We’re excited to announce the upcoming release of IDEX 2.0, the next generation of non-custodial trading. IDEX 2.0 is a complete rebuild of our record-setting hybrid exchange including a new UI/UX, off-chain matching engine, and layer-2 smart contract settlement system. IDEX 2.0 scales to hundreds of thousands of transactions per second and is the only non-custodial platform to match the throughput and performance of centralized exchanges.

The Need to Scale

IDEX 1.0 remains one of the most successful Ethereum DApps, consistently capturing upwards of 50% of all Ethereum DEX traffic. But this success comes at a cost—more specifically the direct cost of using the Ethereum network. In 2018 IDEX traders paid over $4.3M to the network to settle trades, and the contract consumed over 1% of the Ethereum network capacity on peak days. The IDEX contract has grown to become the largest contract state on the entire blockchain, an additional and increasing cost to the public. It’s time for this to change.

IDEX 2.0 is built to address these issues. The design uses an application-specific layer-2 solution, Optimized Optimistic Rollup (O2 Rollup). O2 Rollup is a generalizable pattern for deploying high-throughput applications, and it works today without the use of any proprietary technology. O2 Rollup correctness is enforced by the IDEX staking validator network. All aspects of the system are cryptographically provable, with transparent rules that aren’t subject to majority consensus, and it includes a unique solution to the hardest problem of layer-2, data availability. O2 Rollup, combined with our intelligent off-chain matching system, allows IDEX 2.0 to:

Eliminate all gas costs for settling trades to the Ethereum network

Introduce a true order matching system that eliminates coordination problems found on IDEX 1.0 and other DEXs (affectionately known by our community as “the bot problem”)

Add new order types, such as stop-loss, to our ever-improving list of advanced trading options

Offer traders and institutions a high-trust, secure transaction environment with throughput capacity matching centralized competitors

What’s Been Built?

The O2 Rollup solution has been implemented end-to-end and supports all of the functionality necessary for IDEX’s hybrid design. The smart contracts will be open-sourced soon for further inspection and review by the community. The new client build is fully functional, and we’re in the process of adapting the build for mobile and other devices. We estimate that the full-featured testnet version of IDEX 2.0 will be available before the end of the year. Once we’ve performed sufficient testing, we’ll be ready to go live on mainnet targeting a launch of Q1 2020.

O2 Rollup Deep Dive

O2 Rollup helps address the high gas costs and congestion present in current generation blockchain solutions.

O2 Rollup scales indefinitely, settling an infinite number of trades in one single transaction



Transactions are settled every few minutes via a Merkle root proof



IDEX validator nodes cryptographically enforce the correctness of the Merkle root settlement

We’ll be releasing detailed information about the scaling solution every week leading up to the launch. To get started, please check out our O2 Rollup overview post. We’ve also created an updated whitepaper with more context on the evolution of decentralized exchanges and the need for our layer-2 solution.

Be on the lookout for more information in the coming weeks. In the meantime, please reach out if you have any questions or comments!

-Your IDEX Team

For more information and access to the whitepaper, check out the IDEX 2.0 page.