Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange by adjusted volume, has launched its decentralized trading platform (DEX) earlier than planned, according to a press release shared with Cointelegraph on April 23.
The move comes just a week after the exchange launched its native blockchain, Binance Chain, which will power the new decentralized platform.
While Binance DEX trading is set to go live at an unspecified later date, users can as of today create wallets on the platform — either Binance’s official Trust Wallet or other third-party wallets. They can also access tools such as the Binance Chain Explorer, public data nodes and APIs, the press release states.
Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, better known in the industry as “CZ,” has called on the token community to participate and develop new tokens on the Binance mainnet, stating that the exchange hopes to work closely with projects and developer teams to build out the ecosystem. He underscored:
“We believe decentralized exchanges bring new hope and new possibilities, offering a trustless and transparent financial system […] With no central custody of funds […] We hope this brings a new level of freedom to our community.”
The exchange’s own token, binance coin (BNB), has now migrated from its former Ethereum network blockchain-compatible ERC-20 technical standard to a native BEP-2 Binance Chain standard, and will be used as the blockchain’s native asset to assist network transactions.
The launch of Binance DEX follows a two-month testnet period, during which the exchange reportedly ran 8.5 million transactions across a simulated trading environment, coding competition and bug bounty program.
As previously reported, decentralized crypto exchanges enable users to trade peer-to-peer, using smart contracts to automate deal matching and asset liquidation in order to allow users’ funds to remain under their own control. Other major exchanges eyeing their own DEX include OKEx and Bithumb.
As of January 2019, a survey of data from over 400 international crypto exchanges indicated that DEXes accounted for just 19% of the global exchange ecosystem, and their trading volumes amounted to less than 1% of those on centralized exchanges.
As the top crypto exchange by adjusted volume on CoinMarketCap, Binance has seen roughly $1.1 billion in trades over the 24 before press time. Binance coin is ranked the seventh-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, and is currently trading at $23.96, down 2.5% on the day.
