The vast majority of DEX volumes are currently generated by automated market makers (AMMs) like Uniswap, Sushiswap, and Curve. 0x stands alone as the only orderbook-based DEX live on Ethereum with meaningful spot volume. It accomplishes this by leveraging a hybrid on-chain/off-chain design to enable orderbooks and low latency trading.
That’s not the only thing that makes 0x unique. It’s one of the oldest and, perhaps as a result, underappreciated DeFi projects in the space. Without going into too much depth, I’m going to highlight a few notable data points to pay attention to for 0x. For a deeper understanding of the protocol’s inner workings and how it’s changed over the past few years, I recommend checking out our previous posts on the topics – November 2019, March 2020, and April 2020.
2020 was a breakout year for DEXs, and 0x was no exception to this. The launch of Matcha, an in-house front end for 0x’s aggregation product,