Canto DEX Trading Volume Soars 200% Ahead of Proposals to Upgrade Network

Trading volume on the largest decentralized exchange (DEX) on Canto, a relatively new blockchain, surged by over 200% in the past 24 hours as traders bet on the latest layer 1 hype.

Canto, which runs on the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), a term for virtual computers that power the Ethereum network, is a cheap and fast network that allows developers to build financial products, such as those for lending and borrowing, atop the blockchain.

Applications running on Canto locked over $120 million worth of value as of Wednesday. The Canto DEX accounts for over 9% of that ecosystem. It uses smart contracts to match traders and rewards liquidity providers with tokens.

The price of Canto's token jumped 30% in the past 24 hours, CoinGecko data shows, bucking a market-wide slide.

The DEX processed over $63 million in trades in the past 24 hours, compared with Monday’s figures of $21 million, setting a new record high. The DEX has seen over $330 million in trading volume this month.

A draw for traders is Canto DEX’s mechanisms to prevent “rent-seeking behaviors” – or tactics where predatory developers build products that extract value without benefiting the overall Canto ecosystem – as defined in its technical documents.

The protocol cannot be upgraded, has no official interface and runs in perpetuity without the “ability to implement fees,” the documents read.

Trading volume surged as some developers floated a proposal to launch Canto’s "contract secured revenue," or CSR, on the main network.

According to the proposal, CSR is a fee-splitting model for the Canto network that enables smart-contract developers to earn money from their original work by claiming a percentage of the transaction fees paid to the network when users interact with their smart contracts.

Those fees are distributed in the form of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to developers, who could trade, stake or post the NFTs as collateral for loans.

Such a method helps incentivize developers to build products that attract users, which in turn leads to higher revenue and usage of the Canto network, benefiting the CANTO token and the related network.

CSR is being tested on a private test network, or a blockchain that mimics real-world usage.

The CANTO token was recently trading at 31 cents, according to CoinGecko. The price has tripled this year.