EtherDelta Shuts Down but DEX Protocols Flourish

Decentralized Exchanges (DEXs) are a promise of censorship resistant trading while never having to place your precious money in the hands of a centralized operator which oftentimes have questionable track records. Vitalik has even gone as far as saying “I hope centralized exchanges burn in hell as much as possible.”

The first prominent DEX with meaningful use came through EtherDelta. During the 2017 mania, EtherDelta serviced everyone from raging retail speculators to VCs dumping their ICO coins. There were many coins that you could not get access to anywhere other than EtherDelta due to it having an open listing policy, which brought it to prominence.

Unfortunately in 2018, the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) forced the founder Zachary Coburn to shut down the exchange and charged him with violating US securities laws. This vicious blow decapitated the head of the most prominent DEX and left investors scurrying to find a replacement. Hydra Ethereum did not even flinch as just a few months after the shut down Uniswap was announced by Hayden Adams. Uniswap is the first fully decentralized exchange and is immune to the issues faced by EtherDelta since even Hayden himself can’t take down the protocol. Uniswap allows anyone in the world to not only trade in a decentralized, censorship resistant and transparent manner but also submit liquidity to the pool in order to generate fees.

In addition to Uniswap, there are more than 20 other DEXs built on Ethereum, including entire protocols like Kyber Network and 0x Protocol. The DEX ecosystem will continue to grow and mature until it circumvents many centralized exchanges.