Mapping The Exchange Ecosystem
Slow Burn’s exchange month has, albeit unintentionally, proved relevant to the current macro environment. Regulators, legislators, and entrepreneurs are engaged in contentious debate over crypto regulation—a watershed in the broader ecosystem's US viability.
To conclude our dive into exchanges, we've assembled a market snapshot bifurcated into non-custodial and custodial projects (i.e., they don't hold and do hold the users’ private keys, respectively). Note that we’ve exercised editorial discretion for visual simplicity, but we recognize these companies are more nuanced than our taxonomy allows.
Companies To Highlight
0x Labs develops open-source infrastructure for non-custodial exchanges. It provides developers with the necessary tools to offer highly liquid exchange products.
Architect is a trading infrastructure and exchange provider that grants institutional investors access to a broad range of digital assets. The company's mission is to construct a more efficient and transparent on-chain trading ecosystem.
Coinbase is a leading custodial exchange that facilitates the purchase, sale, and storage of cryptocurrencies. As the current target of the SEC’s legal action (and the plaintiff in its own suit against the SEC), it will play a key role in determining the future of exchanges, and crypto broadly, in the US.
dYdX is a decentralized derivatives exchange. It offers a variety of products, including margin trading, perpetual swaps, and options. Recently, the exchange re-launched on Cosmos in an effort to improve performance and decentralization.
Ellipsis Labs is developing Phoenix—a completely on-chain and non-custodial decentralized limit order book—which is uniquely enabled by Solana’s low transaction costs.
Robinhood is a popular retail trading venue for a variety of assets, including crypto. The company has recently ventured into non-custodial trading through its self-custody wallet.
Uniswap is a prominent decentralized protocol that facilitates automated, Ethereum-based token trading. As an automated market maker (AMM), Uniswap improves efficiency and eliminates the liquidity issues that plague traditional exchanges.
About Slow Burn
Weekly explorations into emerging crypto trends and how to navigate 2023 from the Slow Crypto Team, Sam Lessin, Clay Robbins, and Caroline Cline.