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.

[Naman1111]

One of the major hurdles for DEX is creating liquidity pools. With major DEX especially Kyber network and 0x advancing and working towards launching the DEX with propr liquidity I think this challenge of liquidity will be solved. DEX is the future of the crypto and also the theme for 2018.

PS you missed the following great Decentralised exchange projects:

0x protocol plus several DEX apps being built on it like Radarrelay
Kyber Networks
Block
BCO
NEX

[truefact12]

One of the major hurdles for DEX is creating liquidity pools. With major DEX especially Kyber network and 0x advancing and working towards launching the DEX with propr liquidity I think this challenge of liquidity will be solved. DEX is the future of the crypto and also the theme for 2018.

PS you missed the following great Decentralised exchange projects:

0x protocol plus several DEX apps being built on it like Radarrelay
Kyber Networks
Block
BCO
NEX

Thanks. I couldn't find BCO. Is there a link to their website?

[mu_enrico]

Just wanna add popular DEX

https://idex.market/
https://openledger.io/
https://crypto-bridge.org

[thepo1m]

There is still huge need for more exchanges with better infrastructure than the ones we have now, the issue with decentralised exchanges is that since they lack fiat gate way the amount of money entering the space in fiat is zero, and that is an hidderance to their growth unlike P2p and centralised exchanges

[truefact12]

Just wanna add popular DEX

https://idex.market/
https://openledger.io/
https://crypto-bridge.org

Thatnks. Can you share your experience of using this dexs? Which is better?

[cryptomngr]

Idex would be a good replacement for etherdelta,i dont trust ED anymore because it is getting worst day by day the problems started when ED got hacked using the DNS server which is unaacceptable,you are indeed right DEX or decentralized exchanges are going to replace these centralized exchange like bittrex,poloniex etc. one perfect example is the upcomign NEX which is based on NEO exchange,it is a decentalized exchange which could be the best answer for the market manipulations by these big players.

[cdb1690]

You should also add Bisq (formerly Bitsquare) to your list. It has been up and running for two years and it's volume is growing steadily. You can do both crypto <-> crypto and fiat <-> crypto trades there. It also run behind Tor network, so there's an additional layer of security/anonymity. Similarly to Blocknet, orders are broadcasted in peer-to-peer fashion and each client compiles its own orderbook, so there's no need for third party order books hosts.

[charlie137]

according to the website, airswap is busy distributing tokens their own tokens
altcoin.co website seems to be broken
bancor shows stable performance, but can't really tell if it should be here, need some reading)
enigma - i see nice looking webpage work and some text i might click, but not without github
bisq - on my filed laptop it was a disaster. guess i know how to find a challenging environment for java.
barterdex feels like a breeze) don't remember when i checked it last time, but the platform feels like something that could set the beat for further development towards better market

[Jimmy palumbo]

I agree.
As national policies limit the centralization of exchanges, decentralised exchanges will be a big trend, so it is a good choice to invest in each of the diversified exchanges.

[charlie137]

I agree.
As national policies limit the centralization of exchanges, decentralised exchanges will be a big trend, so it is a good choice to invest in each of the diversified exchanges.

unfortunately usage of these exchanges a little more complicated than regular centralized/web-based platform, slowing down mass adoption. but i guess its normal at this stage