Coordinators, Stablecoin Trading Growth, and an Interview with dYdX
Hello 0x community! Over the past month, we saw a significant increase in stablecoin liquidity flowing into the 0x Network, in addition to a variety of new projects launching in the ecosystem. We’ll dig into both of those topics and more in this monthly update!
General 0x Updates
0x Mesh Beta Release
0x Mesh is now live on mainnet! Mesh is a p2p network for receiving and sharing orders throughout the 0x ecosystem. One exciting aspect of Mesh is the ability to launch a serverless relayer, which doesn’t require a backend server and enables the frontend to be hosted on IPFS! Mesh is a critical layer in the 0x stack, as it will increase network liquidity and further decentralize 0x overall.
To quickly deploy your own Mesh node and join the network, take a look at our guide on Github.
Introducing Coordinators
A Coordinator is a service that enforces rules over trade execution for a specific pool of 0x liquidity. They may be operated as independent services or bundled together with a relayer. Coordinators combine the best characteristics of Order Matching and Open Orderbook relayer models: market makers can perform free, instant order cancellations and users/devs can leverage contract-fillable liquidity (CFL) to power independent Ethereum applications.
The first Coordinator demo implementation is live on Bamboo Relay, where you can find the best prices for DAI and WBTC across all DEXs. Try it out now!
ZRX Tokenholders Approved ZEIP-24 and ZEIP-39
We conducted a vote in July to determine whether or not to add support for the ERC-1155 token standard (ZEIP-24) and the StaticCallAssetProxy (ZEIP-39). Both proposals were approved by the community of ZRX token holders. Over 12.3 million ZRX were cast by 130+ unique addresses. Both ZEIPs will be implemented on mainnet next week!
v2.0 Exchange Contract Vulnerability Post-mortem
On July 12, we were made aware of a potential exploit in the 0x v2.0 Exchange contract by samczsun, a third-party security researcher. The vulnerability would allow an attacker to fill certain orders with invalid signatures. After verifying the vulnerability internally, the 0x Core Team triggered an emergency shutdown mechanism within 0x protocol’s system of smart contracts, preventing the vulnerability from being exploited. Historical trade logs confirm that the vulnerability had not been exploited prior to its discovery and disclosure. Subsequently, a patched version of the smart contract system (0x v2.1) was deployed to the Ethereum mainnet. The initial announcement may be found here.
We wrote up a post-mortem that recaps the details of the vulnerability and discussed a variety of topics including the role of the 0x Core Team and our views on decentralization.
New Explainer Video | What is 0x?
We were thrilled to release a new explainer video that we worked on with Sandwich Video. The Core Team has created a ton of new video content to help businesses, developers, and community members better understand the 0x protocol. So subscribe and check out our revamped YouTube channel to view technical walkthroughs, interviews, dev calls, and more!
0x Network Data
0x Network trade volume was up 6%+ month-over-month (MoM) and the top relayer, Radar Relay, had an eye-popping 142% monthly increase. Most notably though, USDC and DAI trade volumes were up 172% and 95% respectively in July! Let’s dive into the data.
Fill count: 28,233 (+41% MoM)
Fill volume: $30,911,184 (+8.7% MoM)
Trade count: 24,384 (+22% MoM)
Trade volume: $30,170,429 (+6% MoM)
Unique makers: 649
Unique takers: 645
Unique addresses: 1,079
Top Tokens
We calculated volume using both canonical and Ethfinex wrapper tokens. Note that volume exceeds total fill volume due to the two-sided nature of trades.
ETH: $23,741,419.10 (-7% MoM)
DAI: $14,664,631.26 (+95% MoM)
USDT: $10,068,414.87 (-25% MoM)
USDC: $6,690,354.93 (+172.6% MoM)
Top Relayers
Radar Relay: $16,968,758 (+142% MoM)
Tokenlon: $9,154,726 (-30% MoM)
Ethfinex: $3,283,336 (-48% MoM)
Paradex: $522,665.56 (-49% MoM)
Tokenmon: $170,227.58 (-78% MoM)
Ecosystem Highlights
Bit2Me, a Spain-based ERC-20 token relayer, launched last week! We are excited to see teams expand to service a variety of geographies.
Bazaaar.io, a Japan-based NFT relayer, launched last week as well! They also built a custom set of 0x extension contracts that enabled them to offer new ways of exchanging non-fungible tokens. Check out their announcement blog post here.
