State of Decentralized and P2P Exchanges, 2018

[truefact12]

Cryptocurrencies and decentralized technologies are booming. The numbers speak for themselves — market capitalizations have gone through the roof, transaction volume has skyrocketed, and adoption from individuals, corporations, and governments has reached a global scale.

Thanks to blockchain technology, we are moving toward a trustless economy, with no need of third parties to exchange goods. Yet today’s digital currency exchanges are centralized. They have proven to be vulnerable to hacks, to react poorly to unusual blockchain events like hard forks, and often run with a high regulatory risk. Centralized exchanges keep their systems off-chain, meaning they operate as escrows for their clients, and transactions are not recorded on the blockchain. This leads to massive breaches of security and unsafe storage of information, funds, and private keys.

"Trading comes with risks, but traders should not face any other risks than those they are already willing to take."

Blockchain entrepreneurs understand this, and some of them are working hard on what many believe will be the future of trading: decentralized exchanges.

Decentralized exchanges — or DEXes — aim to tackle the problems that impedecentralized structures by building peer-to-peer marketplaces directly on the blockchain — Ethereum mostly — allowing traders to remain custodian of their funds. However, building a fully decentralized and efficient exchange remains today something of an utopia. Exchanges are centralized because it is the simplest way to proceed, and it is either too costly or technically complex to build fully decentralized platforms — for now, at least.

Here is the list of exchanges. Let me know if I missed some of them.

Decentralized exchanges:

AirSwap.io
Decentralized exchange on Ethereum using the Swap protocol (Live on February 1st 2018!)

Altcoin.io
Decentralized cryptocurrency exchange, powered by Atomic Swaps (Beta on testnet)

Barterdex (by Komodo Platform)
Open source decentralized network doing atomic swaps (in production)

Bancor Protocol
Smart contract based token exchange protocol (Live on the Ethereum MainNet)


Catalyst (by Enigma Project)
Investment platform for algorithmic/data-driven trading on crypto-assets without a custodian (in alpha; simulation available)

Etherdelta.com
The cryptocurrencies fully decentralized exchange market leader for ERC-20 tokens (Live)

Stellar Distributed Exchange (by Stellar)
StellarTerm is an open source distributed exchange for the Stellar network. (Live since 2015)




Peer to peer exchanges:

LocalBitcoins.com
 - bitcoin to fiat exchange

LocalEthereum.com
 - ether to fiat exchange

SimpleDex.org
 - any cryptocurrency to fiat exchange(Live on March)

paxful.com
 - bitcoin to fiat exchange

Hodl Hodl (Hodl Hodl)
P2P cryptocurrency exchange on the Bitcoin Testnet (Testnet)


Conclusion

99% of cryptocurrency transactions still go through centralized exchanges; this trend is expected to be reversed in the coming years. Switching to decentralized exchanges is necessary for cryptocurrency users to exploit their full potential, aligning with the decentralized nature of blockchain itself. Education is arriving, and most technological hurdles we face today will probably be overcome very soon.

[TaxHelp]

Sounds cool. DEX is the future  of exchanges

[BillCoin]

Very informative thread, but you forgot to mention one of the biggest decentralized market places available- Waves exchange,which works the same as etherdelta works with Ethereum contracts but with Waves contracts, I don't really like the platform because of the UI, but it usually has a decent amount of volume so it could fit for trading.
I believe that we, as a community, should advertise and tell our close friends about Decentralized exchanges, and maybe donate funds for advertising programs, it could really change the world of cryptocurrencies as we would be immune for exchanges hacks and frauds.
We transfer funds at a decentralized system, why wouldn't we convert funds at a decentralized exchanges?

[Azjum]

There are also
- https://crypto-bridge.org/
- https://bitshares.org/
- https://waveswallet.io/
- https://decentrex.com/
- https://token.store/trade/accounts
- https://forkdelta.github.io

[buwaytress]

Pretty decent update. For a time in 2017, I was really putting a lot of my hopes into this new idea of decentralized exchanges. Yes, I know Dexs took up the idea as a concept in 2016 but last year, there were quite a number of new projects launching proposing to realise it. I've slowly been watching and some really took up quickly, but by the looks of things, are also quick to stumble (EtherDelta for example).

Personally, I've only used two for actual trades: Waves and Counterparty Dex. The latter looks like it'll really need a lot more love, Waves will get there eventually. I still hope this year will see good things for DEX... but I'm not sure any longer.

[1Referee]

I believe that we, as a community, should advertise and tell our close friends about Decentralized exchanges, and maybe donate funds for advertising programs.

You don't have to donate anything, just use it and tell your other crypto friends to use it, that alone is free advertising and worth more than anything.

it could really change the world of cryptocurrencies as we would be immune for exchanges hacks and frauds.

The past has taught us that even decentralized platforms aren't 100% secure (with coin loss as result), and thus decentralized platforms aren't immune to hacks/exploits.

We transfer funds at a decentralized system, why wouldn't we convert funds at a decentralized exchanges?

For coin versus coin trades that could definitely work, especially with enough volume and liquidity, but that's not the case when it comes to fiat. You can trade coin versus fiat on decentralized exchanges, but that process isn't entirely decentralized because you still depend on centralized services to initiate the fiat transfer and to receive fiat.

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Please OP, change the standard font back to normal, because the [ size=14pt ] code disrupts the reading experience.

[dollarneed]

99% of cryptocurrency transactions still go through centralized exchanges; this trend is expected to be reversed in the coming years. Switching to decentralized exchanges is necessary for cryptocurrency users to exploit their full potential, aligning with the decentralized nature of blockchain itself. Education is arriving, and most technological hurdles we face today will probably be overcome very soon.

I think we have to be a volunteer to make them rise or crowdfunding maybe to support this industry. I don't get it with those who still use centralized exchanger while you can get a lot of benefit by using decentralized or P2P exchanges, centralized exchanges are needed you to verify your Identity before using their service which is a bad thing since it's against the concept of the bitcoin and cryptocurrency being decentralized.

We can start from teaching newbies what is Decentralized and P2P exchanges are, i believe the reason why people still not use it due to lack of knowledge. Everyone just comes to crypto only about making money but they don't think how dangerous giving some random people on the internet their identity, we should educate them.

[virat25]

i personally prefer idex exchange because of its state of art technology and cash back or incentives to traders is such a cool thing to become the top exchange of 2018 in decentralized category

[GregoryPorter]

I think coinable and binance will always be around and successful and maybe even one day bought out by governments and hedge funds like we saw with gp Morgans acquisition of poloniex. I do think decentralised exchanges will take centre stage long term. Its simply more efficient if done correctly. Neo are launching NEX. I like them. I also like 0x

[lopez cryptomania]

Very informative thread, but you forgot to mention one of the biggest decentralized market places available- Waves exchange,which works the same as etherdelta works with Ethereum contracts but with Waves contracts, I don't really like the platform because of the UI, but it usually has a decent amount of volume so it could fit for trading.
I believe that we, as a community, should advertise and tell our close friends about Decentralized exchanges, and maybe donate funds for advertising programs, it could really change the world of cryptocurrencies as we would be immune for exchanges hacks and frauds.
We transfer funds at a decentralized system, why wouldn't we convert funds at a decentralized exchanges?

This is very true of decentralized exchanges like EtherDelta where the UI is terrible. I believe in this ICO : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3085831.msg31823480#msg31823480

The designer and coder both individually have over 30 years experience and their aim is to provide a secure exchange with a user friendly UI that will bring in the masses into crypto. A project I believe in being that the coder has so much experience in financial markets with exchanges.