OKEx lists UNI for trading, derivatives

Top cryptocurrency derivatives exchange OKEx has launched a full suite of trading products for decentralized exchange (DEX) Uniswap’s UNI governance token.

According to a Sept. 18 announcement, OKEx allows UNI deposits and withdrawals, alongside trading against ether (ETH), bitcoin (BTC) and U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin tether (USDT).

OKEx also announced a number of of trading products for the hot decentralized finance (DeFi) token, including margin, swap trading, coin-margined perpetual swap and savings.

The firm’s CEO Jay Hao spoke highly of the project behind the token in an email to Modern Consensus:

“In an area with such ferocious competition, Uniswap has managed to continue to iterate and innovate fast. It is currently the DeFi protocol with the most locked value and one of the largest DEXs in the space, solving the major problem that DEXs had with liquidity and also becoming a respected platform on which new, up and coming DeFi projects reach the market.”

Uniswap is a DEX that is powered by two smart contracts running on the Ethereum blockchain. It is well-known for hosting an on-chain decentralized market maker that takes the place of the traditional orderbook. The market maker uses a liquidity pool that is filled with funds users put up in exchange for earning passive income on their deposits.

This mechanism allows Uniswap to facilitate user trades of even the most illiquid pairs without seeing significant slippage or price impact. This makes it possible to trade a large number of ERC-20 tokens against each other or ether in a decentralized fashion. Hao commented:

“We applaud Uniswap for setting the bar for DEXs and tackling one of the biggest issues in that space. It has the potential to grow its user base and become even bigger if it can manage to stay ahead of the curve and continue to keep competitors at bay.”

Furthermore, the Malta-based exchange also listed perpetual swap contracts for UNI, which the firm claims is the first derivative product based on this token. In the announcement, Hao said:

“We are very pleased to be one of the earliest exchanges to list UNI, and the first to provide a complete set of trading tools including margin, swaps and savings for it. As one of the largest decentralized exchanges today, Uniswap has made outstanding contributions to the current development of DeFi.”

OKEx also announced that it has waived fees on UNI perpetual swap contract trading for both market makers and takers. 

DeFi complements traditional finance

Hao pointed out that OKEx is continuing its collaboration with the participants in the DeFi space to help this nascent industry grow. He also claims that the goal of those initiatives is different from what many think it is:

“The goal of blockchain and DeFi has never been to replace [centralized finance], but to use its own characteristics of trustlessness, low friction and low costs to make up for the deficiencies of the existing financial system.”

Hao’s view of DeFi explains the strong interest that his firm has shown towards this space so far. As Modern Consensus reported, on the last day of August OKEx listed eight different DeFi tokens in a single day.