The hype around decentralized finance [DeFi] has faded but the development and activity surrounding the industry have once again gained prominence. In the background, amidst the noise of food-themed, meme, clone DeFi protocols, there is one decentralized exchange or DEX has started picking up pace. Yes, we are talking about the open protocol 0x which has noted significant appreciation as the market continued its uptrend.
Specifically, 0x climbed to the second spot with respect to the market share of decentralized exchange [DEX] by volume over the past week. Currently, the platform represented 22% of the total market share and was trailing behind, Uniswap which recorded a 7-day trading volume of a whopping $2.42 billion with a market share of 52.7%
This was noted by Senior Research Analyst, Ryan Watkins who’s tweet read,
“Surprised no one has talked about 0x cracking the top 2 DEXs by volume this week.”
Over the past 7 days, 0x registered a trading volume of 1.22 billion. With this, the Ethereum-based protocol surpassed the contentious Sushiswap whose volume for the same time period was found to be at $544 million followed by Curve and Balancer at $428 million and $119 million respectively.
The latest spike in the volume figures can be attributed to the new relayer Tokenlon which was currently running a trade mining program. Affirming the latest news, Tokenlon stated,
“True. We had a trade mining and referral program for Tokenlon users. This way we can get a broad distribution of our $LON token, which is then released very soon.”
As deFi boomed throughout the year, 0x’s usage, also climbed record highs. To top that, the protocol reportedly facilitated nearly $4 billion in trades across various DEXs as well as aggregators such as Tokenlon and 1inch. In fact, it also generated approximately $400,000 in protocol fees.
0x’s native token, ZRX also witnessed a surge of nearly 300% during the same time, from trading below $0.26 to climbing all the way close to $0.75. However, the token took a massive plunge soon after as selling pressure intensified and has so far failed to recover. At the time of writing, it changed hands at $0.41.
0x Vision of Bringing Interoperability Cross-chain
More recently, the execs of the platform had revealed an ambitious plan to drive the expansion of 0x protocol beyond Ethereum. In a blog post, Theo Gonolla, 0x Labs product manager stated that the team believes in heading towards a multi-blockchain world with a vast web of interconnected networks forming the backbone of web3.