Relayer Report #6 — Decentralized Exchanges, Meet NFTs
The latest updates from the 0x ecosystem: July 17th, 2018
Written by Rahul Singireddy. Sign up for Relayer Report here
We started a developer specific email list that you can sign up for here. The next couple of months in particular will bring a lot of important development updates.
If you’re a developer, we need your feedback. Check out our 1st ever Developer Feedback Survey.
Special Feature: NFT + Decentralized Exchange
I’m co-writing this next piece with Brian Flynn who runs an NFT newsletter called NFTY News and is in my mind a leading specialist on the topic. In our eyes, non-fungible tokens and decentralized exchanges are a match made in heaven.
The ERC721 token standard that deals with non-fungible tokens was pioneered by CryptoKitties, but the number of projects now incorporating it into their project has risen dramatically. NFTs will be the single most user-generated tokens due to their unique, customizable nature. Influencers, for example, could accept collectibles of themselves as currency or access to their own content — imagine Kanye West releases a limited edition Yeezus NFT that gives users access to an album early, and is also redeemable for a special edition Yeezus white T-shirt. The possibilities are endless.
Decentralized exchanges are crucial to the success of NFTs because they let NFTs become a currency. In a decentralized exchange, users will be able to swap ERC20 tokens with ERC721s, in the same way fungible tokens have their own trading pairs. New demand for an NFT can be created by simply accepting it as payment — even when there is no official market price, NFTs will still have some value. And decentralized exchanges present a single entry point into a whole variety of NFTs, eventually enabling interoperability between many different kinds of non-fungible assets.
At the same time, NFTs will give decentralized exchanges built on Ethereum an advantage over centralized exchanges. A 0x Relayer that is built for ERC20 tokens will easily be able to implement NFT support, and by incorporating ERC721s the amount of assets that can be traded on a Relayer will exponentially increase. NFTs enable the 0x mission of becoming the leading medium of exchange in a tokenized world.
Ecosystem
Shark Relay (Suchit):
Shark Relay is updating our Kovan environment to implement 0x V2 and you’re invited to participate in the testing
Shark Relay is hosting a webinar on Thursday, July 26th, 1:00–2:00pm New York time where we will demonstrate trades on our Trading Dashboard and show participants how to get the most out of it
LedgerDex (Matt):
After our recent beta launch, we have been busy adding contents to the LedgerDex website and improving performance of the LedgerDex app
ERC dEX (Lindsey):
Please welcome our new Community Manager, specializing in Chinese, Vivienne! 大家好，如果您有任何问题或意见，欢迎您随时与我联系!
Trade our new token listings: DFS, RC, WAX, POE, GNO, SALT, RDN, DENT — follow us on Twitter to receive the announcements in real-time. We’ll be adding many more over the next couple of months. Let us know which tokens you’d like to see.
Due to increased interest, we opened up a Telegram channel!
OpenRelay (Greg):
In the next few weeks we’ll be starting a YouTube series called OpenRelay Screenside Chats, a livestream forum delving into how OpenRelay works
Also coming soon, our affiliate signup portal, a simple dApp allowing anyone with a wallet address to sign up as an affiliate with OpenRelay
We’re very close to launching initial support for 0xv2 on Kovan (Massive included). Once we’re live (tentatively expected early next week), we’ll let everyone know via Twitter
EthFinex (Chris):
Join us for our first hackathon in London, U.K. from July 20th to 22nd. Find more info here and here. We’re offering a USD 5,000 prize for the project making the best use of our self-custodial API
Check out our latest community listing vote here and learn more on our FAQ page
We can’t wait to unveil our self-custodial portal very soon! If you’re interested in being one of the first to try it out, fill out this form with your email and we’ll be in touch
Mobidex (Abraham):
Mobidex Alpha begins on July 17th. Our team is working towards making everything ship-shape for that deadline
We’ve added a neat feature: Touch ID authentication for Android and iPhone. We felt this is a critical security feature and worthy of being included in the Alpha. Check out the announcement
We’ve added the ability to import MetaMask seed words (BIP-39 and BIP-32 standards). Hopefully, this will let folks re-use their existing wallets with Mobidex
The Ocean (Monica):
We’re pushing to MainNet at the end of July! Sign up early and receive a discount on all trades
Check out our June Progress Update to catch up on our pre-launch activity
Our solution for trustless market orders: An intent/reservation system
DDEX (Diane):
DDEX is on imToken 2.0 browser
DDEX partners with Blockchain game HyperDragons (Chinese CryptoKitties) to support in-game decentralized transactions
DDEX COO Bowen gave a speech at the panel of “The Future of Exchanges” on Blockchain Open Forum in Seoul
Jobs
Blockchain Engineer and Community Manager @ Shark Relay, email suchit@sharkrelay.com
Senior Full Stack Engineer @ The Ocean
Links
Vitalik Buterin On Centralized Exchanges (TechCrunch):
Vitalik: “I definitely hope centralized exchanges go burn in hell as much as possible.” Vitalik criticized the listing fees for many exchanges in particular.
Governance (Fred Wilson):
Fred Wilson features 0x in his blog, discussing how people can make changes in decentralized protocols unlike centralized counterparts. We recently hired Peter Zeitz to the 0x team to research decentralized governance. Welcome Peter!
How Asian Exchanges And Investors Are Making Huge Profits Through Trade-Driven Mining (Mohamed Fouda):
Good post that looks into how Asian exchanges are introducing native tokens and changing incentives.
Fun Stuff
I really enjoyed this video of Balaji Srinivasan of Coinbase and Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures. In it, Balaji makes a parallel between how the Internet democratized content to how crypto will democratize investing. With the Internet, anyone can be a publisher, using tools like Twitter and Medium, but there is still a necessary place for traditional publications like the Wall Street Journal and New York Times. Similarly, with token sales and ICO investing, anyone can be an investor, but there will still be a place for professional investors.
I am currently in Nigeria on vacation, and took a tour of a company called Andela that is teaching Africans to code and integrating them with the world’s best tech companies. I liked this line from the tour: “Talent is evenly distributed around the world, but opportunity is not.”