Microsponsors published a great article on why blockchains are ideal for creating trust-minimized marketplaces for sponsors and advertisers. Check out their blog post here.
We are excited to support the CheezeWizards online hackathon! We look forward to working with teams to bring their ideas to life and offer up a $2k prize to the project that best utilizes the 0x protocol! Hackers can learn more here about how 0x can facilitate p2p token exchange in their projects.
Interview with dYdX
Antonio Juliano, Founder & CEO of dYdX, sat down with Clay Robbins to discuss their recent 0x integration and give his thoughts on how the DeFi space is developing.
Project Updates
Chris from Tokenlon (imToken)
Tokenlon is a mobile DEX embedded in imToken, a popular crypto wallet.
Last month, Tokenlon saw $7M in trading volume, with daily volume exceeding $1.2M.
Users mainly trade ETH <> Stablecoins and exchange ETH for ATOM or EOS.
We launched ETH <> DAI trading and raised transaction limit to 100 ETH.
Check our tweets for weekly data updates https://twitter.com/tokenlon
Joshua from Bamboo Relay
Bamboo is an exchange that allows users to trade, lend, or borrow any ERC-20 token trustlessly.
Updated the Bamboo Relay Hummingbot connector to support 0x orders made with the coordinator.
Launched 0x mesh nodes across all supported networks and begun backend integration.
Started work on a complete website design refresh.
Antonio from dYdX
dYdX is both a margin lending protocol and a user-facing decentralized exchange that creates leveraged short and long positions on Ethereum-based assets.
Over $35M in trade volume in July
Working on adding limit orders
Working on adding WBTC-DAI through Bamboo Relay
Ben from Ethfinex
Ethfinex is an ERC-20 relayer based out of the UK.
Exciting new listings include Wrapped Bitcoin and Data Transaction Token. The game-changing WBTC now means traders can benefit from BTC price action directly within the Ethfinex Trustless portal.
MetaMask efficiency and usability improvements. We fixed a number of sticking points for MetaMask including streamlined address swapping without needing to reconnect and solved excessive re-authentication requests due to idle time.
Wrappers and contract upgrade to the new version. With the fast-thinking support of 0x, we upgraded to the new wrapper contracts subverting potential vulnerabilities and making Trustless even more secure. As such, we now have a new site https://trustless.ethfinex.com/legacy/ where users with tokens still locked in the legacy contracts can get them unlocked.
Greg from OpenRelay
Open Relay is an open-source relayer and infrastructure company.
Rivet beta updated to fix sync issue and introduce enhancements — read Austin’s blog post about it
Michael from Hummingbot
Hummingbot is open source software that helps you build market making and arbitrage bots that run on both decentralized and centralized exchanges.
Worked with Bamboo Relay to add Hummingbot support for their new coordinator-based model, which allows market making bots to soft-cancel orders without paying gas
Launched a liquidity bounty for Harmony Protocol. In the first month, bounty participants provided liquidity for 72k trades and $2.1m volume, and earned 35 ETH in rewards
Started Hummingbot School, a weekly live-streamed webinar series to teach users how to use Hummingbot
Added Developer Manual for technical users who want to create their own strategies and exchange connectors
Simplified the installation and update processes with new helper scripts
We’ll be hosting a crypto trader meetup with 0x on August 29. RSVP here!
Ryan from Fabrx
Fabrx is an infrastructure company that enables businesses to quickly spin up a 0x relayer.
Launched “RESTful APIs for any ABI”. 0x contact methods are live as API calls.
First version of the Fabrx DeFi IFTTT is live — Set email alerts on Compound interest rate changes.
Merchcoins, built on a Fabrx based 0x relayer, is available on the Coinbase dApp store.
Jim from Emoon
Emoon is a p2p marketplace for ERC-20 and ERC-721 (NFT) assets.
Wyre Integration: https://medium.com/@emoonmarket/emoon-adds-wyre-integration-for-purchasing-eth-and-dai-8e58d59db9a6
Public Mesh Node Launched: ws://mesh.emoon.io
Bass from MARKET Protocol
MPX is a relayer for trading MARKET Protocol Position Tokens, which track the prices of traditional or crypto assets.
Integrated with 0x Mesh beta as a replacement for OrderWatcher
Launched MP Tools to educate users on how our BTC-DAI contracts work
Integrated with DDEX, launching our latest LBTC-DAI and sBTC-DAI pairs
Daniel from Kordex
Kordex is a 0x relayer based out of South Korea.
