Months after heralding plans to build a “high-performance” decentralized exchange (DEX) on the then-dormant EOS, Bitfinex has plated up some fresh morsels of information on the project ahead of its beta release later this month.

EOSfinex will facilitate a highly scalable network of peer-to-peer value exchange, unconstrained by borders and built around a foundation of transparency, speed and integrity. Read the story in full below. https://t.co/CzORoYpCPv — Bitfinex (@bitfinex) September 13, 2018

The revelation is the first since the EOSfinex announcement in February and offers an overview of the platform’s “three pillars” of ideological foundation, along with a glimpse at some of its bells and whistles.

The platform will support three “major” pairs upon launch—the industry-standard BTC/USD and ETH/USD pairs as well as EOS/USD. On the execution front, EOSfinex will offer market, limit, immediate-or-cancel and post-only orders, omitting but a few of Bitfinex’s current order types.

Perhaps music to the ears of an archetypal blockchain enthusiast, Bitfinex highlighted decentralization, trust and transparency as the exchange’s core foundations and revealed all the trimmings expected of, what it describes as, an “entirely trustless” DEX including on-chain order books, matching and settlement.

An Arms Race for Decentralization

The push for transparency would seem an understandable concern for Bitfinex. As the fourth-largest cryptocurrency exchange by daily volume, the Hong Kong-based outfit may be feeling the heat, with authorities in trading hubs like China, Japan, South Korea and the U.S. moving with conviction to crack down on manipulation and questions of solvency.

Bitfinex appears to hint that its newfangled exchange will erase some of the nagging question marks that seem to hover over market-leading exchanges. The announcement stated:

“The key to a truly valuable decentralised trading experience comes through eliminating the need for trust. With EOSfinex, we are creating a transparent and auditable network of peer-to-peer exchange which can be monitored and verified by participants from around the world at any time.”

Coming in step with the exchange industry’s apparent thirst for decentralization, the venture will see Bitfinex join the likes of Binance, Huobi and a handful of other centralized monoliths currently building DEXes—many of which would recognize the known security of on-chain transaction in a landscape that’s yet to shake the reality of multi-million-dollar hacks.

The incentive to decentralize may boil down to something less ideological in nature, however. As a comparatively young and unsaturated market, the DEX space has yet to decide its winners, to which would presumably be granted multi-billion dollar or, perhaps, a trillion-dollar reign.

“EOSfinex will alter the way value is exchanged within a network and we are excited about the opportunities this will foster.”