OKEx, OKDex, and Scaling The Neo-Trustless Financial System

OKEx recently published an article titled, “OKEx: Defining Blockchain and Redefining Finance,” where they breakdown the exchange’s genesis and their take on the renaissance blockchain provides to a legacy financial system needing a facelift.

When I ventured into the blockchain realm in 2009 upon reading The Bitcoin White-paper and Satoshi Nakamoto’s vision for peer to peer digital currency for the entire world that’s censorship resistant, immutable, fungible, divisible, portable and basically magic, the current state of affairs was unimaginable. Back then, a future world with over 20,000 exchanges, thousands of blockchains and countless dApps [decentralized applications] wouldn’t have even passed for fiction. Yet, here and now, in 2019 the space is exploding exponentially with innovative projects.

​One of the leading projects and exchanges is indeed, OKEx, which got it’s start in China in 2014. The team is headed by CEO Jay Hao, CRO Tim Byun, COO Andy Cheung, and Director of Financial Markets Lennix Lai. Shortly after launch the exchange left China for sunny Malta, a blockchain and cryptocurrency safe-haven that’s embracing the financial revolution like no other country in the world.

OKEx has some very unique features that drive users to the exchange and is consistently ranked among the top exchanges in total volume. According to CoinMarketCap, at press, they’re 21st in volume with $695,187,964 the last 24 hours.

Another very attractive feature of OKEx is the exchange provides roughly 500 trading pairs which at any time cryptocurrency traders may partake. This is obviously a great advantage to many other exchanges that don’t come remotely close in this metric.

While the exchange has been accused of wash-trading in the past, it has continued to be one of the most prominently used exchanges world over. One reason for such dominance, is the fact that OKEx has never had a security breach. Users of the exchange have been able to hold their funds there with relative ease since inception; moreover, knowing the security team at OKEx thus far has been on top of their game.

​Moving forward, the OKEx Team is working on a number of new and exciting projects. While the world outside of blockchain technology is currently witnessing the polarization of centralization versus decentralization, the blockchain / cryptocurrency dichotomy is no different.

​One example of this dichotomy between centralized blockchain projects and decentralized projects can be illuminated by OKEx’s desire to soon offer their own DEX [Decentralized Exchange]. OKDex will run on its own proprietary blockchain. The jump will leave behind the Ethereum blockchain and OKBs current status as an ERC-20 token and enable decentralized value transfers on a DEX hosted on the blockchain itself. This is likely coming soon, as the aforementioned article states:

“Our public chain, OKChain, is expected to launch on the test network for some final adjustments before it could be released to the public along with OKDex, our decentralized exchange.”

​Decentralized exchanges appear to be gaining steam in the blockchain community and provide an alternative to ‘legacy’ cryptocurrency exchanges and their custody solutions now over a decade old. Despite decentralized exchanges requiring users to already exist in the blockchain ecosystem [since a fiat pair is not available typically but a DEX token is the trading pair] they provide a great number of benefits to consumers.

​Most business was once done with a handshake in person. Today, we delve further into a digital era of blockchain innovations that are emerging and give rise to new economies of scale through trust minimization. One shinning example and advantage of a DEX is the potential for vast tokenization of businesses and the ability to free-markets. Through a DEX contributions can be made to increase the breadth of the world economy and give rise to emerging markets where prior to blockchain tech there was little hope.

These emerging markets will be fueled by businesses tokenizing and their ability to move in and out of one asset without a centralized point of failure. This is the epitome of a trustless system: using Bitcoin as an example, Bitcoin can be exchanged on a decentralized trustless blockchains exchange via smart contracts that don’t execute transfers [atomic swaps] until extensive protocol has been verified and then data is released by both actors in synchrony. Further, this provides a paradigm absent of fiat money, one that isn’t subject to inflation, debasement, and avoids the ham-strung, old, bogged-down legacy financial system.

​“We are believers of blockchain and cryptocurrency. We believe that Bitcoin and peer-to-peer distributed ledger can rebuild human trust and empower everyone. We are proud to witness and become a part of this world-changing economy.”

It’s clear from their publications, OKEx believes they’re laying the foundation to improve the world and contribute to a new, just, transparent, financial system — it will be enjoyable to watch their progress as the space evolves over the second decade of blockchain technology.