- IDEX corporation announced a new update Idex 2.0 of October 20, 2020, having the capability of processing thousands of transactions
- As the Idex 2.0 was striving for perfection in the update, they lost track of the idealism with which Idex entered the market
- Idex in the new update delisted projects like Cajutel, GHOST, ADX Network, Silent Notary, Merculet, CarVertical
IDEX is one of the leading crypto exchanges which aims to provide a real-time and high-performance trading experience in conjunction with blockchain-based settlement. The decentralized exchange was launched in October 2016 and provides real-time trading as a first Ethereum based decentralized smart contract exchange. The exchange built a smart contract that allowed users to submit signed trades on Ethereum enabling the control of orders in which transactions are processed and separated the act of trading from the final settlement.
However, the exchange didn’t pull up enough trading volume and had a 24-hour volume traded of $1.7 million on 17th July 2019 which is particularly not astonishing. In fact, in the last updated review which was held around March 2020 (right in the middle of the pandemic), the volume traded fell down to $316,725(ACCORDING TO coinmarketcap). Therefore, if the investors were looking for liquidity, this exchange was certainly not the right place as the design was not compatible with the software. The overview of the trading portal of the exchange was described as very nominal by the users.
IDEX Grabbed Top Venture Capitalist Firms for Funding IDEX2.0 In August 2020
Two months back, IDEX secured a funding of $2.5 million as a seed investment which was led by G1 Ventures and Borderless Capital which included Collider Ventures, and Gnosis for the main purpose of a high-performance DEX, IDEX 2.0. The update was set and planned to provide a unique combination of performance adhering to the industry standards which should enable the market makers to support IDEX 2.0 out of the box with their existing systems.
Introducing New Roles For Stakers In IDEX 2.0
In the start of2019, IDEX launched a new version of its staking network in the crypto market which allowed its stakes to lock their tokens in a dedicated address and run the IDEXD staking program. This would help in operating the infrastructure of the exchange and in return stakers earned 25% of the trade fees from IDEX in the form of ETH. The first iteration was considered a huge success for the exchange and it got a circulating supply of 52% of the total IDEX tokens. With the introduction to IDEX 2.0, stakers are given new roles of securing the layer-2 network and providing API services for which they will be compensated with 50% of the IDEX trade fees.
IDEX 2.0 Launched On October 20, 2020
The wait for the update which was planned by the exchange for more than a year ago was finally over. The update was given strong claims of providing a high-performance trading engine that is capable of processing hundreds of thousands of orders per second. A brand new interface for its users with advanced trading options and fully-featured mobile support is available in the current update. New API support allowed different types of advanced orders including stop loss, post only, fill or kill, and much more. The usage of layer-2 design said to be an innovative idea in the update.
While the exchange board was making strong commitments in the market, during the launch date, a migration tool was set up in the update for the purpose of assisting the token migration process. It helped in the withdrawal of every token which a user-owned in IDEX 1.0 and transferred it to IDEX 2.0. However, the transfer process looked out to be slow and required numerous fixes.
The whole idea of instant trade execution and no gas fees charged in reality is a conceptualization of a centralized exchange. WhileIDEX entered into the market as a decentralized exchange claiming to provide a real-time high-performance platform for its users forEthereum based smart contracts. Though with the launch of IDEX2.0, the exchange has adopted the concept and features of a centralized exchange. It’s because the main USP of the update can clearly be categorized in the features of a centralized exchange. No matter how much we value a decentralized exchange, when it comes to high liquidity and the vast majority of trading volume, a centralized exchange has a certain edge in providing these features in the global market.
As the exchange was striving for perfection in the update, they lost track of the idealism with which IDEX entered the market. For adapting the perks of a centralized exchange, the exchange even delisted some very valuable projects from the platform which had ample growth opportunities in the future. Delisting of projects led to heavy losses that were incurred in their respective price segments.
Delisting Of Valuable Crypto Projects
The list of projects which were delisted includes names like Cajutel, GHOST, ADX Network, Silent Notary, Merculet, CarVertical, etc. Cajutel is a Guinea-Bissau based company Cajutel Sari owned project and comes under Swiss ownership. Capital Project aimed to provide100% solar-powered high-speed internet in the untapped zones of West Africa. Another project named AdEx Network aimed to provide a solution for some of the most prominent inefficiencies of the online advertising industry which include user privacy misuse, ad fraud, and lack of transparency in reporting. It originated as a decentralized ad exchange and subsequently evolved into a protocol for decentralized digital advertising proving its growth potential in the market.
Taking a look at the damage to the price levels of these projects due to delisting, ADX Network suffered approximately a loss of -16.14% on 16th October 2020 when the exchange publicly delisted the project on its official Twitter handle. The price of the project dropped from $ 0.192609 to $ 0.177006. Cajutel was another crypto asset that suffered heavily in terms of pricing. The price of the digital asset was trading well above $1.00 which after the news of delisting dropped to $0.23 losing its bullish levels completely. The crypto asset hasn’t been able to cross above $1.00 since then. It can be concluded that these projects were relying heavily on IDEX as a major source of volume. By delisting these projects, IDEX not only harmed the price segments of these projects but also invaded the fair play and harmony of the crypto market.
Conversion Of Ideology Being Common Among Crypto Exchanges
The example of IDEX 2.0 of changing into a centralized exchange is nothing new in the market. Many other crypto exchanges had also followed in the same footsteps. The main purpose of doing this is to attract a vast majority of trading volume and high liquidity from the market and in return users get fast transaction speeds. Users are completely blindfolded by the trap of high-speed transactions and don’t realize that a centralized exchange holds the custody of the user’s private keys. It means not even having full control over owed money. The security of assets under centralized exchange is also vulnerable as they are a prime target for bad actors. Manipulation, insider trading, fake volume, and price manipulation are other negative aspects that users overlook being blindsided by the greed of high-speed transactions. It was expected that IDEX’s update will provide new aspects and features to the users within the boundaries of a decentralized exchange. But conversion to a centralized exchange has certainly disappointed and raised many questions on the functioning and integrity of the exchange.