The Kyber Network, a on-chain liquidity protocol for decentralized exchanges, wallets and dApps for the Ethereum ecosystem, is approaching a notable milestone: crossing the total transaction volume mark of one million ether.

The platform’s builders announced on July 2nd the exchange to date had processed more than 827,000 ether in total transaction volume and burned one million Kyber Network Crystals (KNC), the exchange’s associated fee token. The platform’s mainnet launched last February.

Rather than using an orderbook system, the DEX — a so-called liquidity aggregator — leverages Ethereum smart contract tech to manage a dynamic reserve pool and facilitate trades instantaneously. The platform’s token is a deflationary one, as a small portion of KNC is burned every time the Kyber Network facilitates an on-chain exchange.

The growing ether volume and steadily deflating token supply puts the project further along its intended trajectory of maturation, with demand on the rise.

In their Tuesday release, the exchange’s leadership highlighted how cryptocurrency wallet projects, dapps, and exchanges have started increasingly turning to the Kyber Network API to use the platform for liquidity, a dynamic that pushed the DEX’s volume up more than 500 percent month-over-month recently.

Kyber Network co-founder and chief executive officer Loi Luu hailed the advancement as an opportunity to highlight the progress of the DeFi ecosystem and how Kyber would remain as a trustless tool in the face of the steady march of large companies turning their attention to cryptocurrency. The CEO said:

“We’re finding strong burgeoning growth for decentralized financial products and the implications of this on finance, banking, and trade are tremendously understated. With monolithic companies like Facebook investing into the industry, the Kyber team remains committed to providing a decentralized framework for all blockchain stakeholders to break up the monopoly of data, wealth and authority that lies ahead.”

Looking Toward the Horizon

Taiwanese electronics giant HTC announced this spring it was using Kyber Network to allow users to securely and privately swap cryptocurrencies within the EXODUS 1 smartphone’s Zion Vault wallet app.

It was a major embrace for Kyber and a high-profile example of how its service can be readily integrated into different kinds of infrastructure.

It’s the kind of adoption the DEX’s builders hope to see as they continue to build out new functionalities for the space — functionalities that will make DeFi go further, CEO Luu said on Tuesday:

“We’re focused on increasing our network by implementing Kyber-framed protocols on different blockchains to power decentralized cross-chain swaps, and adding value and liquidity to the entire blockchain ecosystem. Kyber Network has become one of the most prolific non-banking liquidity providers […] We aim to build a world where the value of digital assets can flow seamlessly anywhere in any wallet, payment services, and financial products.”

Alas, such building will come as the Kyber Network evolves itself. In a post detailing the project’s objectives for 2019, its builders wrote back in January that Kyber would be pivoting in three particular directions.

For the first of those directions, the platform’s backers said they were steering the DEX toward becoming agnostic, i.e. deployable on any smart contract blockchain. Secondly, they said Kyber was being aimed at growing the cryptoeconomy in general, e.g. via working to boost commerce payments.

Lastly, the Kyber team said they would help to start fostering the conditions needed for a decentralized community to take the reigns of the platform’s governance system. They wrote at the time:

“It is important to incrementally move towards a future where adoption and technical contributions comes from an educated, engaged and empowered community, rather than a single centralized entity.”

So while use of the DEX is growing, its backers are positioning it to achieve further maturity — both in use and in design — in the years ahead.