IDEX’s unique design pairs an off-chain trading engine with a decentralized Ethereum smart contract. The off-chain infrastructure manages the trading experience, while the smart contract handles all funds, trade authorization, and final settlement. Traders on IDEX can trade continuously without waiting for transactions to mine, while behind the scenes the transaction arbiter properly sequences and dispatches authorized transactions to the blockchain, ensuring that the smart contract stays in sync with the off-chain balances.
By separating trade matching from execution, IDEX provides the speed and user experience of centralized exchanges combined with the security and auditability of the Ethereum Blockchain.
Watch the video below to see what it's like to trade on IDEX.
The IDEX exchange has given indications that it is limiting trading for certain IP addresses, enforcing curbs similar to those of centralized exchanges. IDEX, through the Aurora project team, announced it would start blocking IP addresses as of October 25
The decision has mystified the crypto community, where IDEX has been a source of free trading for a vast array of tokens. However, the decentralized app (dApp) is not without its limitations. The stringent New York State regulations have forced exchanges to abandon the area in the past, as in the case of Poloniex and Bittrex. Compliance has simply proven too expensive for market operators.
The move shows that even a decentralized exchange (DEX) would not be exempt from some form of trading regulation and limitation. IDEX is a relatively niche platform despite being the leading decentralized market based on the Ethereum blockchain. At best, it has a few thousand users daily, which is just a fraction of the traders and accounts for centralized exchanges. The DEX has a turnover of about 5,000 ETH in 24 hours.
