Spotlight 36: DEX Hunter, Midnight, and Genius Smart Order Router

Highlight of most interesting events happening around Cardano, cut the noise and find the signal.

Author

Utsav Sheth
October 27, 2023

Hi,

What’s Spotlight? Every week, we highlight the most interesting events happening around Cardano. We want to help you cut the noise and find the signal.

DEX Hunter has taken the market by storm; we discuss its function and unique features. We move towards Midnight - a data-protection blockchain by IO and Genius Yield’s Smart Order Router.

DEX Hunter

DEX Hunter is a recently launched DEX aggregator on Cardano. They have been focused on improving the user experience of trading on Cardano. It has quickly captured 33% of the DEX transactions on Cardano.

DEX Aggregators drive <20% of transactions in the broader crypto world. Due to DEX familiarity and risk concerns, most users prefer directly swapping through Uniswap or Curve. On the Cardano end, most DEXs have significant issues with UI/UX, and a front-end that simplifies it is a welcome addition.


DEX Hunter UI

A DEX aggregator uses an off-chain algorithm to find the best route for trades across multiple DEXs. For a $1000 swap, it could route $500 through DEX A and $250 through DEX B & C. This routing gives users better prices than directly interacting with any single DEX. Once you place an order, DH builds the transaction and sends it to the respective DEXs.

DEX Hunter Features:

  • Clean UI/UX

  • Efficient trades

  • Custom nodes to process transactions faster

  • Integration with TapTools

  • Integration with Vespr Wallet

  • Batch limit orders and cancel orders

  • Batch Multiple token orders as Baskets

  • Stop Loss to manage risk.

It offers a set of unique features to Cardano traders that we haven’t seen before. The project is still very young, and it would be interesting to see where it goes.

Midnight

Midnight is a data-protection blockchain being developed by IOG. The chain hopes to enable commercial use cases like medical records, supply chain, tradfi asset trading, and onchain IP rights. It would protect your data using ZK Snark technology while maintaining regulatory requirements.

The chain has been touted as a 4th Gen Blockchain by Charles due to the following key reasons:

Multi-resource consensus: IOG has released research papers on Minotaur, a Multi-Resource Blockchain Consensus. It allows the use of PoW and PoS together in their consensus model. PoW could be an issue with ESG-friendly enterprises.

Settlement-Consensus Layer: Midnight will be a sidechain of Cardano. This could imply assets on Cardano can be bridged to this layer, and it’s settled on the chain with checkpoints of the state. This separates the base layer from the consensus layer.

Identity & data protection: Atala Prism has been working on DID solutions for years. Using ZK Snarks can allow proving something without revealing underlying data. It would be selective privacy, where you can reveal information only to the ones you need. This is a valuable feature for several types of enterprises.

Midnight devnet registrations are open now, and the devnet is expected to launch soon.

Genius Smart Order Router

Genius Yield is building an Orderbook DEX On Cardano, which utilizes the benefits of parallelization and the EUTXO architecture. In orderbooks, users place buy/sell orders, and they get matched by a matching engine. An orderbook DEX needs to decentralize this matching function. Genius Yield has developed its solution - Smart Order Router, which allows anyone to be the matching engine.

The Smart Order Router (SOR) scans the chain for active orders; it will pick the orders and match them based on conditions like price or advanced configurations. The Operator will make money from the difference between buy and sell orders, known as the bid-ask spread.

These SOR operators are different from batchers. You need batchers when you are frequently trading against the same pool. However, here, we are trading against individuals instead of a pool. Thus, you don’t need a single batcher performing batches; you can have multiple matchers concurrently matching orders.

Genius Yield has open-sourced SOR. They are currently in the testnet phase and are expected to go live soon!

Cardano Meetup India

Cardano Spot hosts community-building events across the globe. This month, we hosted a Cardano Community meetup in Bengaluru, India. Stay tuned for more such events!

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