Binance Offers First Look At Planned Decentralized Crypto Exchange

Cryptocurrency exchange Binance unveiled the platform's first look at its upcoming decentralized exchange (DEX) on Thursday.

Binance, one of the world's largest cryptocurrency exchanges by trading volume, announced back in March that it plans to launch a new public blockchain for the purposes of developing the Binance Chain, a platform to transfer and trade different crypto assets without a centralized operator. This week, CEO Changpeng Zhao provided the first demonstration of the Binance Decentralized Exchange and the Binance Chain.

"Today, I have something really exciting to share with you guys. This will be the first demo for the Binance Decentralized Exchange, the Binance Chain," Zhao told viewers.

Zhao explained that his team of developers is ahead of schedule, saying in the demonstration that "I thought this would happen one to two months later or more but again, the team delivered early."

While the majority of the demo is footage of a command line terminal voiced over by one of the Binance Chain developers, the various activities depicted outline the basics of issuing, listing and trading crypto assets on the decentralized exchange.

Zhao insists the product remains in "early stage development," adding that:

"There's still a ton of work to be done to turn [it] into a final product. The team's working on it very aggressively. Nevertheless, this is a major milestone for Binance Chain."

Indeed, other competitors to Binance such as cryptocurrency exchange Huobi announced similar plans in June to fund the creation of an open-sourced blockchain protocol aimed at one day evolving into a standalone decentralized exchange.

And while there are decentralized exchanges currently in existence in the crypto markets, data by analytics firm Alethio reports that most have varying degrees of centralization built into their model.

In fact, sentiment as of late around the security of decentralized exchanges as a whole has taken a hit with one decentralized crypto exchange by the name of Waves being hacked of funds almost immediately after launching from a year-and-half-long beta period.

Changpeng Zhao image via YouTube