Kordex hosted a DeFi Seoul meetup on July 22nd. There was a lot of interest and had 230 people sign up with a turnout rate of about 150 with more showing up for the networking event. Here is a video prepared by one of the organizations: https://youtu.be/NATJkDUWgCI
Kordex is now a core organizer (along with Nonce and stake.fish) of DeFi Seoul, which will continue to host meetups and events with speaker presentations and tutorials.
We have officially brought in core components of our team in Korea including a UX Researcher (JaeMyung Lee, PhD from KAIST in Industrial Design and UX) a Content Editor and Language Localization Expert (YoungWon Kim, Viral English Teacher and Social Media Growth Hacker), and a De Facto Kordex Lead (See Eun Ha, Co-Founder of Nonce and Studio Decentral).
We are currently investigating alternative ways Korean users can interact with online wallets (and even the jump to hardware wallets) when using our Relayer. As there are different age demographics that we target for specific parts of our platform, and therefore the type of web client used by each is dramatically different. Further, depending on the web client used, browser extension education is actually a very important part of the process.
Lauren from Microsponsors
Microsponsors.io is a p2p sponsorship marketplace and ad network.
Microsponsors.io is going to be rolling out the Registry for our upcoming Limited Alpha soon. We are using the 0x Whitelist smart contract plus some additional features for mapping web content (social media profiles, email addresses, websites, etc) to Ethereum addresses and enabling participants to refer their friends and collect affiliate fees. More info coming soon. If people are interested in participating in the Limited Alpha as content publishers or sponsors, please email hello@microsponsors.io
Onboarding development continues (Registry, User-facing and Administrative Dashboards, Onramp from fiat)
Continued work on the Wyre integration
Participated in 0x protocol voting last week
Elizabeth from EtherBlockchain.io
EtherBlockchain.io is an Open Finance platform powered by 0x and the Ethereum blockchain.
Etherblockchain.io/exchange is a 0x relayer for ERC-20 tokens. We utilize 0x.js, 0x Standard Relayer, 0x Instant and 0x Connect. Currently, we are in the process of integrating 0x Mesh. For the purpose of orderbook sharing, fellow 0x relayers can access info about our REST and WebSocket endpoints here:www.etherblockchain.io/relayer-api
EBO Mobile App — Instant Buy and Instant Sell ERC-20 tokens with the swipe of a button using liquidity from Etherblockchain.io/exchange and the entire 0x ecosystem. Trade ERC-721 tokens from within the EBO app using third party DApps such as OpenSea and Gods Unchained. Instantly buy ether using a credit card. Launching Q3 2019.
EBO Browser App — A Chrome extension plugin, EBO lets you easily store, receive and send Ethereum tokens. EBO can also securely connect to 0x Relayers, and web3 enabled websites running Ethereum smart contracts and trusted decentralized applications. Launching Q3 2019.
Etherblockchain.io/blockchain/blocks is a fully-featured Ethereum blockchain explorer delivering transactional data to the public and all EBO applications.
Matt from LedgerDEX
LedgerDEX is an ERC-20 token relayer.
In response to the recent emergency patch of the 0x smart contract, we halted our service, updated our code and quickly made our platform available again.
Bug fixes related to order validation after the code migration.
Fixed the problem of unnecessary communication with the Ethereum gateway that might result in high data usage.
Kuldeep from Off Chain On Chain
Off Chain On Chain is an ERC-20 relayer based out of India.
New and improved version of the DEX as well as the website: https://oc2realm.com/exchange & https://oc2realm.com/
6 Market pairs (More than 100 to be launched within 2–3 weeks)
Metamask and Fortmatic(New) as wallet providers.
Shared liquidity with RadarRelay and Bamboo Relay.
Customer chat service integrated.
Weekly Updates on Crypto world and Oc2: https://blogs.oc2realm.com/
Jack from Ambo
Ambo is mobile relayer that was recently acquired by MyCrypto.
Ambo has been heads down for the past several months preparing the app for a huge update which plans to launch in the next few months. This update includes a whole redesign as well as infrastructure changes to make trading as easy and efficient as possible
Ambo has also been working very heavily on developing strategies to tackle the main friction points of Ethereum wallets: keystore management, gas relaying, and addresses.
Crypto News
MetaMoneyMarket enables depositors to automatically move their funds between tokens and DeFi lending services to get the best rates
Global Coin Research’s Small Handbook to Asia Crypto
Linda Xie’s take on the future of DeFi