of features under development or planned for the future. That's why, many of these features go unnoticed by ordinary cryptocurrency users. In this article, I will try to explain some of these features concisely.

Kyber Network vs Kyberswap

Let me start by comparing Kyber Network and Kyberswap. Kyber Network is an Erc20 token contract with many added functionalities. These functions were built specifically to make it an ideal platform for decentralized applications (DApps). It's not a DEX because it doesn't have a frontend for trading.

Its core functionalities make it easier for DApp developers to make applications that can perform onchain token swaps, margin trading and accept merchant payments. Kyber team is currently working on cross chain functionalities which will soon allow DApp developers to make apps that can perform cross chain token swaps.

In simple words, Kyber Network is like a foundation on top of which many things can be built. It works as an extension to the Ethereum blockchain. DApps don't need to independently code their own swap functions for decentralized financial applications. For example, Tokensets is an onchain financial platform that uses Kyber for token swaps and liquidation.

Tokensets would have had to code their own swap function if no service like Kyber's onchain liquidity protocol existed. With Kyber, their workload was significantly reduced since it is fairly easy to integrate DApps with Kyber Network by following the instructions at Kyber Developer.

This benefits both Tokensets and Kyber. More usage in Kyber integrated DApps increase Kyber's token burn. And more burn increases KNC token value.

Kyberswap on the other hand is an application like Tokensets, that is built on top of the Kyber Network platform. It is primarily an user interface, kyberswap.com where users can easily swap Ethereum based tokens. Kyberswap is integrated to Kyber Network exactly how Tokensets is connected with Kyber.

I hope this clears up how Kyber Network is different from Kyberswap. Now, let's move forward to explaining other features of Kyber Network.

Merchant Payments

Kyber Network offers a merchant payment solution similar to request network. Online merchants, that is, E-commerce store owners can add a Kyber widget to their website to receive cryptocurrency payments.

Its main feature is that it can receive payments from many tokens and automatically convert the money to stable coins. Merchants generally prefer to receive payments in stable currencies such as USD or EURO.

Bloggers and content creators can also make use of the widget to receive cryptocurrency donations. Take for example, I created this new tab widget to receive payments from my readers and supporters.

Margin Trading

Margin trading is a type of advanced cryptocurrency trading where the trader borrows money from the trading platform or other sources and trades with the borrowed money. This means, the trader’s loss or profit increases proportionally.

This feature is generally utilized by expert traders. General traders are recommended not to margin trade with large amount of assets. Learn more about margin trading from here.

Kyber Network has a number of margin trading DApps where expert traders can short or long major Ethereum assets. Notable Kyber margin DApps:

Nuo Network - https://www.nuo.network/

Fulcrum by bZx - https://fulcrum.trade/

Cross Chain Swaps

The Kyber platform was built keeping in mind that it will be used for cross chain swaps in the future. Kyber team is funding two other teams working on token swaps in other smart contract platforms. These teams are working on Yoloswap and Tomoswap.

Yoloswaps is for EOS based tokens and Tomo is for Tomochain tokens. Yoloswap was launched on the EOS mainnet a few months ago. Kyber team recently revealed that they are working on enabling cross chain swaps with EOS. Learn more about these platforms from their official links:

https://yoloswap.com/

https://tomoswap.com/