"Not your keys, not your coins". "Unbank the banked." Two of the most well known phrases in crypto. Bitcoin has become the giant it is today because you can truly own your Bitcoin. Like a physical gold bar you hold in your hand, but then in digital form: you hold your private key, then you hold your gold bar. And yet, millions of people trade and store their cryptocurrencies on exchanges which hold the cryptocurrency for you in a centralized manner. The exchanges hold your keys. Like a bank holds your money. Totally contrary to what makes crypto unique and revolutionary. Exchanges are actually worse than banks, because of the fact that it's a lot harder to hold an exchange accountable for any mistakes. Like random decisions to block accounts or lost funds due to exchange hacks. Banks are regulated. If they mess up, you have a good chance of getting reimbursed. Crypto exchanges are not very well regulated. And on top of that, there is a big chance that the exchange you use, is not located in your country of residence. So any legal matter will be a foreign affair for you to settle. Unbank the banked? Yeah, but if you switch banks for centralized exchanges, you're worse off. Holding funds on exchanges does not make sense at all. A "DEX" (Decentralized EXchange), changes the game. In decentralized exchanges, you sell and receive straight from your own blockchain address. You own the private keys. You simply authorize a transaction straight on the blockchain. DEXes are the ideal solution for buying and trading crypto.
DEXter, the decentralized exchange that is being build on Tezos, will be launched soon. Last month, camlCase, the development team of DEXTer, mentioned it will be launched this month. You can actually check out the alphanet right now. You will be able to trade Tezos' native FA1.2 tokens. DEXter will be a simple Uniswap-like decentralized exchange without an orderbook.
"Instead of an order book, Dexter uses an automated market maker. Liquidity is added to a common pool for each XTZ/FA1.2 token pair, and the exchange rate is determined by a constant product formula. Anyone can become a liquidity provider and earn a return from the fees generated by trades. All of this takes place entirely on-chain." - camlCase
tzBTC, tokenized Bitcoin that was released last month, will be tradable on DEXter too.
CamlCase will make use of Tezos' ability to formally verify DEXter contracts before deploying them. So we can be assured that DEXter will run as it's supposed to run before anything of value will be traded.
