Ethereum’s Top DEX Is Rebooting With New Scaling Features
IDEX, the top decentralized exchange (DEX) for ERC-20 tokens in 2019, according to etherscan, is in the process of launching a new DEX on top of Rollup technology, a Layer 2 scalability protocol highlighted in ethereum’s latest “Istanbul” hard fork. As part of the relaunch, a demo was released on Thursday.
A non-contentious hard fork, Istanbul consists of six ethereum improvement proposals (EIPs) including EIP 2028, which reduces the gas fee for requesting calldata from 68 gas per byte to 16 gas per byte. Calldata is information broadcast on the ethereum state necessary for creating specific smart contracts.
By reducing gas fees, Rollup-based smart contracts, which bundle on-chain transactions off-chain, have become an expedient scalability tool – for IDEX and others.
In an email sent to CoinDesk after the initial publication of this article, IDEX said its rollup design, the Optimized Optimistic Rollup (O2R), was developed independently of the Istanbul hard fork.
Istanbul includes code improvements capable of supporting Layer 2 systems such as Rollups, a tech first developed in 2018 by ethereum developer barryWhiteHat and ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin. The improvements were created with the intent of fostering privacy-based, Layer 2 solutions on ethereum.
Aurora Labs CTO Jason Ahmad said IDEX was looking for different Layer 2 solutions for scaling when his team found Optimistic Rollups, created by ConsenSys scalability researcher John Adler, at this year’s Devcon, an Ethereum hackathon in Osaka, Japan, two months before the planned ethereum hard fork.
Ahmad said IDEX’s O2R improves on Adler’s design, giving it “unbounded” scalability – a handy feature given the amount of contracts an exchange settles daily. Unboundedness is a feature Adler has publicly disputed.
“As the creator of optimistic rollup, that kind of behavior saddens me, because the design paradigm can easily stand on its own merits without being fluffed up,” Adler said in a message to CoinDesk. (Adler, it should be noted, is a co-founder of Fuel, one of about 10 firms working on Rollups.)
Adler specifically pointed out the claim of “instant, gas-free transactions” as being untrue, saying in an email all contracts must sync back to the mainchain at some point which has inherent gas requirements. The two entities have since gone public with their disagreements, feuding Friday on Twitter.
For Aurora Labs, the company behind IDEX, Rollups mean lowering operating costs as well as boosting transaction speeds, Ahmad said. The CTO expects IDEX’s O2R Rollups to reduce gas fees by as much as 90 percent on the new platform.
“The design for off-chain exchange functionality with on-chain custody and settlement is much more efficient, much more cost-effective and frankly is a better judicious use of the scarce blockchain resource,” Ahmad said.
Update (Dec. 5, 18:25 UTC): A prior version of this story said the new IDEX platform was launching Thursday. Only a demo is currently available.
Update (Dec. 6, 21:25 UTC): This piece has been updated with additional information and the headline has been changed.
The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups.
Satoshi Nakamoto is inventor of the Bitcoin protocol, publishing a paper outlining it via the Cryptography Mailing List on November, 1 2008. He then released the first version of the Bitcoin software client in 2009 and participated with others on the project via mailing lists until he finally began to fade from the community toward…
news Overstock’s security token subsidiary tZERO has announced a partnership with media company BLOQ FLIX to tokenize film financing. The company announced the plans on Thursday, amid a period of reorganization following tZERO’s quarterly loss of $10 million and Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne’s abrupt departure. Through the partnership, referred to as “Blockbuster meets blockchain” in the press…
Jan 24, 2020 at 19:05 UTCUpdated Jan 24, 2020 at 19:06 UTCFROM THE EARLY DAYS: Stephen Tse, Niranjan Gawli, Trausti Kristjansson, Minh Doan, Alok Kothari and Nicolas Burtey, all part of the team at the company's beginning (Courtesy of Harmony)Holders of the ONE token from the team at Harmony should make plans to swap their…
Cross-chain router Multichain developers have confirmed an exploit that impacted $130 million in user-supplied tokens and cautioned users against using its service, as per Friday tweets.Developers said Friday that the team “is currently investigating.”“It is recommended that all users suspend the use of Multichain services and revoke all contract approvals related to Multichain,” they said.…
Investment management company Invesco (IVZ), which has $1.4 trillion assets under management, reapplied for a spot bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded fund (ETF).In 2021, Invesco first filed for a bitcoin ETF in conjunction with Galaxy Digital. It also filed for a bitcoin futures ETF, but dropped the effort in October 2021 after a futures ETF by ProShares…
Seba, a crypto bank based in Switzerland, said it won approval-in-principle (AIP) from Hong Kong's Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) for its regional subsidiary as it looks to extend its international presence.The approval is the first step in acquiring a full license for Seba Hong Kong to deal in crypto or virtual assets-related products and
Feb 28, 2020 at 15:15 UTCUpdated Feb 28, 2020 at 15:27 UTCCredit: Shutterstock/Jer123With malicious cryptocurrency miners having proliferated over the internet in the last two years, Microsoft has moved to protect users of its Edge web browser from the effects of the malicious software.In a blog post on Thursday, the tech giant said it had…
Tornado Cash deposits and deposit data is reportedly at risk.A proposal has been made to revert back to a previous version of the protocol's IPFS deployment.User deposits on token mixer Tornado Cash are reportedly at risk following the insertion of malicious code in the protocol's back end, according to a Medium post by community member
news The German government is seeking industry feedback ahead of developing the country’s blockchain strategy by the summer. A Reuters report on Monday, citing anonymous government sources, said that companies and industry groups “that could become stakeholders in a blockchain deployment process” have been invited to provide recommendations on the strategy. Whether proposed recommendations would…